The Strategy of Public Administration Reform: The Case of BrazilAuthor(s): Gilbert B. SiegelReviewed work(s):Source: Public Administration Review, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Mar., 1966), pp. 45-55Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/973929 .Accessed: 29/04/2012 09:11

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The Strategy of Public Administration Reform:

The Case of Brazil

By GILBERT B. SIEGEL University of Southern California

HEN decisions are made to reform a nation's public service, strategies (or means to an end) are con-

sciously or unconsciously employed. In the case of public administration, the end is the improvement of government's capability to accomplish its goals. Broadly speaking, the selection of strategies involves the establish- ment of a series of ends, means and prior- ities.

It is difficult to describe accurately the de- tails of ends and means in a given situation because all but the broader aspects are ob- scured by the process of change. One reform leads to another. The means employed have consequences, which, in turn, produce varied results. Environmental factors have an im- pact upon reforms. This is not to say, however, that it is impossible to observe the process of change.

Strategies are evident in the choice of such structural variations as study commissions, the permanent centralized agency, the diffu- sion of reform structures throughout a bu- reaucracy, and the temporary experimental unit. Strategies are also involved in the choice of the type of reformer to be employed. Are specialists to be trained as generalists? What of the role of the high level political official? Further, what tools and techniques are used? Is the work of the administrative analyst and the organizational planner re- quired? Is there a problem of changing and controlling human behavior? Are education and training regarded as viable instruments?

The bases and effects of choices among strategies relating to means of reforms can be studied while ecological conditions and goals change. Brazil is an example of a living labo- ratory for such study. For over thirty years,

) American administrative theory and practice have strongly supported the thesis that a central staff agency, having responsibilities for budget preparation, personnel procedures, and purchas- ing practices is very nearly essential to efficient and economical administration. The thesis has seemed especially attractive to many developing countries which are short on trained personnel, and, perhaps, on the motivation for reform. The vagaries through which Brazil's Administrative Department of the Public Service has passed strongly suggest the need for an empirical ap- proach to what is required to effect administra- tive reform.

although attempts have been made to improve public administration through a variety of change models, one principal strategy has predominated. The Administrative Depart- ment of the Public Service (DASP) has evolved as the primary locus of reform. In scope, the executive housekeeping or staff functions, such as personnel, budget and or- ganizational analysis, have been emphasized. The central agency structure with controllist overtones has been used. Staffing has been elitarian, and although some attempt has been made to diffuse administrative skills throughout the bureaucracy, such technology has remained a monopoly of the elite.

This overall strategy, in the context of certain political and social conditions in the Brazilian millieu, has, on the whole, failed; the DASP is dead, or dying, and administra- tive reforms have been notably unsuccessful.

The primary purpose here is to provide a case study of a centralized staff agency and its failure. Such case studies may have con- siderable value in the study of comparative public administration.

Although the centralized staff agency struc- ture is widely used in the United States, especially in general departments of adminis-

45

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tration in the state governments under which are clustered the major housekeeping staff and control functions, much as Willoughby first suggested in 1927,1 there has been almost no systematic investigation of its impact and consequences for public administration. Abroad, the strategy of the central staff agency is perhaps even more appealing than in the U.S., because there are critical short- ages of educated and trained personnel and there is a belief that reforms will perish if they are not centrally managed. These fac- tors influence decisions about special areas, as well as about general administration- for example, organization for economic devel- opment and planning.

The DASP experience suggests the need for a more cautious approach to choice among strategies for reform, and for more extensive empirical study.

The Beginning of the DASP

The roots of the DASP lie in the 1930's when study commissions were established by President Getulio Vargas to deal with press- ing financial and economic matters.

Vargas, who was swept into power in 1930 following a revolution that turned out the oligarchy in control of Brazil since the nineteenth century, was not by nature a re- former, but he gained power through com- mitments to labor, and to the urban popu- lation in general, to establish various welfare programs, to effect improvements in the sal- aries of the civil service and the military, and to overhaul the entire federal bureaucracy. The need for bureaucratic reform was not generally articulated among the masses. Rather, Vargas undertook reform because the corrupt and inefficient nature of the ad- ministrative machinery that he inherited was a formidable obstacle to his new pro- grams.

