Cooperação intergovernamental e capacidades municipais : políticas do estado do Ceará para melhoria dos resultados do ensino fundamental nos municípios

Abstract

This thesis aims to be a contribution to the academic debate on intergovernmental relations in a federative context, shaped by coordination and cooperation between entities, and their relationship with state capabilities. The general objective is to analyze the influence of the main cooperation policies of the government of the state of Ceará, in order to understand their effects on state capabilities and on the results of elementary education in the municipal system, between the years 2007 and 2019, and whether these policies affect municipalities differently. We chose to analyze three vertical cooperation policies: Programa de Alfabetização na Idade Certa (PAIC), Prêmio Escola Nota Dez (PENDez) and distribuition of the ICMS share, which are the main cooperation policies of the government of state of Ceará, institutionalized after 2007. Methodologically, this research is based on mixed methods of social investigation, based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative descriptive approaches and techniques. The analyzes showed that the cooperation policies of the state of Ceará, through the formalization of coordination mechanisms and instruments, favored the expansion of the municipalities capacities, which, consequently, acted on the progression of educational results in elementary education. The implementation of these instruments was hampered by several factors, notably the cooling of policies after their implementation; the deficiencies in the state capacities of the municipalities, in addition to their autonomy in implementing or not the state's guidelines. This study also concluded that the design and implementation of policies tend to favor specific profiles of municipalities. In PAIC, although the design foresees actions for all municipalities, universally, there are targeted actions in the implementation process for those that did not obtain satisfactory results. These focused actions may have helped to reduce asymmetries in results between municipalities. On the other hand, the financial incentives of PENDez and the rule for distributing the ICMS share acted in a meritocratic and competitive manner, that is, those who gain the most are those municipal governments and schools that have better performance results. It is observed that the policies analyzed generate a balance between competition and cooperation: while PENDez and the ICMS distribution model predominantly induce competitive behaviors, PAIC strongly induces cooperative behaviors.