State and Municipal Public Management

Ford Foundation Research Programme — Cycle II
Programa de Pesquisa “Estado e Gestão Pública Municipal: Estruturas de Poder, Participação de Atores Sociais e Políticas Ambientais”

2000–2005 · Fundação Ford · NAEA/UFPA · Municipal Governance · Public Policy · Regional Development · Amazonia

Municipal Governance · Local Power · Public Policy · Participation · Organizations · Environment · Territorial Differentiation · Regional Development

Project Overview

State and Municipal Public Management — Structures of Power, Participation of Social Actors and Environmental Policies (Estado e Gestão Pública Municipal: Estruturas de Poder, Participação de Atores Sociais e Políticas Ambientais) was the second cycle of a long-term research programme on the state and public policy in Amazonia developed at NAEA/UFPA with support from the Fundação Ford.

Beginning in 2000, the programme extended questions developed during the first Ford Foundation research cycle (1997–1999) while shifting the empirical and analytical focus toward municipal government, local power structures, participation, environmental policy and territorially differentiated processes of regional development.

I served as General Coordinator of this second research cycle. The programme brought together six coordinated research strands led by researchers at NAEA/UFPA and combined empirical research with postgraduate formation, fieldwork, publications, cartographic and information resources, and institutional development.

The Baixo Tocantins constituted the principal empirical region, complemented by research in Jari, Belém and other locations in Pará. Within this comparative architecture, municipalities were examined not simply as administrative units but as settings in which political decisions, economic transformations, organizations, social actors and environmental processes interacted in different ways.

From State Policy to Municipal Governance

The second cycle developed directly from the earlier programme State, Public Policy and Sustainable Development in Amazonia, conducted from 1997 to 1999.

The first cycle had concentrated particularly on state organization, public-policy formulation and implementation, administrative modernization and the possibilities and limitations of political intervention. The second cycle moved the analysis closer to the territorial and organizational settings in which such interventions become consequential.

This shift placed greater emphasis on:

municipal government and decentralization;
local political power;
participation by social actors;
changing forms of public administration;
environmental policy and natural-resource governance;
relationships between municipalities and companies;
indicators and information for municipal decision-making;
urban–rural and intermunicipal relations;
differentiated territorial consequences of economic and political transformation.

The transition between the two cycles therefore represented a change in analytical perspective rather than a break in the research programme: from the organization and intentions of state intervention toward the institutional, political and territorial conditions under which intervention operates.

Research Architecture

The programme was organized around six interconnected research strands coordinated by Armin Mathis, Edna Castro, Lígia T. L. Simonian, Maria Célia Nunes Coelho, Norbert Fenzl and Thomas Hurtienne.

Together, these strands addressed different dimensions of municipal and regional transformation, including local political power, public administration, social actors, environmental governance, mining and industrialization, sustainability indicators, rural transformation and natural-resource management.

The programme did not impose a single standardized methodology across these research areas. Its coherence resulted instead from a shared concern with the changing relationships between public policy, organizations, social actors, economic transformation, environmental conditions and territorially differentiated development.

Municipal Governance, Local Power & Participation

A central strand of my research examined local political power and municipal governance.

The research addressed questions concerning political elites, clientelism and coronelismo, municipal councils, decision-making processes, institutional change and municipal autonomy. It investigated how formal processes of decentralization and democratization interacted with historically established structures of political power and social relations.

This perspective made it possible to move beyond a purely institutional description of municipal government. Formal administrative structures and participatory mechanisms do not by themselves determine how decisions are made or whose interests acquire political relevance.

Municipal governance was therefore analysed through the relationships between formal institutions, political actors, organizations, participation and historically established local power structures.

This research also generated empirical work on local political elites in municipalities of Pará, subsequently developed as a distinct research strand.

Regional and Territorial Differentiation

The Baixo Tocantins provided the principal empirical setting for examining these questions.

