Gaylord George Candler
University of Vermont
Particularism versus Universalism in the
Brazilian Public Administration Literature
The author draws on the Brazilian public administration literature to discuss the conflict between
the need to remain open to lessons from elsewhere, while at the same time remaining grounded in
a particular local context. The article begins by presenting calls by a number of Brazilian public
administration scholars for what might be termed an “administrative particularism,” or an assertion that universal lessons do not apply in the discipline. This is followed by a discussion of the
challenges that these and other Brazilian public administration scholars identify. Further discussion will suggest these challenges, and many of the solutions most commonly offered for them,
imply that, far from a uniquely Brazilian public administration, the country seeks to move closer to
the model of public administration practiced elsewhere, especially in the developed world.
Introduction
The contemporary study of public administration as a
separate academic discipline is generally seen as having
its origins in the United States (Dunshire 1999). As the
discipline spread, questions were soon raised about the applicability of lessons learned in this country. Dourival de
Souza Carvalho Junior and Sylvia Constant Vergara (1996)
indirectly raise the fundamental issue that will be addressed
in this article: the conflict between grounding public administration in the national and local context, while avoiding a debilitating “administrative nationalism” that blinds
administrators to lessons from elsewhere (135–37).
The importance of context has long been appreciated.
In early development studies, Alexander Gerschenkron
(1952) and Gunnar Myrdal (1971, 30–45) pointed to the
different historical conditions that the industrialized world
and the current crop of hopeful industrializers face. O.P.
Dwivedi has written more recently that failures in development have occurred because “(1) for many years the
western scholars have been unable to include the non-western contributions to developmental studies; (2)
ethnocentricism and ignorance in the West have continued
to overshadow the need to appreciate the role of local tradition, culture religion, and style of governance …” (1990,
92). Similarly, Fred Riggs has argued that “a naive willingness to copy American practices and accept American
advice is especially dangerous when the American
presidentialist regime is equated with democracy. Precisely
298 Public Administration Review • May/June 2002, Vol. 62, No. 3
because the American political system, including its bureaucratic components, is so different from what is normal
in other countries, both the American example and the advice given by Americans often produce results that are both
unintended and disastrous” (1994, 27).
Gerald Caiden agrees with Riggs, arguing that parochialism “… afflicts too much of the study or science of public administration. Much of what purports to be universalistic is actually highly culture bound and idiosyncratic.
Probably Americans are the worst offenders. Too many,
ignorant of the world outside the United States, merely
generalize about American public administration, not recognizing that American ideas and practices are idiosyncratic and the exception rather than the rule” (1994, 46).
This all appears very healthy. Carl Meacham, however,
suggests the down side of this turn to particularism is that
“many non-Western transitional states reject approaches
used by advanced Western nations, primarily to escape
dependency in any form …” (1999, 47).
There is a danger here, though, in throwing out the baby
with the bath water. In Meacham’s terms, stymied develGeorge Candler is currently a visiting assistant professor in the MPA program at the University of Vermont, and has accepted a position as assistant
professor in the MPA program at Bridgewater State College for Fall 2002.
Previous published work has covered a variety of areas within public administration, including administrative reform, science and technology policy,
democratization, and international development, with an especially strong
current focus on accountability and policy involvement in the nonprofit sector. Email: [email protected].
opment resulting from rejecting useful lessons learned elsewhere could, paradoxically, increase dependence. In a recent article, Klinger and Washington (2000) discuss this
in the U.S. case. The “ignorance of the outside world”
pointed to by Caiden certainly renders dubious attempts
by Americans (and other developed-world scholars) to extrapolate lessons beyond their own contexts. However, this
also suggests that U.S. public administrators miss many
important lessons that might be gleaned from elsewhere.
For Klinger and Washington, “... parochial assumptions
hinder U.S. public administrators from realizing the two
fundamental advantages of an international and comparative perspective on public affairs. First, they keep us from
learning from the rest of the world and from applying these
lessons to our own advantage. Second, they keep us from
understanding our own country in context, and from seeing ourselves as others see us” (2000, 36).
