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Trends in Administrative Reform in Brazil*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Francis Lambert
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In almost all the developing countries ‘planning’ has become the open sesame to an industrial future. Private enterprise, it has been argued, is either incapable or unwilling to provide the investment necessary to develop the world, and therefore the task must be carried out by the state, acting through a wide variety of ministries, nationalized corporations, and ‘mixed’ businesses in which the state is the main shareholder. But making a plan is not the same thing as carrying it out, as most of the nations of the Third World have discovered to their cost. A new and highly sophisticated administrative structure will be necessary to carry out the national plan, and the existing government systems, which are mostly based on foundations laid when the responsibilities of the central government were very much smaller, are mostly inadequate. This dilemma can be seen most obviously in the case of Brazil, where a strenuous and partially successful effort has been made to reform the administration and to fit it for its new tasks. What lessons can be learnt from the successes and failures of the administrative reform in Brazil?

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Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , November 1969 , pp. 167 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

1 It should be pointed out, however, that Argentina and Uruguay, which are still in many respects two of the most developed states in Latin America, were developed almost exclusively by private enterprise.

2 For a history of Portuguese colonial administration, and a comparison with the Spanish system, see Lobo, Eulalia Maria Lahmeyer, Processo Administrativo Ibero-Americano; Aspectos Socio-Econômicos, Período Colonial (Rio de Janeiro, 1962), especially pp. 550–60.Google Scholar

3 Portugal had developed a large bureaucracy (though never to such an extent as Spain) to administer her empire, especially in the east. Raymundo Faoro has even claimed in his study of the whole patron-client system in Brazil that Portugal was ‘a country of public officials’, Os donos do poder: Formação do Patronato Político Brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro, 1958), p. 105.Google Scholar

4 Ramos, Alberto Guerreiro, Administração e estrategia do desenvolvimento (Rio, 1966), p. 446.Google Scholar

5 The ministries were the Empire (Império), Foreign Affairs, Justice, Finance, War and the Navy, which indicates that the bias of the administration was towards finance, defence and the court. In 1861 two new ministries were added, Agriculture and Commerce, and Public Works, which shows a growing tendency to intervene in the ‘economic’ aspects of government.

6 The Ato Adicional of 12 08 1834Google Scholar reformed the provincial government in the direction of decentralization: for the text sec Mendes Almeida, Constituiçôes do Brasil (Sāo Paulo, 1961).Google Scholar For the relations between the Emperor, the presidents (governors) of the provinces, and provincial assemblies see João Camilo de Oliveira Torres, O Presidencialismo no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1962), pp. 87–109.Google Scholar Mario Wagner Vieira de Cunha summarizes the state of the civil service: ‘Except for the efforts made to maintain order in the face of local revolutions and foreign attacks, as in the case of the war with Paraguay, there was no real need for administrative activity … It was rather an administration of a regulating type, with limited financial resources and a small number of officials. Its aristocratic bias was shown by the expenditure on the Court, which amounted to half or more of the total expenditure …’ The activities of the civil service were either ‘for the service of the court’ or ‘service activities for the ruling classes’, to attract them to the regime, O sistema administrativo brasileiro (Rio, 1966), pp. 32–3.Google Scholar

7 Uruguai, Vizconde do, Ensaio sobre o direito administrativo (Rio de Janeiro, 1862).Google Scholar

8 The administration was not entirely decentralized. The Crown retained the power of nominating officials to the National Treasury, the War and Navy Ministries, and to the Post Office; the Emperor also appointed the presidents of the provinces, the bishops, the senior officers in the National Guard, judges of the higher courts, and professors in the faculties of medicine and law. ibid., p. 215.

9 ibid., pp. 275–6.