Initially some experimentation in stand- ardizing government purchasing was tried. Although such attempts continued for a number of years, they produced undistin- guished results. The very earliest of these reforms, initiated during Vargas' first three years in power, failed largely because of the lack of interest and ineptitude of the busi-

1 W. F. Willoughby, Principles of Public Administra- tion, (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1927), p. 108.

nessmen to whom the task was assigned.2 By 1934 the economic condition of the civil

service and the military could no longer be ignored. Vargas then turned to members of the Foreign Service of Brazil for assistance. Mauricio Nabuco, a foreign service officer, was appointed to chair a subcommittee of the Mixed Commission of Economic and Finan. cial Reform.3 This subcommittee was to ex- amine the classification and pay of the civil service. Nabuco had conducted similar stud- ies in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other departments of government and had observed bureaucratic organization abroad. He enlisted the help of other officials from his ministry who had similar experiences and interests. Ultimately, Nabuco's recommenda. tions on personnel classification and pay were rejected because of fear of the overall effects of the reforms upon the Treasury.4

Upon the resignation of Nabuco, the sub- committee was reconstituted under the leader- ship of Luis Simoes Lopes, an advisor to President Vargas on administrative reform. He too had gained a familiarity with gov- ernmental organization and practice abroad through extensive travel and through a knowledge of the literature on administra- tion. The work of Sim6es Lopes and his subcommittee resulted in the first major leg- islation for civil service reorganization in Brazil. The "Law of Readjustment" of 1936 provided for the creation of organs charged with organization, coordination and develop- ment of the public service: The Federal Civil Service Council and the efficiency commissions.5 The Council, responsible to the President of the Republic, had in its jurisdiction all personnel matters in the fed- eral service. The efficiency commissions were the eyes and ears of the Council in the min-

2 E. L. Berlinck, "A Reforma dos Servicos de Mate- rial," Revista do Servifo, Publico, III (July, 1940) pp. 127-130. Oscar Victorino Moreira, "Sistema de Mate- rial no Servico Piublico Federal," Revista do Servico PiSblico.

8"Conselho Federal do Serviho Publico Civil-Como Surgiu o Readjustamenta," Revista do Servifo Ptiblico, I (November, 1937), pp. 73-75.

'Gilbert B. Siegel, The Vicissitudes of Govern- mental Reform in Brazil: A Study of the DASP (Los Angeles: School of Public Administration, University of Southern California, International Public Admin- istration Center No. 6, 1966), pp. 41-47.

6Law 284. Article 10 Collecao das Leis do Brazil, October 28. 1936. Primeira Parte, pp. 200-201.

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REFORM STRATEGY

istries, charged with effecting improvements in public organization and management.

The reforms initiated in the nineteen thirties were, then, shaped by the promises of a revolutionary politician, by the reorganiza- tion needed to carry out these promises, and by economic conditions requiring a general overhauling of the pay and status of the civil service; the last led to the institutionalization of change. An elite composed of foreign service officers and scholarly individuals fa- miliar with organizational forms and prac- tices abroad were assembled because no others seemed qualified for the undertaking, previous experience with businessmen having been disappointing. There was not yet time to train a cadre of qualified administrators; therefore, a centralized personnel apparatus was a natural consequence of the study com- missions. While the efficiency commissions appeared to be a move in the direction of de- centralization, they proved to be little more than branch office operations.

After less than two years, the Federal Civil Service Council was abolished. Sim6es Lopes and his technical staff had succeeded in ini- tiating a new personnel system, including es- tablishment of the open competitive exam- ination as the primary tool of selection, some rational bases for the treatment of temporary personnel in government, and the Civil Serv- ant's Welfare and Assistance Institute.

There were two principal reasons for the decision to abolish the Council.6 First the authority of the Council was limited to personnel and organization matters. Sim6es Lopes and others saw the need for a central agency with a greater variety of functions, including control of the budget and controls on government purchases. Second, many of the Council's personnel controls were being made ineffectual because of budgetary deci- sions beyond the Council's control. The Min- istry of Finance had been the traditional power center in financial affairs. Its strength lay in its influence upon the execution of the budget, for there had been little sys- tematization of c o n t r o 1 of expenditures. Ministry officials used this situation to their

Moacyr Briggs, "0 ServiCo Pdblico Federal no DecAnio Getdlio Vargas," Revista do Servigo Pgiblico, II (April, 1941), pp. 217-225; and interviews by the author with Luis Sim6es Lopes, April 23, and May 6, 1963, Rio de Janeiro.

advantage politically in supporting favored bureaucrats and politicians.

By 1937, Vargas' regime was feeling pres- sures politically from both right and left. A communist-led revolt of parts of the army and navy and other disorders were used as an ex- cuse for a coup d'etat on November 10, 1937, eight weeks before the presidential election. Vargas then set about consolidating the power of his administration. To this, some parts of the new Constitution proposed by Vargas as the basis for his "New State" con- tributed not a little.