This article discusses this debate between enlightening
contextual grounding and debilitating “administrative parochialism” in the Brazilian context. It will start by presenting calls by a number of Brazilian public administration scholars for what might be termed an “administrative
particularism,” or an assertion that universal lessons do not
apply in the discipline. This will be followed by a discussion of the challenges that these and other Brazilian public
administration scholars identify. Further discussion will
suggest these challenges, and many of the solutions most
commonly offered for them, imply that, far from a uniquely
Brazilian public administration, the country seeks to move
closer to the model of public administration practiced elsewhere, including in the developed world.
Brazilian Administrative Particularism
The teaching of public administration in Brazil is widely
held to have begun with U.S. help in the 1952 establishment of the Escola Brasileira de Administração Pública
(Warlich 1965, 62; Graham 1968, 165–68). Voices soon
began to be raised, though, questioning the usefulness of
the American—and more broadly, foreign—models that
these programs introduced. Alberto Guerreiro Ramos was
perhaps the most prominent of Brazil’s first generation of
modern scholars of public administration to assert this. For
Guerreiro Ramos, many of the development theorists of
his era proposed deterministic models, with development
involving the rejection of a range of particularistic values
in favor of the universalism characteristic of the industrialized West (1967, 30). He rejected these ideas, arguing
that countries on the periphery did not have to passively
follow these examples (39). Public administration was
deeply embedded in society (1966, 38–41), and so it did
not require systematic theory, but rather “muddling
through,” guided by concrete empiricism based in the par-
ticular realities of developing countries (208–10; 1973,
186–239).
A strong chorus of voices have since reasserted
Guerreiro Ramos’s rejection of “foreign models.” Paulo
Roberto Motta criticized development administration that
was developed in the North in the 1950s and 1960s. He
highlighted a number of limitations of this, including the
assumption that “modern” forms of administration could
be implemented without problems, and the emphasis in
these models on administrative efficiency rather than development effectiveness (1972, 39–2). Armando Moreira
da Cunha raised similar concerns, questioning whether
American public administration was relevant in Brazil. In
particular, Mereira da Cunha pointed to a number of thirdworld realities that did not apply to the United States, such
as inadequate technology, the activities of multinational
corporations, political instability, and weakness of the “public” orientation of public administration (1981, 22–26).
Looking at administration at the local level, Carlos Afonso
da Silva Oliveira points to problems in the uncritical application of modern administrative practices. He argues that
modernization in the mid-1980s Brazilian context often
had more to do with elite political squabbles or clientelistic
maneuvering (1986, 27).
More recently, the assertion of the irrelevance of foreign models has perhaps increased. Maurício Serva argues
that the Weberian model of the public administrator, with
merit-based appointees treating her or his office as a “vocation … a duty … an acceptance of a specific obligation
of faithful management” (Weber 1946), was irrelevant in a
country where the patriarchical family continued to exert
a strong role in public administration (Serva 1990, 19).
Nelson Mello e Souza points out that reforms based on
foreign models had gotten nowhere, as these were inconsistent with Brazilian realities. “Instead of trying to achieve
a good administrative reform conceived in global terms
and in accordance with foreign models, we must confront
out own realties of underdevelopment, our characteristic
social values and political interference”1 (1994, 63–65).
Cornélio Octávio Pinheiro Pimenta similarly criticizes
“the fallacy of a belief in a universal administrative model”2
(1990, 30), arguing that imported techniques often stymied
development. Quoting Riggs, he points out that the development of public administration in Brazil must be based
in Brazilian realities (31–32). Carvalho and Vergara point
to the American focus of public administration research
and argue that a Brazilian public administration theory is
needed (1996, 124–25). While seeking to avoid the assertion of an administrative nationalism, the authors join those
asserting that Brazilian cultural realities must be considered (135–37) and suggest that comparative research with
countries similar to Brazil—such as Italy, Spain, and Argentina—is needed (133). Lenaura Lobato asserts the im-
Particularism versus Universalism in the Brazilian Public Administration Literature 299
portance of the local sociopolitical reality in policy formulation in Latin America, arguing that pluralism in the
American model didn’t apply in societies characterized by
large state sectors, clientelism, and weak democratic consolidation (1997, 37–41). Finally, others have argued much
the same more broadly in Brazilian political science.
