University of São Paulo: President-elect will face challenges for the implementation of public policies
The 2022 presidential election was close, but it chose Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as the new president of Brazil. This will be his third time in office, but even with a lot of experience, he will face challenges in the implementation and maintenance of public policies next year.
“We went off the rails because of the economic crisis, but also progressively, and this accelerated a lot in the Bolsonaro government, with the dismantling of policies”, analyzes professor Marta Arretche, from the Department of Political Science at the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences of the University of São Paulo. USP.
Challenges
For Marta, the president-elect will face three important challenges in terms of public policies: “The first of them [challenges] is, in fact, to resume this agenda in an institutionalized way. The second is the funding challenge, our budget today does not support large-scale policy funding. Lula will have to review the budget issue. The third is the challenge of designing policies that protect the most vulnerable populations, who are currently unprotected. Brazil does not have a well-designed policy for workers in the informal sector, for the unemployed. If you raise the minimum wage, they will not be protected because they are outside the realm of formality”.
According to the professor, Brazil does not have a well-designed policy for the informal sector, the unemployed, so an increase in the minimum wage, a point emphasized by Lula, would not help this part of the population. Marta adds: “It is one thing for you to distribute an Emergency Aid or an Auxílio Brasil with a high value, it is another thing for you to form a policy that really reaches the poor, a policy that is complemented by a set of other policies that guarantee that people really get out of poverty.”
The context is important for the articulation of public policies. Talking and negotiating with Congress, which also underwent changes in this election, is one of the layers to the development planned by the president-elect.
Marta comments on state capabilities and, in her opinion, Brazil has advanced on this point: “It is also true that the context is different from the point of view of what we call state capabilities in political science. During the democratic period, Brazil built a sophisticated body of people technically prepared to formulate policies and also constituted the center of social assistance in the territory. The challenge, in terms of capacity building, is much smaller than it was in the 2000s. I think that this is of enormous value for us to quickly resume an agenda to confront inequality. At some point, we went off the rails and my great hope is that we get back on them”, says the teacher.