The 1937 Constitution centralized power under the chief executive and eliminated many of the conventional checks on such power. Article 67 provided that an admin- istrative department be established under the Office of the President, with responsibility for study and control of all organizational matters in the government, the preparation of the national budget, the audit of budgetary execution, the selection, development and control of civil servants, inspection of the public service, the development and control of materiel systems and specifications, and the operation of a legislative reference serv- ice for the President.7 The net effect of Article 67 was to centralize administrative staff and reform activities.8

Although, broadly speaking, inspiration for the Constitution of the "New State" came from the fascist constitutions of the day, the idea of an integrated administrative staff agency as a strategy of reform and control appears to have been derived from North America. The writings of students and prac- titioners of reform such as W. F. Wil- loughby, the recommendations of the mem- bers of the President's Committee on Ad- ministrative Management, Luther Gulick, Charles E. Meriam, and Louis Brownlow and the staff of the Committee, were widely known by 1938; many provided a rational basis for the development of the Adminis- trative Department of the Public Service. Most of these articles were reprinted and ap-

7Constituiado dos Estados Unidos do Brazil-1937 (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional. 1940), Article

67. 8 Temistocles B. Cavalcanti, Manual da Consti-

Tuiado (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar Editors, 1960), p. 167.

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PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

peared in the new professional journal of the DASP, the Revista do Servifo Publico.9

Between 1938 and 1945 the DASP ex- panded greatly in functions and personnel. Because the granting of government jobs had always been a coveted perquisite of public office in Brazil, particular attention was paid to controls on the hiring and overall status of civil servants. All personnel actions in the government were either reviewed or audited by the DASP. The authority to follow up and post audit every placement, transfer, pro- motion, leave, disciplinary measure and other minor actions by the ministries "was enforced so thoroughly and painstakingly that it became a nightmare for many an ad- ministrator." 10 DASP particularly concen- trated its controls on entry level positions and the lower civil service in general where demand for jobs was high. Middle manage- ment up through the level of minister was outside the classified service.

Because of DASP's expanded activities, it was necessary to broaden the elite. Accord- ingly, the Department initiated a program of courses, lectures, round table discussions and scholarships for study abroad. The Revista do Servifo Piblico was launched and hundreds of monographs and essays were published by the agency. The caliber of the DASP's personnel during the Dic- tatorship was generally high. Many were favorably compared with the civil servants of more developed countries.l In fact, for many years, DASP provided a large part of the

9See for example: Moacyr Briggs, "Evolucao da Administra5ao Publica Federal," "Revista do Servico Publico, III, (August, 1938). pp. 13-20; Pauldo de Lyra Tavares, "0 DASP," Revista do Servifo Publico, III (August, 1938), pp. 19-20; Augusto de Bulh6es, "Ne-

cessaria Reforma-DASP," Revista do Servifo Publico, IV (October, 1938), pp. 5-11; and Celso Furtado, "Coria de Departamento de AdministraSao Geral," Revista do Servico Publico, II (May, 1946), pp. 31-33.

0 Beatriz Wahrlich, "An Analysis of the DASP-A Contribution to the Study of Comparative Administra- tion," (Rio de Janeiro: An Unpublished paper pre- pared for the Public Administration Clearing House, Chicago, February, 1955), p. 11 (Mimeographed). 1 See for example: Henry Reining, Jr., and A. M. Mattos (Trans.), "0 DASP Visto por Um T6cnico da Administracao Norte Americano," Revista do Ser- vifo Publico, IV (October, 1949), pp. 32-35, where Professor Reining is quoted as saying that the quality of the DASP's management and technical personnel is, in many cases, as high as he had observed in the United States.

trained managerial personnel for Brazil's growing industry, which hired them away from the staff agency as quickly as they at- tained journeyman competence.

Through the budgetary controls and legis- lative reference service, and because there was no legislative body during the Dictator- ship, the DASP gained quasi-legislative power under Vargas. Presidential policy was often general, and the DASP filled in the details, thereby frequently initiating policy.12

Some DASP functions remained relatively undeveloped. For example, purchasing and material systems were never perfected. Part of the difficulty lay in the fact that, with the exception of few federal agencies, standards, procedures and purchases themselves were centralized for the entire government-pur- chases being centralized in the Federal Pur- chasing Department, and standards and pro- cedures in DASP. The limitations of such a system are obvious.

Because controls were emphasized so heavily, the more positive benefits of or- ganizational studies were little realized. Struc- tural analyses, the formal aspects of or- ganization, and, most important, the control of official organization patterns, received great attention. The need for central ap- proval of organization structure resulted in much formalism in government organization.

Each of the original DASP activities spelled out in the 1937 Constitution was greatly amplified to include many subordinate ac- tivities. New major functions, such as the control of public buildings, were added. This over-expansion of activities during the agency's first seven years, in conjunction with the emphasis on centralizing control, set the stage for many of the difficulties DASP was to experience later on.

One of the most interesting organizational improvisations of the DASP was the con- cept of the "coordinative system" which ap- parently grew out of the early administrative concepts of organizational separation of "ends" and "means," and F. W. Taylor's

12 Interview with Benedicto Silva, Professor of Pub- lic Administration and first Director of the Brazilian School of Public Administration, and former Chief of the Revenue Section of DASP, May 23, 1962, Rio de Janeiro; also see Henry Reining, Jr., "VI. The Brazil- ian Program of Administrative Reform," in "Latin America Looks to the Future," The American Politi- cal Science Review, XXXIX (June, 1945), pp. 542-543.

