Policy orientation in Public Policy Research in Brazil

Leonardo Secchi1

Tuanni Rachel Borba2

Larice Steffen Peters3

Camila Herzmann Côrrea4

Douglas Ruschel5

1 Has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Milan (Italy). Professor of the

Graduate Programme at the Santa Catarina State University (PPGA/ESAG/UDESC).

Address: Av. Madre Benvenuta, 2037 – Itacorubi – CEP 88035-001, Florianópolis, SC,

Brasil. E-mail: leonardo.secchi@udesc.br

2

Undergraduate student of Public Administration at Escola Superior de Administração e

Gerência of the Santa Catarina State University (ESAG/UDESC). Address: Av. Madre

Benvenuta, 2037 – Itacorubi – CEP 88035-001, Florianópolis, SC, Brasil. E-mail:

tuca_hb5@hotmail.com

3

Has a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Administration from the Escola Superior de

Administração e Gerência of the Santa Catarina State University (ESAG/UDESC). Address:

Av. Madre Benvenuta, 2037 – Itacorubi – CEP 88035-001, Florianópolis, SC, Brasil. E-mail:

laricesp@gmail.com

4

Undergraduate student of Public Administration at Escola Superior de Administração e

Gerência of the Santa Catarina State University (ESAG/UDESC). Address: Av. Madre

Benvenuta, 2037 – Itacorubi – CEP 88035-001, Florianópolis, SC, Brasil. E-mail:

chcmila@hotmail.com

5

Undergraduate student of Public Administration at Escola Superior de Administração e

Gerência of the Santa Catarina State University (ESAG/UDESC). Address: Av. Madre

Benvenuta, 2037 – Itacorubi – CEP 88035-001, Florianópolis, SC, Brasil. E-mail:

dougruschel@gmail.com

2

1. Introduction

The Brazilian scholars or researchers who write about public policy reveal different

degrees of understanding of the meaning and nature of public policy features. There are

reasearchers adressing the concept of public policy, and they achieve extraordinary results for

the theoretical field and public governance. But there are also researchers addressing “public

policy” in a vague and unspecific manner, and do not heed the complex difficulties that the

concept of public policy contains or implies. Many times, the language of “public policy”

they employ is but an inocuous formalism or a fad, with little connection to the existing

theoretical developments in the policy sciences.

The field of policy sciences is new (60 years-old) and still needs a great deal of studies

to be recognised as a well established, renowned science. Besides, this field was born as part

of Political Science, known for its high degree of polissemy and difficulty in establishing

univocality for token occurrences of theoretical terms. Moreover, it is a field that started

abroad and was imported into Brazil, with all the implications of sense or lack of meaning and

the required “sociological reduction” to the Brazilian context.

The main objective of this research was to verify if the policy orientation, as defined

by Lasswell (1951), inspires the activities and the production of research groups on public

policy in Brazil.

This “orientation to public policy” has three dimensions: multidisciplinarity,

normativity and problem orientation (DROR, 1971; HOWLETT; RAMESH, 2003). The

specific objectives were: (1) characterise the policy orientation from concepts, definitions and

indicators found in the relevant literature; (2) analyse, using the lens of public policy, works

on public policy implementation, presented at the ABCP, SBS, ANPAD and EnAPG

conferences; and (3) analyse, using the lens of public policy and the activities of the research

groups on public policy in Brazil.

We justify the conduction of this research by the belief that knowledge and correct use

of the public policy concept have an operational effect in the actions implicated by them. The

use of terms not recognised by the scientific community can lead to a misinterpretation of the

policy-makers actions and can introduce confusion in the field of study.

2. Policy orientation

The term policy orientation is defined here in specific terms and is subjected to

operationalisation. According to Lasswell (1951), this “policy orientation” is what moves the

policy sciences and incorporates the other scientific specialisations. Based on this statement, it

is possible to identify the presence of all other areas of human knowledge in the field of

policy sciences, which are characterized, on the one hand, by the interest in the process of

public policy and, on the other, by the necessity to add intelligence to the process.

The main characteristic of the policy sciences is that of incorporating specific

scientific knowledge into the process of formulation and implementation of public policies. It

is for this reason that Lasswell presents a guide for public policy that goes beyond specific

fields of knowledge, as economics, political science, psychology, etc.

From Lasswell’s work (1951), Dror (1971) and Howlett and Ramesh (2003)

highlighted three elements or dimensions, considered important characteristics of policy

orientation: multidisciplinarity, normativity and problem orientation.