Research across the programme investigated municipalities undergoing different combinations of economic, political, demographic and environmental change. This made it possible to compare how apparently similar processes—including decentralization, industrial investment, environmental regulation and changes in public administration—acquired different forms in particular territorial settings.

The programme increasingly treated regions not as homogeneous administrative containers but as internally differentiated fields of social, political, economic and environmental relations.

This perspective was particularly important in Baixo Tocantins, where industrial development, extractive activities, agriculture, urbanization, infrastructure, environmental change and municipal governance produced strongly differentiated local configurations.

Mining, Industry & Regional Transformation

Mining and mineral-processing activities formed an important component of this regional transformation.

Research in Barcarena examined the relationships between large industrial and mineral-processing operations, municipal government, employment, migration, infrastructure, communities and socio-environmental change.

The expansion of the aluminium production complex demonstrated that large-scale industrial activities could not adequately be understood as isolated economic enclaves. Mining and mineral-processing networks connected extraction sites, energy systems, transport infrastructure, industrial facilities, export logistics, municipalities and labour markets across wider territorial configurations.

These processes produced consequences extending beyond the industrial sites themselves, including changes in settlement patterns, urban development, rural areas, employment relations, environmental conditions and municipal demands.

This research contributed to a growing interest in the ways in which corporate organizations and resource-based economic activities become structuring factors in regional transformation.

Knowledge, Indicators & Cartography

Another important dimension of the programme concerned the production of information for research and municipal decision-making.

Research teams developed empirical databases, indicators, thematic maps and cartographic material concerning municipalities in Baixo Tocantins and other research areas.

A multi-thematic cartographic programme was conceived as a major integrative output. It was designed to bring together information concerning natural conditions, regional structures, employment and income, conservation areas, municipal management, demographic and economic indicators, urban development, agriculture, extractivism, industrial impacts and other dimensions of territorial transformation.

Cartography was understood not simply as a means of illustrating research findings. Maps and spatial information were also intended as analytical instruments and as resources through which public managers and social actors could better understand territorial relations relevant to municipal planning and decision-making.

The available documentation confirms the importance of this cartographic and information infrastructure within the research programme, although the publication of the complete planned atlas in its originally envisaged form has not yet been independently confirmed.

Research, Postgraduate Formation & Institutional Development

The second cycle was conceived not only as a collection of research projects but also as an institutional research and postgraduate-formation programme.

Research activities were closely connected to master's and doctoral work, undergraduate research, fieldwork and academic supervision. Programme documentation records the participation of 48 students, including doctoral, master's, specialization and undergraduate researchers.

This integration of research and academic formation enabled students to develop empirical research within the wider programme while contributing to its different thematic and territorial research strands.

The programme also supported research infrastructure, including information resources, computing and cartographic capacity, field research and mechanisms for communicating research results.

The programme contributed to strengthening public-policy research within NAEA. It created a shared environment in which researchers approaching Amazonian development from different disciplinary and empirical perspectives could engage with questions concerning public policy, municipal government and political intervention.

Research Approach

Across its different strands, the programme combined:

bibliographical and theoretical research;
documentary analysis;
collection and analysis of municipal and institutional data;
field research and research travel;
interviews and other qualitative research;
analysis of political and administrative institutions;
regional and territorial analysis;
construction of indicators;
cartographic and spatial analysis;
comparative analysis between municipalities and regional settings;
research seminars and exchange with public and social actors.

Methodologies varied according to the individual subprojects. The programme should therefore be understood as a coordinated multi-method research architecture, rather than as a single empirical study using one common protocol.

My Role

I served as General Coordinator of the second Ford Foundation research cycle at NAEA/UFPA.

In addition to programme coordination, my research focused particularly on municipal governance, local political power, public administration, participation and the institutional conditions of political intervention.

This work extended questions I had investigated during the first Ford Foundation cycle concerning state organization, public policy and administrative modernization. The second cycle shifted these questions toward the municipal level and toward the ways in which formal political institutions interact with organizations, local power structures and historically established social relations.

