Arranjos institucionais e capacidades estatais em políticas esportivas: caso dos Jogos Escolares de Minas Gerais (JEMG)

Abstract

The Minas Gerais School Games (Jemg) represent a public policy aimed at the development of educational sports and parasports for students aged 12 to 17 enrolled in public and private schools in the state of Minas Gerais. The event promotes competitions in various sports and parasports, conducted in three stages (Microregional, Regional, and State). Currently, the Jemg is implemented by the Government of the State of Minas Gerais through the Undersecretariat of Sports (Subesp), the State Department of Education (SEE), and the Minas Gerais Federation of Student Sports (Feemg). For its execution, the government conducts a selection process to identify a non-profit organization (Oscip) with which it will establish a Partnership Agreement to carry out the Jemg. Considering that sports is a social right that must be guaranteed through public policies, this work sought to articulate this theme with studies on institutional arrangements and the development of state capacities. The objective of the research was to analyze the institutional arrangement and state capacity related to the development of the Jemg by the state of Minas Gerais. To this end, the study aimed to problematize the organizational and institutional model of the Jemg from 2017 to 2023, discuss the level of municipal participation in the event, and analyze the results and outputs delivered in the execution of this public policy. The adopted methodology was qualitative research, characterized as a case study, which included document investigation and semi-structured interviews. The research utilized the analytical model of Pires and Gomide (2016) to understand the institutional arrangement of the policy, the technical-administrative and political-relational capacities mobilized, and the results of the intervention. This involved analyzing the selection Notices of Oscip, Partnership Agreements, Execution Reports, Satisfaction Surveys, Regulations, among others. Additionally, seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers from Subesp, SEE, Feemg, and Municipal Representatives. Data analysis was performed using content analysis techniques and the Statistical Package for Social Science for Windows (SPSS). As a result, it is agreed that Subesp and SEE face challenges in the autonomous execution of the institutional set of public policy, due to the scope of Jemg and the structural and bureaucratic limitations of these secretariats. Feemg has led the execution of Jemg, while the participation of other institutions is limited by the complexity of the selection criteria established in the Notices. As a result of this institutional arrangement, there is a (de)activation of state capabilities, which is reflected in the reduction of the State's autonomy and protagonism in implementing policy. Municipalities face disputes to resolve the competition, which points to the need to review the regulations in order to expand the participation of other cities. The research indicates that Jemg's public policy has broad support, reflected in the participation of students, municipalities and schools across the state, despite there being a lack of participation and social control mechanisms. Product delivery can be considered high, as the policy managed to meet its main conditional targets in the Partnership Agreement. Jemg's evaluation tends to focus on quantitative indicators, limiting the understanding of the social and educational impacts of the event. Finally, this analysis aimed to contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms that support Jemg and its implications in the context of educational sport, in addition to promoting a deeper debate on public policy analyzes in the sports sector.