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REFORM STRATEGY

functional management principle.13 On the matters of organization, budget, personnel, and materials, the DASP established a direct channel to the staff agencies in the minis- tries for purposes of obtaining information on administrative operations, and to facilitate the performance of particular auxiliary staff functions. These staff agencies were re- sponsible to their ministerial chain of com- mand on general administrative matters, and responsible to the DASP on technical affairs. Real power rested with DASP.14 Most em- ployees of ministerial staff sections were se- lected by DASP, and, being concerned with the "means" and not the "ends" of govern- ment administration, they were naturally ori- ented toward DASP. After the fall of Vargas, the DASP was prohibited from continuing the coordinative activities. Although there has been a gradual reestablishment of DASP's coordinative systems since 1945, many of these staffs have been little used by the Min- istries, which never generally accepted the ends-means dichotomy, and few of which gave permanent or stable form to their staff sections.15

The centralized control agency strategy fitted into a larger pattern of centralization pursued by Getuilio Vargas. After setting aside the federal system and replacing state governors with interventores, Vargas ordered that official liaison between the central gov- ernment and the states be handled through the Commission for the Study of State's Af- fairs. The president of the DASP, Simoes Lopes, was an influential member of this Commission. The DASP handled many of the administrative matters associated with the Commission's control of the states. In fact, the DASP was called upon frequently to as- sist the interventores with administrative problems. Such studies often resulted in the creation of miniature DASP's in the states.16

"8Siegel, op. cit. supra n. 4, at pp. 80-83. 14 Leao Machado, Relafdo Entre os Orgaos de Ad-

ministraf&o Especifica e os Orgdos da Administrarafao Geral (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1946), p. 22.

1 Hugo dos Santos and James Farout, "Estudo das Atividades da Organizacao e Metodos no Servico Ptiblico Federal," Unpublished paper of the Organi- zation and Methods Service of DASP, Rio de Janeiro, March, 1960. (mimeographed).

" A Evalucao dos Servicos Anxiliares e dos Orgaos de 'Staff' na Administracao Brasileira," Semindrio

By late 1945, Vargas' Dictatorship was coming to an end. Elections were promised by December of that year, but in fear that Vargas would again attempt a coup d'etat, the military intervened and terminated the regime. The government was turned over temporarily to Jose Linhares, the President of the Supreme Court. Within five months, General Eurico Gaspar Dutra was elected to the Presidency.

Acting President Linhares mirrored the feelings of many people in Brazilian govern- ment vis a vis the DASP. He was suspicious of its personnel and powers, and convinced that the agency was suited more to the needs of a dictator than anything else. He lacked all understanding of the objectives of ad- ministrative reform, having attitudes towards government jobs and public administration no different from those held by Brazilian poli- ticians for generations. Some of the Acting President's decisions rankled the reforming elite. He violated administrative controls and systematically ignored and by-passed the DASP; worst of all, he appointed very nearly all his friends and relatives to the public service.

Prior to the fall of the dictatorship, Sim6es Lopes had resigned the presidency of DASP in order to organize the Getuilio Vargas Foundation, established to perpetuate reforms through training and other services to gov- ernment. He was succeeded by Moacyr Briggs, a foreign service official who had worked with Nabuco's Subcommission in 1934. Briggs resigned from the DASP in protest against Acting President Linhares' abuses. At the same time, but independently, the subordinate leadership of DASP resigned en masse. Linhares ignored the resignations and suspended the insurgents from office. He also vastly curtailed the powers of the DASP by stripping it of its coordination, control, and auditing powers.17 Internacional Sobre Organizacdo, Direcdo e Funcio- namento dos Servifos Auxiliares e Orgaos de Estado Maior (Staff), Serie C: Topico 2 (Rio de Janeiro, FundaSao Getiilio Vargas and UNESCO, 1952), pp. 83-139; and "Administragao nos Estados e Municipios, Reorganizacao nos Estados," containing the subarticle by I. G. Ramos Ribeiro, "A Reorganizacao Adminis- trativa do Estado do Para," Revista do Servico Piblico, IV (October, 1949), pp. 171-179.

'tDecree-law 8323-A, Sole Paragraph following Ar- ticle 1, Collecdo das Leis do Brasil, December 7, 1945, v. VII, p. 193.

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DASP's lines of control into the Min- istries were broken, and only central over- head controls on such functions as personnel administration remained. The agency's budget was curtailed, materiel management was completely removed from the organiza- tion, and the agency's status was lowered by down-grading the title of the organizational head from "president" to "director-general."

In February, 1946, a Constitutional Con- vention was called to reestablish republican institutions. During the Convention, DASP and its powers were debated on several occa- sions. Many proposals entailed the further transfer of functions from the DASP-princi- pally budget preparation and control. The agency survived the convention in its at- tenuated form and without loss of the budgetary function.