10 The best analysis of attempts at civil service reform under the Empire is Tomas de Vilanova Monteiro Lopes, ‘A Selecção de Pessoal para o Serviço Público Brasileiro’, Revista do Serviçe Público, 10 1952, p. 19.Google Scholar

11 Decisão do Reino No. 9, 1818.

12 Decisão do Reino No. 263, 15 Nov. 1825.

13 Law of 4 Oct. 1831, Colleçao dos Leis.

14 Decisāo, Marinha 337, 6 10 1834.Google Scholar

15 Decree 744, 12 Dec. 1850. A committee was to classify entrants as good (bem), moderate (sofrivel) or bad (mau), and competitive examinations were to be held for promotion within the department. But the decree admitted that ‘other considerations’ might be taken into account, so it is doubtful how far it was effective.

16 Decisāo 545 of 19 Dec. 1863.

17 de Aragāo, João Guilherme, O cargo público e seu carãcter regalista e Patrimonial na administraçāo colonial (Rio, Imprensa Nacional, 1951).Google Scholar

18 This attitude still exists, even among professional civil service reformers. Of course it can be paralleled in most other countries. It is widely believed in Britain that the Foreign Office is a ‘closed shop’ whose members keep outsiders out and who protect each other against trouble.

19 Graham, Lawrence G., The Clash between Formalism and Reality in the Brazilian Civil Service (Department of Government, Austin, Texas, 1965).Google Scholar I am grateful to Professor Diogo Lordello de Mello for the loan of this excellent work, to which I am deeply indebted.

20 Torres, Oliveira, A formação do federalismo no Brasil (São Paulo 1961), p. 239.Google Scholar

21 Seabra, José Augusto, ‘Ruy e a administraçāo pública’., Revista do Serviço Público, 11 1949, p. 11.Google Scholar

22 Loewenstein, Karl, Brazil under Vargas (New York, 1942), p. 18.Google Scholar Unfortunately he does not cover the subject further.

23 Decree 19495, 17 12 1930.Google Scholar

24 Decree 22338, 11 01 1933.Google Scholar

25 de Nascimento, Kleber, Classificaçāo de Cargos no Brasil (Rio, 1962), pp. 32–3.Google Scholar

26 Siegel, Gilbert Byron, The Vicissitudes of Governmental Reform in Brazil: the Rise and Fall of DASP (Los Angeles, University of Southern California Press, 1966), pp. 70–2.Google Scholar

27 ibid., pp. 71–2, 79–80.

28 Law, 284, 23 10 1936.Google Scholar

29 Taken from Eduardo Pinto Pessoa Sobrinho, Curso de Classificação de Cargos (Rio, 1952)Google Scholar and Siegel, , op. cit., pp. 250–1.Google Scholar

30 This is pointed out in Barreto, Eloah M. G., Wahrlich, Beatriz and Siqueira, Belmiro, Normas para preservaçāo e revigoramento do sistema de mérito (Rio, 1963), pp. 34–5Google Scholar. Beatriz Wahrlich is at present Director of the Escola Brasileira de Administração Pública in Rio, and Belmiro Siqueira the Director-General of DASP, the body in charge of the civil service.

31 Wahrlich, Beatriz, An Analysis of the DASP, for the Public Administration Clearing House, Chicago, 02 1955, p. 3.Google Scholar Also Willoughby, William Franklin, Principles of Public Administration (Baltimore, 1927), pp. 360–1.Google Scholar

32 de Nascimento, Kleber, ‘Refleixōes sôbre estrategia de reforma administrativa: a experiência federal brasileira’, Revista de Administraçāo Pública, 1 (07 1967), 11–51.Google Scholar

33 ibid., p. 14.

34 This emphasis on the technical nature of the DASP represents the division between ‘means’ and ‘ends’ characteristic of the American school of public administration, and also of Taylor's idea of ‘functional management’.

