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Tensions between paradigms
To sum up, I have attempted to argue that there are no concrete elements which support the conti-nuity hypothesis. More specifically, in the path fo-llowed by the Brazilian social policy in the last five decades it is possible to identify two opposite mo-vements9. The first points to the path of restructu-ring institutional, financial and protection bases
which are particular to the Welfare State. This pro-cess was boosted from the mid-70s, in the midst of the social fight for Brazil’s redemocratization. It was conducted by the large social and popular move-ment which opposed the Military Regime. This long journey culminated in the 1988 Constitution.
The second points to the opposite direction:
trying to halt the establishment of those bases
draf-ted in 1988. After the first opposing marches (in the last years of the democratic transition), this movement was strengthened from 1990. Since then, a new cycle of liberal and conservative reforms be-gan. In the social field, the principles of the neolibe-ral paradigm are absolutely opposite to those of the 1988 Constitution. The “Citizen Constitution” transformed into the “Anachronistic Constituti-on”10,11. The tensions between paradigms so
oppo-site are evident: the social security versus social
in-surance; universalization versus targeting;
govern-ment-sponsored offer of services versus
privatiza-tion; employment rights versus deregulation and
flexibilization. To sum up, this is the context of tensions to which the social policies are being sub-mitted since 1988 until today.
Due to the limited space for these comments, I would like to mention a paper12 which summarizes
the several attempts to disfigure the social victories from 1988 until 2008, distributed in the following periods:
.
Opposition at the National Constitutional Convention (1987/88). The First Transgressions (1989)
.
The First Stage of the Attempt to Counter-Reform (1990/92). The Funeral Postponed (1993)
. The Second Stage of the Attempt to
Counter-Reform (1993/02). New Attempts to Counter-Reform (2003/06)
I hope I have made it clear that the resistance and mutilation attempts of the redemocratization agenda – most of which carried out by the Federal Executive, since 1988 until today – do not offer any elements which make the “notable continuity” thesis credible.References
Brasil. Secretaria de Planejam ento da Presidência da Repú blica. I Plano N acional de Desenvolvim ento da Nova República, 1986-1989. Brasília: Secretaria de Pla-nejam ento da Presidência da República; 1986. Fagn an i E, H en r iqu e W, Lú cio CG, or gan izadores. Previdência social: como incluir os excluídos? Uma agen-da voltaagen-da para o desen volvim en to econ ôm ico com distribuição de renda. São Paulo: LTr, 2008. Krein JD. Balanço da Reforma trabalhista do governo FHC. In: Proni M, Henriques W, organizadores. Tra-balho. Mercado e sociedade. O Brasil nos anos 90. São Pau lo: Editor a da Un esp; Cam pin as: IE-Un icam p-Cesit; 2003.
Brasil. Presidên cia da Repú blica. Um a estratégia de desenvolvim ento social. Br asília: Gover n o Fed er al; 1996.
Serra J. Entrevista. In: Mantega G, Rego JM. Conversas com economistas brasileiros. São Paulo: Editora 34; 1999. Braga JCS. A financeirização da riqueza. Econom ia e Sociedade 1993; 2:25-58.
Baltar P. Estrutura econôm ica e em prego urbano na década de 90 Brasil. In: Proni M, Henriques W, orga-nizadores. Trabalho. Mercado e sociedade. O Brasil nos anos 90. São Paulo: Editora da Unesp; Campinas: IE-Unicam p-Cesit; 2003.
Castro J, Ribeiro JA, Carvalho B. Gasto social e políti-ca macroeconômipolíti-ca: trajetórias e tensões no período 1995-2005 [texto para discussão n. 1324] . Brasília: IPEA; 2008.
Fagnani E. Política social no Brasil (1964-2002): entre a cidadania e a caridade [tese]. Campinas (SP): Instituto de Econom ia, Unicam p; 2005.
Cam pos R. A lanterna na popa – m em órias. Rio de Janeiro: Top Books; 1994.
Giambiaggi F. As raízes do atraso: paternalismo X pro-dutividade. Rio de Janeiro: Elsevier; 2007.