DASP Fights for Survival

Immediately after President Dutra took of- fice, conservative forces in Congress coalesced in his favor. This was short-lived, however, and soon Dutra found himself with no large block of support. It was not surprising, then, that the President was willing to permit DASP to be used as a pawn of executive- legislative bargaining.

Dutra had become familiar with the work of DASP while he was Minister of War under the Dictatorship. He selected Mario de Bit- tencourt Sampaio, a long-time functionary of the staff agency with whom Dutra had worked closely as DASP Director-General. Be- cause Dutra needed to strengthen his hand with Congress, and because de Bittencourt Sampaio was willing to go to extremes to save his organization, they agreed that the highest priority for DASP would be survival. Legis- lative harassment of the staff agency con- tinued, and de Bittencourt Sampaio resorted to "horse trading" and other tactics to pre- serve the integrity of DASP and to sell pres- identical programs.18 Subventions and public works budgetary items were traded with legislators in ex- change for this support.

During the nineteen forties, Brazilian in- terest in resources development and plan- ning grew very steadily. Director-General de

18 Interview with Mario de Bittencourt Sampaio, May 29, 1963, Rio de Janeiro.

Bittencourt Sampaio used this interest skill- fully in attaining prestige and influence for his agency. A comprehensive resources de- velopment proposal, the SALTE Plan, was prepared by DASP.19

The Finance Ministry, rival of DASP for budgetary control, produced its own list of projects for the Congress to consider. The DASP document seemed the more nearly complete plan, however, and Finance's pro- posal was rejected.

The Ministry of Finance fought DASP in the 40's and 50's in other ways. An attempt was made to unseat the DASP from its budget formulation responsibilities and to garner this function for the Ministry. A version of the proposed budget for Fiscal Year 1950 was submitted to Congress by the Ministry of Fi- nance which modifies the traditional form of the executive budget proposal by showing proposed expenditures according to organiza- tional lines, so that the detail of the account totals was established at subordinate or- ganizational levels, rather than by grouping items in expenditure accounts for personnel, maintenance, supplies, etc. The plan had merit because it would facilitate better man- agement control and because it made clear the program aspect of the budget. The diffi- culty, however, was that little forethought was given to legal restrictions that govern the execution of the budget, and to aspects of the Brazilian economy which would have made such a plan difficult to administer.

A great cry of indignation was heard throughout the federal bureaucracy follow- ing Finance's proposal. The Budget Commit- tee of the lower house of Congress declared that it would prepare its own version of the budget. Meanwhile, de Bittencourt Sampaio had clandestinely supplied the DASP's ver- sion of the budget to the Budget Committee. The Committee's proposal was a carbon copy of the document from DASP.

Thus, following the Dictatorship, it was necessary that a basic change in the mode of operation of DASP be undertaken. Prior to the fall of the "New State," the DASP op- erated under a strong positivist orientation which claimed to be apolitical and technical. As a tactic of survival, however, the Director-

" The letters represent the Portuguese words for health, food, transportation and power.

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REFORM STRATEGY

General of the DASP resorted to political be- havior that was new to the agency. This is not to say that the DASP ceased to be tech- nologically oriented in its work, but rather the price of survival was that the organiza- tion had to engage in political "dealing" with the legislature. Ultimately, it became even more evident that the strong attachment to reforming values which characterized Vargas' DASP had been modified under Dutra. Few objections were raised by DASP at the numerous restrictions upon the holding of competitive examinations by President Dutra who argued that he was thereby saving money. Competitive personnel selection un- doubtedly had been the most critical com- ponent of governmental reform in the Vargas period. It was dear to the heart of the old DASP.

Hope and Despair-The Return and Demise of Vargas

Since 1950, presidential incumbents have succeeded each other in rapid fashion.20 Getulio Vargas was re-elected in 1950. Four years later he was forced to retire from of- fice, after which he committed suicide. He was succeeded for the balance of the presi- dential term by Vice President Caf6 Filho.

During the second term of Vargas, new life was injected into DASP. The strategy that the staff agency represented was a product of the needs of Vargas in the first place, and, while he was in office, the agency experienced a revitalization. In 1951, organization commissions were established in the minis- tries to work with DASP in improving or- ganization, conditions and methods of work. Vargas also submitted an administrative re- form bill to Congress which envisioned a mild form of decentralization of the numer- ous agencies that surrounded the presidency. Many of these agencies were to be made subordinate to ministries instead of to the president himself. The bill never emerged from Congress.

An important reform initiated during Vargas' second administration was position classification. Prior to 1950, emphasis was placed upon rearranging personnel careers

o See: Siegel, op. cit. Supra no. 4, passim. for furthet -historical detail and for bibliography concerning vari- ous presidents since 1930.

and manning tables. By 1951, a younger group of technicians was convinced that the North American concept of position classifi- cation was needed. In November, 1952, the ground work was laid for such an under- taking through a Commission for the Classi- fication of Positions, under the leadership of DASP. A survey was conducted during 1953 and 1954, and by late 1954 a classification bill was presented to Congress. With the death of Vargas, however, the plan lay dormant in Congress until 1956 when it was revived by legislators in conjunction with civil servant cost-of-living adjustments.