35 Vieira da Cunha comments: ‘Without being an organ peculiar to dictatorship, the DASP played a role relevant to the political game of the Dictator. It was called upon to give opinions on the most diverse matters. In this way the Dictator was able to use the prestige of a “technical organ” to give weight to those decisions in which he had the biggest stake.’ O sistema administrativo brasileiro, pp. 92–3.Google Scholar Some authors went so far as to claim that the DASP should be an instrument of the Estado Nôvo. Azevedo Amaral claimed that an impartial administration might be desirable in a liberal democracy, but that it was superfluous in the Estado Nôvo. It would be ‘an absurdity which implies making ineffective the very instruments through which the state's objectives ought to be achieved’. ‘Política e Serviço Público’, Revista do Serviço Público, 2 (04 1938), 13.Google Scholar

36 Loewenstein, Karl, Brazil under Vargas, p. 104.Google Scholar

37 José Nazar´ de Teixeira Dias, ‘Formação de Supervisores’, Revista do Servi¸e Público, 3 (08 1942), 27.Google Scholar

38 Carneiro, Alaim de Almeida, ‘A promoção nos Serviços Públicos’, Revista do Serviço Público, 2 (02 1945), 40–1.Google Scholar

39 Berquo, Urbano C., ‘Eficiência Administrativa e Sabotagen Burocrâtica’, Revista do Serviço Público, 2 (04 1938), 5–6.Google Scholar

40 The-Budget Division was only created by Law, Decree 7416, 26 03 1945Google Scholar; Wahrlich, Beatriz, An Analysis of DASP, pp. 4–5.Google Scholar But Kleber de Nascimento claims that any budget controls that were established were purely formal. Many agencies had to certify that they had received material before they had actually received their supplies. This was necessary because the cumbrous controls of the DASP so. shortened the commercial year that orders placed in January would only be delivered in May. This meant that DASP controls actually increased opportunities for corruption in certain cases. (Kleber de Nascimento, ‘Refleixões sôbre estrategia de reforma administrativa’, op. cit., loc. cit., pp. 36–7.)Google Scholar

41 The classification plan of the civil service was codified in Law, Decree 1712, 12 10 1939.Google Scholar

42 There was an element of class distinction in this division. The examinations were fairly difficult, at least in comparison with the calibre of the candidates who entered for them, and many failed. The underprivileged failures had to enter the civil service as extranumerários, while the privileged failures could get ‘positions of confidence’, which were not subject to examination and yet were superior to the career civil service.

43 Vargas's role in Brazil can be compared with that of Peter the Great in Russia. Graham, , op. cit., p. 82.Google Scholar Both attempted to achieve national unity and development by means of a ‘new’ civil service on the latest models—in Russia, Sweden and the ‘collegiate’ system, and in Brazil, the Willoughby theories of ‘general administration’ borrowed from the United States. But both failed because new systems cannot be staffed with old bureaucrats; in both cases the reform groups, although given the full backing of the government, failed to defeat the inert mass of traditional society.

44 See de Nascimento, Kleber, Change Strategy and the client system in Brazil (University of Southern California, 1967)Google Scholar, for a discussion of the failures of the reform strategy. Klebcr's whole thesis is that the reform failed because its proponents wanted to enforce change in the whole system all at once instead of being content to work gradually from inside and win over the career civil servants to their point of view.

45 Brazilian political parties (like those in the United States) tend to be loosely knit coalitions, held together less by ideology or even class than by the desire to mobilize votes and win elections. Patronage is necessary in Brazil, as in the United States, to hold together the ‘ward heelers’ and other figures who can deliver votes, and the amount of patronage necessary has expanded with the vast growth of the electorate (around one million in 1930, seven and a half million in 1945, and twenty million in 1966). The PSD and the PTB were the parties most interested in gaining the mass vote, and therefore most dependent on patronage; they were also the parties in power for most of the time between 1945 and 1964, and therefore those who had most patronage to exercise.

46 The PSD and the PTB were both pro-Vargas parties, the former representing the rural notables and also some big businessmen, the latter the urban masses as organized by the trade unions created under Vargas. The UDN was the anti-Vargas party, consisting mainly of the anti-Vargas rural notables and of the ‘progressive’ urban middle class (including most civil service reformers), although with a lower middle class element. Of the various Presidents, Dutra was supported by a coalition of the PSD and several smaller parties, with the tacit support of the PTB; Vargas was the candidate of a coalition between the PSD and the PTB, which proved unbeatable till 1964; Café Filho was vaguely UDN, but had little opportunity to do much about it; Kubitschek was supported by the PSD-PTB coalition; Quadros was a political maverick, supported by the UDN in the hope of gaining power after fifteen years in the wilderness; and Goulart was the ‘favourite son’ of the PTB in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

47 For an account of the attempt to abolish DASP see Siegel, , The Vicissitudes of Governmental Reform, pp. 168–72.Google Scholar Siegel was told that the bill was drawn up personally by the then Finance Minister, Luis Correla e Castro.

