As mudanças na política de saneamento em Belo Horizonte no período 1993 - 2004: uma análise a partir do modelo de coalizão de defesa

Abstract

This thesis aims at understanding changes in the Belo Horizonte basic sanitation policy, specially the relation among the Municipality, the water supply and sanitation state Company, and the State. Advocacy Coalition Framework, developed by Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, was used as theoretical background for the analysis. The political process started in 1993, resulting into the formulation of a Municipal Basic Sanitation Policy, promulgated in 2001; and into a signed agreement in 2002, aiming at the continuity of COPASAs services provision, in a new management format. Intense political-institutional disputes took place at the policy subsystem, with different dynamics and intervenient factors along time. Meanwhile, other tensions were also taking place among municipalities, state companies, states and the Union, for consolidating a national regulatory milestone for the sector. The main argument developed for analyzing the changes occurred states that innovations or inertias are due to a wide matrix of variables. This matrix of variables could be understood as a dynamics of coalitions, in a network context, according to beliefs, resources, strategies, and a wider political and institutional context, working as opportunities or restrictions to larger changes. The startingpoint for the analysis was the identification of significant innovations at the new management model of this policy, despite important assumptions of the earlier policy, based on PLANASAs reference, have been kept. In the analysis, it was considered that the changes had took place in a direction different from what the conjunctural opportunities signaled, pointing to an expectation of larger changes. From analyses, the design of the new policy was reasoned as the resultant of three advocacy coalitions acting in the subsystem: Coalition of Radical Change; Coalition of Moderate Change; and Conservative Coalition. The research showed that policy-oriented learning developed throughout the process had relevant implications for the occurred changes. Besides, the inexistence of events with a magnitude which could effectively provoke crises, providing internal and external shocks to the subsystem, contributed to the explanation of identified inertias.