Bureaucratic activism : pursuing environmentalism inside the Brazilian state

This study explores the evolution of the Green Grants program, run by Brazil´s Ministry of Environment, as a means for developing the concept of bureaucratic activism. When the Workers´ Party first took office in 2003, many social movement actors joined the government, especially in that agency. After 2007, however, most of these activists left the government. At the same time, the Ministry substituted thousands of temporary employees for permanent civil servants. Surprisingly, the study found that these public employees carried forward the environmentalist cause, even when this required contesting the priorities of superiors. Examining their attitudes and practices leads to a definition of activism as the proactive pursuit of opportunities to defend contentious causes. The case study serves to help develop this concept, and to demonstrate that workers inside bureaucracies can engage in activist behavior. The study also explores the effects of bureaucratic activism on environmental policy-making in Brazil

Comitês de bacia no Brasil : uma abordagem política no estudo da participação social

Este artigo propõe um marco conceitual para o estudo da gestão de recursos hídricos, no contexto de reforma institucional. Desde o início dos anos 1990, a governança descentralizada e participativa da água vem sendo institucionalizada no Brasil por meio da criação de Comitês de Bacia Hidrográfica. Os Comitês incluem governos, usuários de água (privados e públicos) e sociedade civil e têm competência legal para aprovar planos, definir critérios para cobrança da água bruta, alocar recursos gerados pela cobrança, arbitrar conflitos, além de outras atribuições. Nossa pesquisa sugere que a criação de tais fóruns deliberativos nem sempre resulta na democratização do processo decisório ou em aumento de sua eficácia. As chances de sucesso aumentam consideravelmente quando as lideranças confrontam a questão da sustentabilidade política desde o início, reconhecendo a necessidade de se obter colaboração interna e apoio externo para as atividades dos comitês. O artigo conclui que isso ocorre como conseqüência de práticas que levam à construção de redes entre indivíduos e organizações e estimulam o aprendizado. O nível de empreendedorismo político que fomenta tais práticas, mais do que a natureza dos problemas enfrentados nas bacias, ou a disponibilidade de soluções técnicas apropriadas, distingue os comitês mais efetivos dos demais. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACTThis article presents a conceptual framework for studying water resources management in the context of institutional reform. Since the early 1990s, decentralized, participatory water resources governance has begun to be institutionalized in Brazil through the creation of River Basin Committees. These committees include government, the private sector and civil society, and are legally responsible for approving plans, determining criteria for bulk water charges, allocating proceeds, resolving conflicts and other attributions. Our research suggests that the creation of these deliberative forums does not always result in either more democratic or more effective decision-making. The chances of success are greatly enhanced when leaders confront the problem of political sustainability from the outset, recognizing the need to build internal collaboration and external support for committee activities. We propose that this occurs through practices that lead to the construction of networks of individuals and organizations, and that promote learning. The political entrepreneurship that fosters such practices, even more than the nature of the problem or the availability of appropriate technical solutions, distinguishes the more effective committees from the rest

Movements and Parties: Beyond Contentious Performances

For Symposium Absstract is not require

Movements and Parties: Beyond Contentious Performances

For Symposium Absstract is not require

From Creating Spaces for Civic Discourse to Creating Resources for Action

In this paper, we investigate the role of technology to address the concerns of a civil society group carrying out community-level consultation on the allocation of £1 million of community funds. We explore issues of devolved decision-making through the evaluation of a sociodigital system designed to foster deliberative virtues. We describe the ways in which this group used our system in their consultation practices. Our findings highlight how they adopted our technology to privilege specific forms of expression, ascertain issues in their community, make use of and make sense of community data, and create resources for action within their existing practices. Based on related fieldwork we discuss the impacts of structuring and configuring tools for ‘talk-based’ consultation in order to turn attention to the potential pitfalls and prospects for designing civic technologies that create resources for action for civil society

Decentralization of water management : what explains the creation of river basin committees?

No Brasil, muitos governos estaduais já instituíram políticas de recursos hídricos que criam comitês de bacia hidrográfica, mas a não institucionalização dos instrumentos de gestão de recursos hídricos tem limitado o poder desses comitês. Mesmo assim, foram criados quase 100 comitês estaduais. A partir da literatura sobre descentralização política e da análise de dados empíricos, esse trabalho busca levantar hipóteses para explicar o porquê de tantos comitês terem sido criados.Most Brazilian state governments have instituted water resources policies that create river basin committees, but the power of these committees is weakened by the lack of institutionalization of the management tools they are supposed to define. Even so, almost 100 committees have been created at the state level. Based on the literature on political decentralization and the analysis of empirical data about committees, this article raises some hypotheses to explain why so many committees have been created