Antônio Carlos Wolkmer questions whether a uniquely
Brazilian political thinking exists, rather than the country
simply imitating foreign trends (1988, 25–26), Celso
Furtado has similarly criticized Brazil for reflexively adopting ideas from outside (1996, 7), and Raymundo Faoro
probably put it best in his 1987 article, “Existe um
pensamento político brasileiro?”3
Brazilian Administrative Challenges
To sum up the discussion thus far, there is an issue within
the public administration literature concerning whether the
“mainstream” public administration literature generated in
the advanced industrial democracies of the North is relevant in the South. It also has been demonstrated that these
concerns are amply reflected in the Brazilian literature.
This article now turns to assessing whether these claims
have merit.
One might begin by assessing the problems addressed
by public administration scholars in Brazil. On the surface, the country seems to deal with many of the same
issues that the developed country public administration literature addresses. The broader literature includes recurring issues that northerners would find familiar, such as
corruption and accountability (Brei 1996; Silva 1994; Faoro
1977), participation (Gohn 1997; Gondim 1988; Oliveira
1968), decentralization (Pimenta 1995; Silva 1987;
Venâncio Filho 1960), economic policy (Tavares de
Almeida 1996; Bresser Pereira 1987; Prado Júnior 1963)
and administrative reform (Souza 1994; Neves 1981;
Warlich 1965), among others. Similarly, in a 1994 survey
of articles in Revista de Administração Pública, Tânia
Margarete Mezzomo and Claudio Bucci Laporta identify
three distinct phases in the evolution of the journal and, by
extension, given its prominence among mainstream public administration scholars, the discipline. Mezzomo and
Laporta argue that the discipline tended to focus on development issues of public administration from 1967 to 1979.
The emphasis was indicated by an (informal) motto: technical competence and rationality (1994, 10). As the military government lost its developmentalist legitimacy and
Brazilians tired of repression, Mezzomo and Laporta argue that political concerns came to the fore in public administration scholarship in the 1980s. The growth of social movements, agitation for democratization, openness,
participation, and similar themes dominated. It was only
during the 1990s that Brazilian public administration be300 Public Administration Review • May/June 2002, Vol. 62, No. 3
came a discipline focusing on public administration itself.
“The new context demands administrators able to administer democratically and to manage community participation. Added to political competence to reconcile social
demands and cope with the relations of power between the
State and society should be technical capacity to define
priorities and goals, to formulate strategies and generate
resources”4 (14).
Again, many of the same themes found in Revista de
Administração Pública can be found in Public Administration Review. Yet these superficial similarities hide great
differences in the magnitude of the issues dealt with. First,
the development differences between the two regions are
well appreciated, and these are defined in such a manner
as to dramatically change the nature of the problems faced
by developed and developing country public administrators. In turning to address “some of the administrative
obstacles” in developing countries, Riggs points out that
“… examples of every kind of administrative weakness
noted in foreign countries may also be found in the United
States. The chief difference is, perhaps, that other countries cannot afford administrative waste as well as we can”
(1964, 244).
Riggs might also have added that the magnitude of the
problems faced in the South is far greater (and the assumption underlies much of his early development administration work; 1964, 244–59). This hardly needs demonstrating; indeed, this underdevelopment defines these
countries. Despite Brazil’s long self-image of (and hope
for) itself as “the country of the future” (Eakin 1998,1),
many Brazilians would still agree with Paulo Prado’s 1928
epitaph that “in a radiant land live a sad people” (9). Despite an impressive array of industries and a diverse
economy, the benefits of this development have not been
enjoyed by large segments of the population. National
income figures remain well below developed-country levels, and human development has tarried even further behind (UNDP 1999, 135).
