¿Cuánto importan las instituciones para la eficacia de una política de integridad pública? : Un estudio comparativo de cuatro pequeñas ciudades de Brasil

Abstract

International organizations have recommended integrity policies to strengthen government accountability and democracy. This multiple case study investigates how and to what extent institutional factors influenced the efficacy of an integrity policy developed by a federal agency and implemented by subnational governments. Institutions are the rules of the game in societies and organizations. The institutional factors analyzed include technical-administrative capacities, organizational arrangements, and the capacity and functioning of the internal integrity system. The focus is the Time Brazil Program, developed by the Office of the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU) to support states and municipalities in strengthening integrity, transparency, and open government. The cases are four small voluntary municipalities, in four states, that implemented the Program experimentally between 2018 and 2021. Through content analysis and process tracing, the results allow to confirm the influence of eight types of institutional variables. A hierarchy with three levels of influence of the classes of variables evaluated was identified, with a mapping of the codependency of potential preconditions, and long-term efficacy continuity factors: key, important, and enabling factors.