Fagnani E. Direitos sociais no fio da navalha. In: Vaz FT, Mu sse JS, San tos RF, organ izadores. 20 Anos da Constituição cidadã: avaliação e desafios da seguridade social. Brasília: ANFIP, 2008.
3 Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. [email protected]
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Choices and policies
Escolhas e políticas
Jeni Vaitsman 3
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ing analysis of the relationships between institu-tional rules, macroeconomic constraints and in-novations in the Brazilian social protection system after the 1988 Constitution. The issues addressed are diverse and of distinct natures.
The text criticizes eloquently the linear associa-tion between macroeconomic adjustment and so-cial policy, highlighting the role of internal process-es regarding external constraints. It emphasizprocess-es the institutional conditions favorable to building a so-cial protection system, in spite of the macroeco-nomic adjustment agenda, even though that same agenda did determine the emphasis given to target-ing the protection of the poor, above all through the Bolsa Fam ília Program (Fam ily Grant
Pro-gram). The development of the social policy would have gained relative autonomy in relation to the economic policy, the priority now being the issue of fighting poverty, misery and social inequities.
While the FHC administration, although ad-hering to the targeting agenda, would have expand-ed the fexpand-ederative decentralization in health and expand- ed-ucation, in a process which “was closely related to the democratization and criticism to the authori-tarian centralization of the military regime and not with the State reform agenda of the 1990’s”, the Lula administration would have made other choic-es. The creation of the Bolsa Família Program
di-rectly affected the availability of resources of the central government for basic social areas – health, education, and sanitation.
The author highlights the conflicts and choices – tragic, in the Brazilian inequity scenario – between policies. However, what is considered as an advance in the education and health areas in the 1990’s, “the expansion of the federative decentralization in health and education”, in my view, is similar to the process which the social assistance went through in the years 2000, above all after 2004. The national expansion of the Bolsa Família Program and its converging
with the Unified Social Assistance System expanded the federative decentralization to the social assis-tance sphere, a component of the social security which was neglected up until then. In the sphere of assistential rights, the main assistential right to in-come transfer, which did not depend on contribu-tions and guaranteed by the Constitution, the Con-tinuous Cash Benefit, for elderly and disabled per-sons, which started to be implemented in 1996 with an average of 346,000 beneficiaries, reached a cover of 2.68 beneficiaries in 2007 1.
On the other hand, the social developm ent agenda after 2004 did not cause a rupture with the tradition of the movement of fight against hunger and food security, which guided the social agenda
in the first year of office, but in redirecting it. The fight against hunger and food insecurities was now treated as part of an integrated vision of social de-velopment. It was not a coincidence that the Ex-traordinary Ministry for Food Security and the Fight Against Hunger (MESA), the Ministry for Social Assistance and the Executive Secretariat for the Bolsa Família Program merged with the new
Min istry of Social Developm en t an d the Fight Against Hunger, being granted the status of na-tional secretariats (Nana-tional Secretariat for Food and Nutrition Security, National Secretariat for Social Assistance and National Secretariat for Cit-izenship Income) with equivalent hierarchic levels. There was no rupture, but an institutionalization, a transformation of political agenda into public policy. The Consea, which had been dissolved in the FHC administration and re-established in the Lula administration, had a central role in passing the Organic Act of Food and Nutrition Security in 2006 and in founding the National System on Food and Nutrition Security (SISAN)2.
The unification of the income transfer pro-grams and the areas of food security, income trans-fer and social assistance m anaged by the MDS meant, with the converging policies and actions, a new guidance to face the issue, also highlighted by the author, of “a relevant and diffuse set of assis-tance benefits” and the redundancy of programs and double beneficiaries.
Regarding the numbers for the year 2003 pre-sented in Table III, I disagree that the unification of income transfer programs in the Bolsa Família
Pro-gram would have produced a reduction of 4,722,031 beneficiaries in income transfer programs between 2003 and 2006. The total number of families ben-efitted in the year 2003 (16,335,596 families) has been distorted, since it expresses double families. When the Bolsa Família Program was created in
October 2003, several registries coexisted and jux-taposed and one single family could be in several different registries. The unification of programs also meant the registry unification, the Unified Registry System for Federal Government Social Programs, which was gradually – and with count-less operational difficulties – filtering the inconsis-tencies and repetitions and incorporating in the same data base the beneficiaries of programs prior to the Bolsa Família Program.