However, the emphasis on the cultural uniqueness of
Brazil, offered by many Brazilian scholars to explain the
need for a unique Brazilian public administration literature, ironically points to the great similarities between
public administration in Brazil and elsewhere. Many Brazilian public administration scholars cite precisely this
cultural legacy as a key problem to be overcome. The cultural origins of the country have long been cited to explain
its administrative difficulties. Classic works such as
Gilberto Freyre’s Casa-Grande y Senzala (1978), Victor
Nunes Leal’s Coronelismo (1948), Nelson Werneck Sodre’s
Formação da Sociedade Brasileira (1944), Paulo Prado’s
Retrato do Brasil (1928), and Alberto Torres’s O Problema
Nacional Brasileiro (1978) note the authoritarian individualism of Brazil’s early settlement. In contrast to the state-
led model of settlement, which characterized the French
and Spanish colonies, Brazil’s early settlement was characterized by private initiative, with the family, rather than
the individual, the key unit. Slavery further exacerbated
the authoritarian tendencies of this paternalistic patriarchy.
The formal political system was easily suborned to these
informal social relations, as local self-government operated on a property-based suffrage. Whatever moderating
influence might have been exercised by (often equally patronage-driven) state and federal governments was nullified by the great de facto local autonomy that states and
localities enjoyed. Patrimonialism, clientelism, and the
suborning of public to private interests came to characterize public administration (Freyre 1978,19; Leal 1948;
Torres 1978, 44–45; Prado 1928; Sodre 1944, 73–104).
Similarly, Caio Prado Junior’s Evolução Política do
Brasil opens with a reference to “the characteristically feudal origin of the regime of the captaincies.”5 (1966,13).
Celso Furtado’s The Economic Growth of Brazil roots
Brazil’s relative economic stagnation in the dominance of
large, slave-holding landowners. Slavery depressed wages
of free labor and inhibited further European immigration.
Even among the always more numerous free laborers, social links tying tenants to landowners reinforced these
trends (Furtado 1963,107–34; see also Leal 1948, 13–24).
The result was a public administration that was “public”
in name only. As Nelson Werneck Sodre argued over a halfcentury ago, “This absorption of public affairs by private
property lays across our history—for four centuries, in spite
of all alterations, internal and external—and arrives at the
present day in this evident confusion, which we still come
across at each turn, between what is private and what is
public … in Brazil.… We have a very powerful, very strong,
very weighty inheritance of privatism, of public affairs
subordinated to private interests, and our society has only
evolved on the outside, at depth it still remains quite colonial” (1944, 99; see also Torres 1978, 23).6
From these inauspicious roots the country successively
went through 80 years of empire, 20 odd years of the Novo
Estado, and more recently, 20 years of military government, which ended only in 1985. Novelist Jorge Amado
perhaps summed up the ditadura best: “Censorship, corruption, and violence were the tools of government; this
must be recalled because there are some who may have
forgotten it now. It was a time of ignominy and fear: The
jails were overflowing, and there was torture and torturers, the lie of the ‘Brazilian miracle,’ pharaonic public
projects, and graft” (1993, 105).
Despite having justified the 1964 coup partly by the need
for administrative reform (see, for instance, Visão 1964),
the very serious limitations of the Brazilian state remained
on abertura in the mid-1970s and on return to democratic
rule in the 1980s. Maria Carvalho and Helena Tonet note
the need to change the negative aspects of Brazil’s publicservice culture (1994, 151). The current culture is characterized by low salaries, little understanding of organizational roles and career paths, the performance of limited
and repetitive tasks, and the prevalence of personal interests over those of the public. The result is an attitude of
accommodation, rigidity, morosity, and low esteem7 within
the public service (144–46). The authors suggest improving individual performance within the public sector and
increased public participation as solutions (148–51).
Pedro Paulo Carbone reaffirms the historical roots of
organizational authoritarianism—the tendency for Brazilian organizations to adopt a rigid, hierarchical management structure (1991, 89; see also Silva 1987, 93–95). With
strong control at the center, managers become hard to replace on retirement, death, or departure (91). Flexibility is
lost, so that management is often unable to adjust to
changed circumstances (92). Finally, there is an absence
of feedback and little communication, so that valuable input from others is not incorporated into the organization’s
closed decision-making process (95–98).