In 1955, Juscelino Kubitschek, Governor of the State of Minas Gerais, was elected Presi- dent. During his administration, many am- bitious projects were undertaken. Construc- tion of the new Capitol at Brasilia was started and nearly completed. Great eco- nomic advances were made, including the establishment of an automobile industry. Serious social and economic costs were in- curred as a result of this progress, however, including increases in the cost of living, the creation of a large budget deficit, and the de- valuation of the currency through frequent issuance of paper money.

At least in a formal way, President Kubit- schek appeared to continue many of the re- forms sponsored by Vargas and the DASP. However, fundamentally, the President cared little for such matters. He decreed the estab- lishment of a Commission of Administrative Studies and Projects to restudy the decen- tralization project initiated by Vargas, and ignored by the Congress. Later, in 1963, the Commission made its report, but little legis- lative action has resulted.21

North American technical assistance to the Brazilian Government was begun in 1956. A Bureaucratic Simplification Commission was established at the insistence of foreign ad- visors and DASP. Little change resulted- especially in the basic reform strategy. The ministerial counterparts of the Commission (the organization sections) were virtually nonoperational, and, as in the past, the only products of such endeavors were the re- shuffling of boxes on organization tables and the development of new regulations concern-

"' Comissao de Estudos e Projetos Administrativos, A Reforma Administrativa Brazileira, Relat6rio Final, Vol. IV (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1963).

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ing organization structure, again more a mat- ter of controls than reforms.22

The position classification effort also con- tinued during Kubitschek's Presidency. Neither the President nor Congress particu- larly understood the rationale behind DASP's classification proposal. Civil servants, espe- cially those of the lower levels, and poli- ticians interact in Brazil in a client-bene- factor relationship. Political support of poli- ticians is exchanged for patronage and wel- fare, particularly in the urban areas.23 It was not surprising, therefore, that legislators failed to consider seriously the DASP's 1954 clas- sification bill until 1956, and then, only in conjunction with wage adjustments. The DASP's proposal was rejected and resubmit- ted several times between 1956 and 1960. Finally, in 1960 a new Classification Law emerged.

The DASP had proposed the classification of positions based upon duties and responsi- bilities, within the framework of equal-pay- for-equal-work. Amendments in Congress al- tered this equality value considerably. Legis- lative tampering took the form of elevating the grade levels of entire series of classes, an action which affected all occupational groups. As a result, a seller of stamps was paid at a greater rate than a senior clerk. A total of 284 out of 377 classes were altered with re- spect to schedules of pay by the time the Classification Law was approved.24

Generally speaking, the DASP was allowed to continue its approach to reform by Presi- dent Kubitschek. There were exceptions, however. These concerned those areas of public administration which were politically important to the President. The control of

92 Departamento Administrativo do Servi;o Piblico,

Relat6rio das Atividades do DASP-1956 (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1957), pp. 35-36. By 1960 0 & M work had come to a standstill. See: Hugo dos Santos and James Faurot, Estudos dos Atividades de Organizafao e Metodos no Servifo Publico Federal (Unpublished paper of the Organization and Methods Service of DASP, Rio de Janeiro, March, 1961). Ditto and Mimeograph.

23 For a more complete explanation of clientage, see: Andrew Pearse "VII Some characteristics of Ur- banization in the City of Rio de Janeiro," in Philip M. Hauser (ed.), Urbanization in Latin America (New York: Columbia University Press), p. 202.

24 See: Siegel, op. cit. supra no. 4, at pp. 139-145 for a more complete description of the dynamics which lead to the Classification Law of 1960.

public buildings and public works construc- tion used to be significant functions of DASP. Oversight of the greatest public works project of all in Brazil-the building of the Capitol at Brasilia-was wrenched from the DASP by President Kubitschek. Instead, carte blanche authority was given to NOVA- CAP, the public company charged with the Capitol development, in order to complete the project within the President's five year term of office.

Again it should be noted that personnel administration has been the area in which DASP has achieved the most progress. Re- formers have continued to view the control of the civil service, and more particularly, re- straints on the obtaining of public jobs as a critical function of the DASP. The DASP has recaptured most of its original personnel powers eroded in the Linhares period; addi- tional personnel functions have been added. However, these powers cannot withstand the determination of a President to circumvent DASP controls.

When Juscelino Kubitschek took over the Presidency, he assigned blocks of thousands of spoils appointments to his political sup- porters.25 Many technicians left the DASP in protest. The President continued to disre- gard civil service regulations throughout his administration. He forbade the DASP to hold competitive examinations on several oc- casions. Temporarily assigned employees were frozen in office despite legal restrictions.