48 Graham, , op. cit., p. 245.Google Scholar

49 Wahrlich, Beatriz, A importancia da formaçāo de pessoal (Rio, 1960), p. 18.Google Scholar

50 Wahrlich, Beatriz, Barreto, Eloah M. G., Siqueira, Beimiro, Normas para preservaçāo e revigoramento do sistema do mérito (Rio, 1963).Google Scholar The annual report of DASP estimated that of 300,000 established civil servants (excluding extranumerários) only 15 per cent had entered by competitive examination (jornal do Brasil, 8 07 1961).Google Scholar

51 Article 23, Transitional Provisions, Constitution of 1946. A prova de habilitaçāo was for the extranumerário the equivalent of the concurso for the funcionário, but it was much less difficult, merely a test of whether the official was efficient at his present job.

52 Law, Decree 22306, 1954.Google Scholar

53 Medeiros, José, ‘Estabilidade do extranumerario’, Revista do Serviço Público, 111 (07 1950), 56–8.Google Scholar

54 Law, 2284, 34 07 1954.Google Scholar

55 Graham, , op. cit., Formalism and Reality, p. 278Google Scholar, quoting Jornal do Brasil, 9 09 1954.Google Scholar

56 In May 1956 all appointments to non-classified positions in the autarquias were cancelled, and also all grants of permanent status made to interinos who had not passed examinations since May 1952. This looked like a purge of non-merit civil servants, but in reality opened the way for fresh patronage appointments. Graham, , op. cit., p. 282.Google Scholar

57 Graham, who gives one of the best accounts of the civil service scandals of Kubitschek's time, quotes such headlines as ‘The Rush to Catete: They Want 20,000 Jobs by Monday’, ‘500 Appointments in less than 24 Hours to IAPI.’, and ‘400 Appointees waiting for lAPI's new schedule’, op. cit., p. 283.Google Scholar

58 Jornal Jo Brasil, 11 11 1958.Google Scholar

59 The Minister of Labour stated that 4,436 appointments had been made, 1,657. after examinations. The chief of the President's military household denied mat 15,000 jobs had been given away, but admitted that the President ‘had made many appointments under great pressure at the end of his term of office’. He was ‘not responsible’ for the people appointed. Jornal do Brasil, 20 12 1960.Google Scholar

60 Graham, , op. cit., p. 286.Google Scholar

61 5,000 were dismissed from the Ministry of Labour, always a stronghold of the PTB, and 3,000 from the various social security institutes. It was claimed that 8,500 new officials had been taken on in the department of rural endemic diseases. Transport was also a black spot; 5,000 officials were sacked in two departments highways and anti-drought measures, Jornal do Brasil, 24 02 1961.Google Scholar

62 This of course has been a long established practice in the United States. The contrast drawn by Leonard C. White between the United States civil service in the Jeffersonian era, when it was efficiently staffed by a small group of aristocratic appointees, and the Jacksonian period, when the pressures of a mass party led to the ejection of the aristocratic officials in favour of the ‘spoils system’ and to a consequent fall in standards, has parallels with the situation in Brazil before and after Vargas.

63 Decree, 48921, 21 12 1960.Google Scholar

64 For a summary of the trouble in the social security institutes see Graham, , op. cit., p. 297.Google Scholar

65 Law, Decree 200, Di´rio Oficial, 27 02 1967.Google Scholar

66 Article 146, Decree Law 200.

67 Wahrlich, Beatriz, Sugest¯es preliminares para a implantação da reforma administrativa, p. 3.Google Scholar

68 ibid., pp. 4–5.