Maurício Serva notes that in a patriarchal society, personal ties outweigh merit in decision making. Further, he
suggests that indifference and ritualism are Brazilian cultural traits, further inhibiting the efficient functioning of
bureaucracies (1990, 19). Anna Maria Campos addresses
the broad issues raised by Serva at a more fundamental
level. “In the more modern democratic societies it is accepted as natural and expected that the government—and
the public service—will be responsible before the citizens”8 (1990, 30). She suggests that public accountability is so foreign to Brazilian culture that it cannot even be
translated into Portuguese. As a result, the government
wastes money and disrespects the public, which reacts
with an attitude of passive acceptance of favoritism, nepotism, corruption, bribery, and wasted resources (31). This
lack of accountability (and bureaucratic authoritarianism)
is the result of both weak institutions and the low level of
organization in civil society and participation in the policy
process (42).
Luciano Zajdsnajder emphasizes the social
embeddedness of Brazilian public administration. In a society in which levels of civil development differ, the “private appetites” of more sophisticated groups are likely to
predominate, leaving public administration in “ruins.”
Authority in Brazilian public administration is too often
substituted by force, and control of public bodies falls to
these interests or groups. Repression and corruption are
common (1984, 93–94). Gleisi Neves raises similar themes,
listing a range of governmental dysfunctions including
formalism, forgetting ends as a result of focusing on means,
a fascination with size, the fragmentation of activities often obscuring a vision of the whole, resistance to change,
Particularism versus Universalism in the Brazilian Public Administration Literature 301
a lack of initiative, excessive technocracy, a lack of respect for humanity, and an attachment to status symbols
(1981, 34–40). Eli Diniz perhaps sums up this scholarly
criticism of the failures of the Brazilian state best: While
itemizing many of the problems described in the preceding paragraphs (see 1997, 26), a fundamental contradiction exists between the formally strong, centralized state
and the reality of a weak ability to implement policy (17),
and an equally weak system of public accountability (179–
83). The result was often the “privatization” of the bureaucratic apparatus by interest groups (25).
This scholarly impression of the public sector as woefully inadequate is reflected in the public’s perceptions.
Writing only five years after redemocratization, Bernardo
Jablonski and Arnoldo Rodrigues report that the public
image of politics was bad and getting worse (1990, 42–
43). Politicians were seen as ambitious, insincere, deceitful, opportunistic, clever, unconcerned with the public
good, corrupt, and egoistic (46). Even among the political and economic elite, one report finds deep cynicism
concerning Brazil’s leadership. Forty-two percent blamed
deficiencies among the elite themselves for Brazil’s backwardness, while attaching responsibility for the major
problems in the country to government (42 percent), the
elite (23 percent), politicians (10 percent), and Congress
(7 percent). Only 1 percent blamed the Brazilian people
for the country’s major problems (Nascimento Neto and
Grinbaum 1996).
These criticisms imply administrative-reform goals
much such as those espoused in developed countries: accountability, responsiveness, public-spiritedness, fiscal rectitude, meritocracy, and the rule of law. Brazilians advocating economic reform have raised similar themes.
Privatization and open trade policies are advocated as
mechanisms to discipline and reform government. Whether
they are seen as “neo-liberal” policies; justified as “the
ideological matrix most adequate to guide modernizing
forces and to drive the social dynamic in the direction of a
new order” (Diniz 1997, 27); or as a Brazilian manifestation of the same, pragmatic New Public Management
adopted by governments as ideologically diverse as Margaret Thatcher’s United Kingdom and Roger Lange’s New
Zealand (Bresser Pereira 1998, 18–20, 52–58); these reforms have drawn openly and heavily on foreign experience. Given the litany of weaknesses presented above, protectionist trade policies and state-led development have
come to be seen by many as the source of Brazil’s problems rather than the cure. Bresser Pereira preaches the virtues of stabilization, privatization, and liberalization, noting that Latin America’s crisis was one of the state and the
old nationalist-development approach, with its state-led
development behind tariff walls (Bresser Pereira 1993, 38–
39). Hermínia Tavares de Almeida agrees, criticizing the
302 Public Administration Review • May/June 2002, Vol. 62, No. 3
military governments for centralization, closing the
economy, and an excessive public role in the economy.