To recapitulate events since the fall of the Dictatorship: There was a short-lived re- surgence of DASP when Vargas again as- sumed the presidency in 1950. The cen- tralization and control approach had not been emphasized under President Dutra because of preoccupation with the more fundamental task of survival. In the second Vargas period, however, old programs, such as organization and methods reform, were reinstituted, with approximately the same re- sults as before. The same pattern continued

26 It has been estimated that 7,000 appointments were made, a large part of which were the Brazilian Labor Party's share of spoils for supporting Kubitschek. The estimate was made by Beatriz Wahrlich, Director of the Brazilian School of Public Administration, for- merly the Director of the Selection and Training Di- vision of the DASP, in an interview with the author, January 5, 1962, Rio de Janeiro.

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REFORM STRATEGY

under Kubitschek beginning in 1956. How- ever, more significant activities of DASP, such as its central personnel functions, in- cluding the competitive examinations were sacrificed to the patronage needs of Kubit- schek. This was exacerbated by con- gressional behavior that grossly distorted the classification plan.

The Contemporary DASP

In 1960, the colorful but erratic Janio Quadros was elected. During the seven months before Quadros resigned the presi- dency, he instituted a series of economic and financial reforms and indicated his intention of ultimately reforming Brazil's entire legal, administrative, and e 1 e c t o r a 1 structure. Quadros considered the DASP to be a useful instrument for the control of the bureaucracy. It appeared that he would utilize the staff agency as no president had since Vargas. Un- fortunately, his brief tenure in office did not permit this plan to be carried out. With his resignation a n d the succession of Joao Goulart, DASP was again relegated to a subordinate position of importance.

Goulart dispensed with even the facade of formal support for DASP's activities. To- wards the end of the Quadros period, steps had been taken to clean up the problems created by Kubitschek's patronage through the scheduling of competitive examinations. Goulart ordered the halting of these exam- inations. He attempted to manage legisla- tion in congress to blanket the temporaries into the tenured service.26

Goulart had inherited the leadership of the Brazilian Labor Party from Getilio Vargas, and it was with the support of labor that Kubitschek had been elected to the presidency in 1955. Joao Goulart, who served as Vice President under both Quadros and Kubitschek, was the dispenser of patronage. The majority of the spoils appointments was assigned by Goulart to his political followers. It was these temporary appointees that the DASP examinations were to eliminate. Goulart might have succeeded in bringing the temporary appointees into the tenured service if it had not been for a flood of let-

9" Siegel, op. cit. supra n. 4, at pp. 151-173. A short case study of President Goulart's attempt to blanket in the temporaries is presented.

ters in protest from the state medical, dental, and other professional associations, object- ing to the President's action. This, in turn, led to opposition from some members of congress. Eventually, the President with- drew his order and the examinations were carried out.

The restraints that have been placed upon the holding of competitive examinations since the 1945 reform of the DASP have had repercussions for the development of the re- forming elite. Attempts have been made to restaff through the DASP School of the Public Service, which is an institution de- signed to prepare candidates for the Admin- istrative Technician and other management examinations. The restrictions on the hold- ing of competitive examinations have dis- couraged candidates from preparing them- selves at the School because the means of obtaining public employment has shifted from merit to patronage. This, of course, has crippled the DASP and the ministerial staff units in their efforts to replenish the ranks of the reforming elite.

For thirty years, attempted reform of Bra- zilian public administration has been linked to the checkered career of DASP. The agency has represented a particular strategy of administrative reform, that of the cen- tralized agency structure with powerful con- trol functions, manned by a technical elite with a monopoly of skills. Attempted re- forms have emphasized central controls. Even where non-control functions have been in- troduced, they have either languished or have been converted into controls.

Today, DASP is largely ineffectual. This failure is the consequence, to a considerable extent, of the nature of the strategy itself, which was workable for a dictatorship, but could not withstand the rigors of a free so- ciety made more complex by antithetical cul- tural traditions and economic under-develop- ment.

Lessons from the DASP Strategy It was the selection of a strategy of control

and centralization that led to the failure of administrative reforms, and to the downfall of DASP, conceived to be the vehicle of re- form. The agency became a target for hos- tility and frustrations, both political and ad- ministrative. Considerable conflict with gov-

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PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

ernment agencies resulted, especially with the Ministry of Finance. The more positive functions either were not performed or were transformed into controls.

Certainly an alternative to putting all staff functions into one unit is to diffuse them among several. While this may result in some coordinative difficulties for the leader, such an approach does allow for more di- versity and has the important advantage of scattering the shots of the opposition. In the DASP situation, those affronted by its rigid adherence to the merit system and other strictures concentrated their fire on a single agency, with a considerable degree of effect.

Separate units for budgeting, personnel, and

purchasing would clearly have made the

target less concentrated. It is possible, too, that DASP might have been saved, in some small degree, from itself. Staff agencies have a built-in tendency toward controlism; the

separation of the traditional staff powers among several agencies might have led to more emphasis on persuasion and less on order giving.