The combination of programme coordination and empirical research also brought the relationships between different research domains more clearly into view: public policy, mining and industrial transformation, environmental governance, rural change, social participation, knowledge production and regional differentiation.

Selected Research Outputs & Knowledge Infrastructure

The programme generated different types of scientific and institutional outputs rather than a single final research product.

These included books and book chapters, dissertations, master's theses and monographs, research reports, empirical databases, indicators, cartographic material, seminars and online dissemination.

Important programme-related publications included:

Estado e políticas públicas na Amazônia: Gestão do desenvolvimento regional

Edited by Armin Mathis, Maria Célia Nunes Coelho, Edna Castro and Thomas Hurtienne. Belém: CEJUP, 2001.

This volume stands at the transition between the two Ford Foundation research cycles and brought together research on the state, public policy and regional development in Amazonia.

Políticas Públicas e Desenvolvimento Local na Amazônia: uma agenda de debate

Edited by Maria Célia Nunes Coelho and Armin Mathis. Belém: NAEA/UFPA, 2005.

The volume represents an important synthesis of the programme's growing concern with public policy and local development.

Poder local e mudanças socioambientais em Barcarena

The programme also generated research subsequently brought together around local power and socio-environmental transformation in Barcarena.

Gestão socioambiental, políticas e movimentos sociais na região do rio Jari (AP/PA)

Edited by Lígia T. L. Simonian, this work consolidated research associated with the Jari component of the wider programme.

Not every publication produced by participating researchers during this period should be attributed exclusively to the Ford Foundation programme. Several researchers participated simultaneously in other research initiatives. Publications are therefore attributed to the programme only where the available documentation supports such a connection.

Contribution to My Research

This research cycle represents an important development in my work on public policy, regional development and political intervention.

The first Ford Foundation cycle had directed attention toward the organization of the state and the possibilities and limitations of public-policy intervention. The second cycle demonstrated more clearly that the consequences of political intervention depend on the regional, organizational and institutional conditions through which decisions are implemented and contested.

Three developments became particularly important.

Local power and organizations. Formal municipal institutions operate within historically established structures of political power and through organizations with unequal capacities to participate in decision-making.

Territorial differentiation. Political and economic transformations do not produce uniform regional consequences. Their effects vary between municipalities and within broader regional configurations.

Knowledge and intervention. Data, indicators and cartography can transform empirical observations into forms of knowledge relevant to public decision-making, without guaranteeing that political intervention will produce its intended outcomes.

These questions subsequently remained important in my research on public policy, mining, resource governance and regional development.

From Municipal Governance to Regional Development in World Society

The Ford Foundation research programme was conducted long before the development of Regional Development in World Society (RWS) and should not be interpreted as an early application of that theoretical framework.

Its relevance to the current research programme is genealogical.

The research progressively shifted attention from political objectives toward the organizational, institutional and territorial conditions through which political intervention becomes consequential. It also demonstrated that processes extending beyond individual municipalities—including industrial investment, mineral production, environmental regulation and administrative reform—interacted with different local structures and consequently produced differentiated regional outcomes.

Research on municipal governance highlighted the role of organizations and unequal forms of political participation. Research in Barcarena demonstrated how corporate investment and industrial networks could restructure wider territorial relations. Work with indicators and cartography raised questions about how knowledge becomes relevant to political decision-making.

From the perspective of my current research, these observations constitute important antecedents to later questions concerning organizational mediation, political intervention, knowledge and measurement, regional differentiation and asymmetric consequences.

Retrospective analytical relevance:
Political intervention · Organizations · Local power · Knowledge and measurement · Territorial differentiation · Mining and industrial transformation · Regional consequences

The connection is therefore one of research genealogy rather than theoretical continuity: the Ford Foundation programme generated empirical and conceptual problems that later acquired a different theoretical formulation within Regional Development in World Society.