Worse, she notes that the leftist opposition “shared with
the political, military and technocratic elites favorable to
the regime the same faith in strategies of development conducted by the state”9 (1996, 220–21).
Martins Filho offers two complementary explanations
for the crisis of the state. On the one hand, the crisis represents a crisis of Fordism, with its government-led development through large, state-owned enterprises generally proving unable to compete on global markets; this is
made worse by the “cartorialismo, corrupção e
clientelismo” that characterizes the Brazilian state. On
the other hand, Martins Filho suggests the crisis represents the bankruptcy of Vargas’s Novo Estado. In an inflationary environment, the political spoils system that is
the legacy of varguista corporatism bankrupted the state,
strengthening the liberal, minimal state as an option (1996,
98–103). Belmiro Valverde Castor concurs, arguing there
are few doubts that the model of public administration,
in the form conceived and implanted from 1930, entered
in absolute and definite collapse during the 1980s (1994,
155). Inflation and budget deficits had eroded the efficiency of a state apparatus already riddled with
clientelism, corporatism and populism (156–58). Earlier,
Castor and Célio França argued that the varguista centralist fascination with scale, uniformity, modernity, and
control of the environment had broken down, exhausted.
Significantly, while the model had worked adequately
through much of the twentieth century, modern society
became too complex for the state to manage from the
center (1986, 7–13). Decentralization was called for, with
much of this management coming from civil society (22).
In short, the issue may be as seen by current reformist
(and deeply embattled and unpopular as a result) President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Cardoso has referred
to his goals as not so much about privatization of the public sector, in the sense of selling assets to private hands,
but rather as about deprivatization: “... ensuring that it
will be more permeable to the aspirations of society and
less susceptible to be controlled by sectoral, private interests.”10 (Cardoso 1997b, 7; see also 1997b; 1998, 9).
Discussion
From the discussion above, it should be evident that the
magnitude alone of the policy issues facing Brazilian public administration might justify the development of a Brazilian literature, focusing on uniquely Brazilian solutions
to these problems that few developed countries experience.
Brazilians would be justified in looking little to lessons
learned elsewhere, especially those gleaned from the industrialized world.
However, on further analysis, it has been shown this
should not be taken too far. Despite assertions to the contrary, the broad goals of public administration appear to be
remarkably like those of the developed world. This is also
reflected in the vagueness of the solutions offered by those
asserting a need for a uniquely Brazilian public administration literature. Details are sketchy. Carvalho and Vergara
urge Brazilian public administration researchers to recognize local conditions in their research (1996, 134–37), but
they have little to say about what uniquely Brazilian administrative principles might come from this. Lobato similarly urges that the local sociopolitical reality be understood in policy formulation (1997, 39–40) and dismisses
pluralism as an American model conforming to U.S. realities (41), yet fails to indicate what sort of nonpluralistic
policy alternatives might be put forth. Indeed, in a broad
literature that both applauds the growing strength of Brazilian civil society and advocates more participation in the
policy process by these groups (Candler 2000), rejecting
pluralism seems out of place. Mello e Souza calls for a
vague pragmatism (1994). Pimenta criticizes universalistic models without describing a particularly Brazilian model
(1990, 30–31).
As a result, there appears to be a tautological loop in these
arguments. There are wide calls for administrative reform
in Brazil, many of which imply trying to introduce processes
or values common in public administration in the developed
world. Yet a number of Brazilian public administration scholars seek to reject a vague, ill-defined Western model. For
example, Nelson Mello e Souza calls for administrative reform, in the sense of ending the oligarchy of rural elites and
their corruption, cronyism, and other administrative pathologies. However, he criticizes administrative reform conceived
in global terms, arguing instead that reform should confront
Brazilian realities and social and political characteristics.
Yet it is precisely this political interference and these social
values that many Brazilians identify as contributing to
Brazil’s own “reality of underdevelopment,” and that global
norms of meritocracy, accountability, and transparency seek
to replace.
