Bras. Political Sci. Rev.2007;1(2):224-30.
Governo, Políticas Públicas e Elites Políticas nos Estados Brasileiros
DOI: 10.1590/1981-3836200700020008
The collection titled Governo, Políticas Públicas e Elites Políticas nos Estados Brasileiros (Government, Public Policies and Political Elites in the Brazilian States), organized by Celina Souza and Paulo Fábio Dantas Neto, of the Federal University of Bahia, is a landmark in the welcome, but still incipient, process of decentring of Brazilian political science. I say this because the nine studies compiled promote significant displacements in relation to three of the guiding axes of Brazilian politicology, those being the thematic, the methodological and the spatial axes.
With regards to the thematic axis, the book in question, by focusing on government structures, public policies and the role of political elites in several Brazilian states, carries out a significant “correction of course” in relation to the still predominant emphasis on institutions, processes and players of the federal and municipal levels. If, on the one hand, the country’s academic researchers have only recently turned their attention to the ongoing processes of de-fragmentation of public administration in Brazil — following through on the perception of the limitations and perversities of the autarchic and predatory municipalism —, which led to more consistent inter-municipal cooperation and to a revaluing of regional planning, on the other, the state sphere remains seriously neglected, even considering the well-known exceptions that seem only to confirm the rule.
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