Devolution or deconcentration of reforms and controls provides an opportunity for

experimentation within a larger system with- out having mistakes cripple the organization as a whole. It can be argued that decen- tralization was actually attempted by the DASP through the ministerial staff units. In

reality, however, this was not a decentraliza- tion because ministerial staff agencies were

closely controlled by the DASP, and were never really allowed to become a part of the ministries. Moreover, while coordination of subordinate agency or ministerial counter- parts by central staffs is probably necessary in some degree, the control implied in lit- eral acceptance of an "ends-means" separa- tion is excessive.

Possibly the concept of the reform agency, regardless of hierarchical location and amount of power, is an untenable strategy. After all, administration is not an assortment of housekeeping staff activities alone. The administrative process takes place through- out the organization. The assumption by the reforming elite that the solution to the ills of government lay solely in proper budget procedures, classification plans, and the like, is questionable. Such systems do little to increase the skills of public officials or to

inculcate administrative values. If all "eggs" must be placed in one reform "basket," per- haps training would have been a more ap- propriate concentration.

Types of reforms and their organizational structures have not been the only problems of Brazilian public administration. Cultural traditions and other ecological conditions have left their mark on reforms. Certainly, the phenomenon of political clientage27 as practiced in Brazil is an example in this context. Other factors which have not been discussed, and which are beyond the scope of this analysis, relate to culture and ecology, such as the constant inflation and the under- developed internal labor market.28

Attempting to bring about change in cul- tures in which there are values that are inim- ical to bureaucratic norms is indeed an am- bitious undertaking. The instruments of change have to be selected with great care. In the long run, the Ministry of Finance- and not DASP-might have been the most viable element for structuring change in Brazil, because of the great residue of power that has traditionally accrued to that agency. Though DASP won minor skirmishes, the Ministry has proved to be the more durable institution.

Where values must be modified in a so- ciety, the already existing groups and institu-

a7 Political clientage is a characteristic of the politi- cal scene in contemporary urban Brazil. It is one means for the individual to better his socio-economic status; in some cases it represents survival. Under clientage, the individual attaches himself to a poli- tician from whom he receives various benefits, scaled according to his station, and in exchange for votes and personal loyalties in political maneuvers such as mass demonstrations. Those of intermediate standing in

society receive benefits through the allocation of pub- lic jobs, contracts, etc. The masses have received bene- fits through defensive labor legislation, access to public medical assistance services and sometimes through out-

right distribution of food and money. This pattern probably has its origins in the feudal patron of tra- ditional rural Brazil. It was fashioned into an urban tactic by Vargas and his political followers as a link to the masses.

28See: Nelson Mello e Souza and Breno Genari. "TTcnicas de Organizacio Cientifica em SCtores Espe- cificas para o Desenvolvimento da Administracio Piblica," IDORT, XXXI (November-December, 1962), p. 15. A translation of parts of this article appears in Robert Daland, editor, Perspectives of Brazilian Public Administration, (Rio de Janeiro: University of South- ern California Faculty, in Brazil, 1963).

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REFORM STRATEGY

tions that have accepted new norms should be put to work. Information about such groups and institutions which have no direct bearing on the public service seemingly would have little usefulness. For example, the fact that significant industrial develop- ment has taken place in Brazil, and that in- dustry itself tends to operate under the rubric of administrative values seems only slightly related to the problem of strength- ening public administration. However, such facts are of relevance in devising over-all strategies for government reform and in gauging the preparedness of the society to ac- cept these reforms.

One conclusion is evident; governmental reform is not an easy or automatic process- simply, it cannot be accomplished by creating a control agency. Although centralization and control are appealing strategies because of the scarcity of resources of all types, the DASP experience reveals the serious limita- tions in this approach to change. Thus, Brazil is still seeking answers to its govern- mental problems. It is no worse off because of the DASP experience; if the lessons of this really major effort at governmental change are well digested, Brazil may yet realize benefits from its reform venture begun nearly thirty years ago.

The End of Ideology American politics is widely thought to be innocent of ideology, but

this opinion more appropriately describes the electorate than the active political minority. If American ideology is defined as that cluster of axioms, values, and beliefs which have given form and substance to American democracy and the Constitution, the political influentials manifest by comparison with ordinary voters a more developed sense of ideology and a firm grasp of its essentials. This is evidenced in their stronger approval of democratic ideas, their greater tolerance and regard for proper procedures and citizen rights, their superior understanding and acceptance of the "rules of the game," and their more affirmative attitudes toward the political system in general. The electorate displays a substantial measure of unity chiefly in its support of freedom in the abstract; on most other features of democratic belief and practice it is sharply divided.

-Herbert McClosky, "Consensus and Ideology in American Politics," The American Political Arena, (Joseph R. Fiszman, Ed.)

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