Similarly, Pimenta’s caution that merit-based recruitment threatens the survival of elites whose power is based
on patrimonialist clientelism appears redundant. Threatening the survival of patrimonial elites is precisely the goal
of meritocratic hiring practices. Serva’s dismissal of universality, science, neutrality, rationality, modernity, instrumental rationality, and so forth as elements of the “myth”
of imported administrative methods (Serva 1992, 134–42),
appears equally confusing when the opposites of these traits
are often precisely the problems that many Brazilian public administrators identify.
A distinction, then, needs to be made between those
aspects of the Western model that are peculiarly North
American and European, and those that are indeed universal goals that just happened to develop in the modern era
first in the developed countries. Developed-world lessons
appear less useful in transport policy, poverty alleviation,
higher education funding, and any number of similar specific, context-critical policy issues. However, universalistic prescriptions may apply in many other areas, especially
concerning the broad goals and values driving public administration. These include many of the areas specifically
rejected in the readings cited above, such as modernity,
rationality, neutrality, science, accountability, meritocracy,
and pluralism.
Conclusion
Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe has addressed the issue in another context. When the authenticity of his African artistic expression was questioned because he used a
Western medium (the novel), Achebe responded that writing about African realities in a medium first developed in
the West made his work no more European than did the
use of trombones and pianos make jazz European (1975,
27). Despite his emphasis on the importance of context,
mentioned in opening this article, Fred Riggs has come to
much the same conclusion. Noting that bureaucracy has
been both an instrument of repression in some societies
and a force for good in others, he argues that the reason for
this difference cannot be found in the nature of the bureaucratic structures themselves. “The key variable has not been
any fundamental transformation in the structure of bureaucratic organization—rather, it has involved the establishment of new political structures able to maintain popular
control over the conduct and performance of appointed
public officials” (1997, 347).
Or, as Alberto Torres argues, “the best model that they
[the United States] offer us is not in their material civilization, but in the moral and intellectual culture of their
society”11 (1978, 98). It is correct then, that many of the
structures of the industrialized world are peculiar, and
many of the current and past development lessons of these
countries, too, are of little relevance outside of their spatial and temporal origins. But many of the basic, even
Weberian “moral and intellectual” principles that underlie public administration in these countries remain universally relevant.
Particularism versus Universalism in the Brazilian Public Administration Literature 303
Notes
11. All translations by the author. “Em vez de tentar alcançar
uma boa reforma administrativa conceibida em termos
globais de acordo com modelos estrangeiros, temos que
enfrentar nossas próprias realidades de subdesenvolvimento,
nossos valores sociais característicos e a interferência
política.”
12. “A falácia da crença em um modelo administrativo universal.”
13. “Does a Brazilian political thought exist?”
14. “O novo contexto exige adminstradores públicos capazes
de administrar democraticamente e gerenciar a participação
das comunidades. À competência política para conciliar
demandas sociais e conviver com as relações de poder entre
Estado e sociedade deve somar-se capacidade técnia para
definir prioridades e metas, formular estratégias e gerir
recursos.”
15. “O regime das capitânias em princípio caracteristicamente
feudal.”
16. “Essa absorção da coisa pública pela propriedade privada
atravessa a nossa história, por quatro séculos, apesar de tôdas
17.
18.
19.
10.
11.
as alterações, internas e externas, e chega até os nossos dias,
nessa evidente confusão, com que é público, coisas e planos
em plena confusão … no Brasil … Temos uma poderosa,
fortíssima, pesadíssima herança de privatismo, de coisa
pública subordinada a interêsses privados, e a nossa
sociedade só evoluiu por fora, no fundo ainda permanece
bastante colonial.”
Carvalho and Tonet use the word “descredito,” or discredit.
“Nas sociedades democráticas mais modernos aceita-se
como natural e espera-se que os governos —e o servício
público—sejam responsáveis perante os cidadãos.”
“Compartilhava com as elites políticas, militares e
tecnocráticas favoráveis ao regime a mesma fé nas estratégias
de desenvolvimento conduzidas pelo Estado.”
“Assegurando que ele seja mais permeável às aspirações da
sociedade e menos suscetível de ser controlado por interesses
setoriais, privados.”
“O melhor modelo que eles nos oferecem não está em sua
civilização material, senão na cultura moral e intelectual da
sua sociedade.”
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