O planejamento governamental: PPA como proxy para medir as capacidades estatais municipais na região sul do RS

Abstract

This research is included in the scope of strategic planning in public management. At the municipal level, it manifests itself in sectorial plans and is consolidated through the Pluriannual Plan (PP), an instrument with guidelines, objectives, targets and indicators, with a four-year periodicity. The Federal Constitution of 1988 transferred the responsibility for preparing and managing their pluriannual plans to municipalities. Thus, this research presents the following question: After 33 years of decentralization of power, accountability and autonomy, do the municipalities have state capacities to elaborate and manage their Pluriannual Plans? Therefore, a multi-case study was carried out on government planning using the Pluriannual Plans as a proxy to investigate the state administrative capacities and relational political capacities of the municipalities in the state, through the analysis of the process of elaboration and management of the 2018-2021 Pluriannual Plan of 17 municipalities from the southern region of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Regarding the methodology, a qualitative exploratory and descriptive research was carried out, operationalized through documentary research and content analysis. The analysis of the documents that make up the municipal PPAs was focused on the formal and mandatory aspects, as required by law, verifying the presence of essential structural elements for the analysis of municipal PP. The interviews took place through the application of an electronic questionnaire developed on the Google Forms platform and sent to the emails of previously contacted participants. As a result of the research, it was found that there is a lack of standardization in the plans presented by city halls, as well as the plans lacking information regarding their presentation and content. The responses to the questionnaires led to the conclusion that municipal managers still consider the PP as a budgetary instrument, as they dedicate responsibility for its preparation and management to accounting sectors. As well as the deficiencies found in the documents and through the answers to the questionnaires, they reveal the low administrative capacity of the 17 municipalities studied. Such shortcomings are also perceived in relation to the communication channels installed for society's participation in the construction of plans. Therefore, through document analysis and application of questionnaires, the low administrative and political relational capacity of the municipalities studied was found.