Crossing Boundaries Strategies: Managing Macro Policies in Federal Government

The paper’s main goal is to investigate whether the management of prioritized policies in Brazil were in line with the worldwide movement known as crossing boundaries strategies. First, the inquiry discusses the idea of bringing the center back in that, in general, encompasses trends of holistic and integrated government approach, coordination and control of cross cutting issues. These trends have been undertaken in the developed countries since the last decade. Based on this, three main comprehensive governmental programs of the President Rouseff’s first administration are analyzed in order to assess if their framework are convergent with this movement. The policies were implemented in the federal level - Brazil without Misery Plan (BSM); Growth Acceleration Program (PAC) and The Brasil Maior Plan (PBM), and cover initiatives in the social, infrastructure and economic areas, respectively. For decades, the New Public Management (NPM) reforms were spread among countries. Nowadays, strategies of major reforms have fallen into disuse. During the last fifteen years, the public sector has experienced new strategies to cross boundaries in order to improve performance in different ways. Focusing on integrated view of the policymaking and strengthening coordination and control mechanisms, these management strategies reflect the appositive view of the original NPM assumptions by shedding lights on reintegration and needs-based holism themes. The concepts of joined-up government, whole-of-government, holistic governance, interactive governance, among other, have been implemented to address the “wicked” problems that challenge the boundaries of public sector organizations, administrative levels, and policy areas. The aims encompass increasing governmental capacity to integrate and promote horizontal and vertical coordination not only across governmental departments and agencies, but also between public and private organizations. The notion of working across boundaries involving inter-organizational, interjurisdictional and inter-sectoral activities demands an intense relational capacity coming from the center of the government. Thus, lately, the federal government formulated and implemented macro policies, such as BSM, PBM and PAC, that indicate some similarities with the crossing boundaries movement. Formally, these macro policies were launched and prioritized during President Dilma Rouseff administration to coordinate several ongoing and new programs in the social, economic and infrastructure sectors, respectively. Some goals were partially accomplished; however, this paper’s focus is not to assess their outputs. Instead of that, it aims at investigating in which extent these three macro policies were in line with the crossing boundaries strategies. Most importantly, the inquiry analyzes how the implementation of the BSM, PBM and PAC have been successful in terms of governmental integration, performance control and coordination inside and outside the federal ministries and agencies. To do so, white papers and academic publications are used to investigate how the policies framework were designed. Additionally, interviews with key actors were conducted to understand the programs actual outputs. Preliminary results indicate different levels of crossing boundaries features. On the one hand, the institutional arrangements of BSM and PAC were effective in monitoring performance. On the other, PBM faced a range of coordination issues that harmed its crossing boundaries initiatives.