Between October and December 2003, the num-ber of beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família Program
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Comments on the article Social protection
in Brazil: universalism and targeting in the
FHC and Lula administrations
Comentários sobre o artigo
A proteção social
no Brasil: universalismo e focalização nos
governos FHC e Lula
Carlos Pereira 4
I would like to start by emphasizing the author’s effort to make a comparative analysis of the social policy in the Fernando Henrique Cardoso – FHC and Lula administrations. Nilson Costa performs this non-trivial task in an unbiased and analytical fashion while attempting to identify, although in a descriptive way, the paths and decisions which were made regarding social policy by the last two admi-nistrations in Brazil.
However, considering that the article, although timidly, concludes that social policies in the Lula administration are not necessarily characterized by innovations, but by maintenance and/or expansi-on of policies created by the previous government, the article’s title does not convey what I feel to be its main contribution. Thus, it would be interesting to have a title which captured this, up to a certain point, counter-intuitive result: “Innovation versus
Imitation: The Brazilian Social Policy under the FHC and Lula Administrations”.
The article begins by making a distinction be-tween two opposing social policy agendas which arose in the 90s in Brazil: the “macroeconomic pers-pective and the institutionalist protection
perspec-4 Department of Political Science, Michigan State University. [email protected]
were not until then beneficiaries of any federal in-come transfer program. From 2003, as the num-ber of beneficiaries and the amount granted by the
Bolsa Família Program increased, the transfer and
number of beneficiaries of the remaining programs decreased. When it comes to the program’s national expansion, between October 2003 and October 2004, the municipalities covered rose from 4,396 to 5,521, reaching the total number of municipalities in 20063.
In addition to the issue of quantity, there is an issue of quality, or of meaning. The Gas Voucher expanded the reach of the social programs, for although it covered 8 million families, the benefits were limited to R$ 15,00 every 2 months. The uni-fication of the program s increased the average amount of the income transfer grants, from R$ 23,24 to R$ 68,13 in October 2004 values3.
The comparison of the budget and spending on different sectors is crucial to understand the political priorities in relation to the public policies. But as the text itself points out, other variables must be taken into account in order to explain why
certain choices are made or why certain sectoral policies are more successful in its institutionaliza-tion and results than others. This was not the intent of the article under discussion, but it is one of the issu es it r aises. Th e sect o r al p r o cesses o f institutionalization of policies are not symmetric or regular. In two decades of democratization, re-forms and innovation, the decentralization of so-cial policies has been taking place in distinct paces and producing different sectoral configurations.
This debate poses the problem of explanation, of finding vocabulary, creating theories for what is new and upcoming in the confluence of different processes, internal and external, but acquires its own meaning in specific contexts. In terms of an agenda on policies research in a compared per-spective, two issues arise: on the one hand, the need to understand the nature, the processes and the sectoral logic involving the mobilization of differ-ent actors and interests which influence the for-mulation and implementation of social protection policies in specific contexts. On the other hand, understanding that the social protection system is under construction, seeing it in the inequity and exclusion contexts that it attempts to overcome through its set of policies, whether they are univer-sal or targeted.
References
Brasil. Ministério do Desenvolvimento Social e Com-bate à Fome. [acessado 2009 jan 30]. Disponível em: http:/ / aplicações.m ds.gov.br/ sagi/ m iv/ m iv.php Burlandy L. A construção da política de Segurança Ali-mentar e Nutricional no Brasil: estratégias e desafios para a promoção da intersetorialidade no âmbito fede-ral de governo. Cien Saude Colet 2009; 14(3):851-860. Brasil. Ministério do Desenvolvimento Social e Com-bate à Fome. Dados dos Programas do Ministério do Desen volvim en to Social e Com bate à Fom e, 2004. [ acessad o 2009 jan 30] . D isp o n ível em : h t t p :/ / www.m ds.gov.br
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