Insecurity and corruption undermine development in Brazil – 07/30/2023 – Politics

What is the real capacity of governments to respond to the demands of the population? A new index prepared by researchers from Fundação Dom Cabral points out that bottlenecks related to the fight against corruption and the effectiveness of public security undermine social well-being in Brazil.

The result is based on an assessment of the country’s institutions, in fields ranging from the judiciary to the environment. Institutional quality shows the ability of governments to promote development and, with that, meet the needs of citizens, according to specialists.

Security and corruption control are the areas where Brazil performs the worst, below other upper-middle-income countries and the Latin American region.

“These are our great challenges in the functioning of governments, much more than in other systems such as health and education, with glaring deficits in quality and institutional capacity”, says Professor Humberto Martins, one of the authors of the study.

This is the fifth article in the Public Professional for Democracy series, which discusses themes linking the responsibilities of governments and their servants in protecting institutions, seeking to respond to social concerns. The special is part of the Vida Pública publishing group, a partnership between Sheet and Instituto República.org.

Martins and fellow researcher Ettore Oriol created an Institutional Capacity Index (ICI) to measure the potential of governments to promote socioeconomic development. The objective was to supply the lack of measurements, with numbers and statistics on the subject.

Data from sources such as the World Bank, UN and OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) were used. Among the evaluated factors are accountability, focused on accountability by the State, and open government, a management model that combines transparency and engagement with the population.

The results of the ICI are related to responsiveness, which is the performance of a government to meet citizens’ demands and raise the quality of life.

One of the conclusions was that, although Brazil has higher income and expenses than the average of countries with the same income (17% and 20%, respectively), the levels of well-being are similar. That is, even though it has a larger budget and investments, Brazil is not capable of raising the development of its population above the average of other countries.

The response of governments also depends on human, technological and financial resources. In addition to good management, the analysis considered the institutions’ capacity, a necessary but not sufficient condition to generate well-being.

In public safety, according to Humberto Martins, an aggravating factor is the inefficiency of the police, in which factors such as precarious working conditions hinder work. It is a condition related to low institutional capacity, which will undermine the responsiveness of the security forces.

The 2022 Brazilian Public Security Yearbook ranked Brazil as the eighth country with the highest number of violent deaths, based on data from the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime). The most recent report, published in June of this year, did not disclose the updated comparison.

The document highlights the role of public management in responding to the wave of crimes, considered more important than the number of police agencies.

The fact that it deals with transversal aspects, including everything from limitations of the Judiciary to issues involving international drug trafficking, makes the task of creating a public policy that solves the problem complex, as explained by Martins.

Corruption is another systemic problem, seen as associated with the Brazilian political culture of coalition governments and the ineffectiveness of oversight bodies. As with public safety, it is difficult to think of a measure that deals with these obstacles, according to the professor.

Although initiatives that help in the fight against corruption have grown in recent years, with emphasis on the LAI (Law on Access to Information), the analysis is that it is still necessary to increase the active transparency of the institutions, without having to request the data.

Renata Vilhena, also from Fundação Dom Cabral and chairman of the Board of Instituto República.org, says that it is necessary to improve access to information, which, she points out, is a way of monitoring and demanding results from the government, which increases responsiveness.

“Sometimes, the way in which data transparency is made available is not very friendly for ordinary citizens. Several instruments already exist, but we need to qualify to improve access and encourage the population more effectively”, he says.

MUNICIPALITIES HAVE MORE CHALLENGES

Most municipalities face limitations to serve the population, associated with the lack of specialized servers or financial resources. Therefore, they tend to be less responsive than other federative entities.

According to Cibele Franzese, professor of public administration at FGV, state capacity is more concentrated in the municipal sphere, with most of the civil servants.

“Cities are not properly structured to deal with all this challenge of the complexity of the country’s problems, which are very uneven regionally”, he says. “So, we have several problems that are not resolved, because they need both state and federal support to be solved.”

According to Renata Vilhena, there are cities that live off income transfers from the states and the Union, or whose population has public office as their main source of livelihood.

To solve the situation, the ideal would be to think about collaborative governance. “In the collaborative model, I see a fundamental way out, bringing the union of municipalities, with interesting experiences from academia and the third sector”, he says.

In the analysis of Professor Daniel Pinheiro, from the public administration course at the University of the State of Santa Catarina, for a long time the State has been looked upon as the great provider of services, with enormous spending capacity.

He claims that, at times when the economy is relatively under control and revenues are increasing, the State starts to spend, carrying out major works and giving the impression that everything would be fine.

The question, he ponders, is that this is not enough. “Some states and municipalities understand that it is not just a question of financial resources, but also a question of personnel training”, she says.