Governance mechanisms, societal institutions, and State bureaucracy: concerns over societal institutions and governmental porosity

Abstract

This essay discusses participative governance mechanisms in the public sector grounded on theories of civil liberties, dialogical democracies, patterns of state bureaucracies, and public governance reforms. We aimed to analyze the effects of these issues on political agendas and public and participative governance alternatives in Brazil, emphasizing conflicts among rulers, politicians, civil servants, interest groups, and advocacy coalitions in dispute in decision-making processes. The article signals a hybrid nature of the Brazilian democracy in which Weberian universalism and rules of Welfare State institutions inscribed in the 1988 constitutional matrix operate through competition between two other logic streams – strata inheritance of state bureaucracy on the one hand and initiatives in favor of horizontal and participative governance on the other. The dynamic contradictions among these four issues will define the pattern of current competition for State apparatus.