The first element, multidisciplinarity, refers to the fact that public policy science

incorporates works and findings of different fields, as sociology, economics, administration

and politics. Multidisciplinarity is the first level of integration between disciplinary

knowledges. According to Japiassú (1976), multidisciplinarity is characterised by a

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simultaneous action of a range of disciplines around a common theme. It is the shallowest

level of integration, but it is deepened by interdisciplinatrity and transdisciplinarity.

As to normativity, Lasswell stated that public policy science cannot hide under the

guise of “scientific objectivity or neutrality”, but must recognise that the objectives and the

means, the values and the techniques need to stay together in the study of public policies.

Normativity is related to prescription as opposed to description. Prescription is based on the

values of who make it, and they can follow the deontological or teleological principles

(EVANS; LOWERY, 2006), or a “persuasive doctrine” (HOOD; JACKSON, 1991), based on

values of efficiency, resiliency or accountability.

Finally, problem orientation incorporates the other two elements and has a greater

importance in the process of public policy-making. Therefore, this is the element that implies

intent and the respective action that makes it possible to problem orientation.

This pragmatic tradition of the policy sciences, originating in anglo-saxon countries, is

confronted with other types of orientation, as legal orientation (Law oriented), marxist

orientation, originating in communist countries (FARAH, 2011).

Laswell’s (1951) definition required a policy science directed at practicality, to

attempt to solve the concrete policy and admistrative problems, and that went beyond

entrenched theoretical discussions. Over time, however, it was observed that the science is

unable to solve any of the concrete problems that presented themselves, for in governments,

the political imperative surpasses technical approaches (HOWLETT; RAMESH, 2003).

As Howlett and Ramesh (2003) observe, over time, these orientation gained respect.

Public policy is now an independent discipline, with its own vocabulary, dimensions and

analytical categories. Multidisciplinarity, however, continues to be emphasised with some

modifications, in the sense that there is now no doubt as to the need to insert other disciplines

in the field of public policy science, and that the scholars in the field must be experts in its

concepts, history and interests, and in problems of substantive policies.

Normativity has also changed, but not in the same degree as multidisciplinarity. For

the most part, the values of the public policy analysts have remained and they continue to

insist on assessing the objectives and means of public policies, as well as the policy making

process per se. On the other hand, the search for the prescription of values and specific

objectives that delineate practical guidelines for the improvement of the policies has

decreased. This is due in part to greater awareness of the intractability of many public

problems.

Nowadays, the number of works on public governance developed empirically and

theoretically has increased around the world, and, at the same time, Lasswell’s and his

followers’ initial proposals remain valid and continue to be the basis for the study of public

policy.

3. Methodological Setting

This research, using the lens of policy orientation, has an exploratory and descriptive

nature, in that it presents characteristics of scientific production and of the activities of the

group research on public policy in Brazil.

The method of investigation was divided into two parts: 1) Research of the scientific

production on public policy in Brazil (first year); 2) Research of the research groups’

activities on public policy in Brazil (second year).

The description of the procedures and the techniques of data collection and analysis is

done separately, as follows.

3.1. First part of the research: analysis of the scientific production

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The literature survey was made by collecting data in works published in conference

procedures in the area of public policy.

The research started with a conceptual study in the area of public policy in order to

define the concepts of public policy, implementation of public policies, policy orientation,

multidisciplinarity, problem orientation, normativity. The latter aspect, normativity, is an

integral part of policy orientation, but it was not studied in this stage of the research due to

problems of operationalisation of indicators.

Once we understood and contextualised those concepts, we delimited the scope of the

research, which was to verify the normativity and the multidisciplinary aspect of the scientific

papers presented at the conferences promoted between 2005 and 2009 by the associations

and/or societies of specific areas, as the Encontro da Associação Nacional dos Programas de

Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Administração (EnANPAD), the Encontro Nacional de

Administração Pública e Governança (EnAPG), the Reuniões Nacionais da Associação

Brasileira de Ciência Política (ABCP), the Conferenceo Brasileiro de Sociologia (CBS) of

Brazilian Society of Sociology (SBS). These events are generally organised into Work

Groups (WG), and the research focused on the analysis of papers presented in Work Groups

on Public Policy. We also tried to obtain the papers from events like the annual meets of

ANPOCS (Social Sciences), but they were not available. Some other events were excluded

from the research, as they did not fit the research criteria. However, the events we analysed

were adequate to answer the initial questions.

In the next step we analysed each paper from the Work Group on Public Policy, to see

in which of them the terms “Implementation”1 and “Public Policy” were cited. In this step the

criterion was the presence of these terms in the text at least three times, so we could analyse

the conxtext.

The papers were catalogued into spredsheets, separated by event and year of

presentation, and separated in the file, so they could be used in the next step of the research.

The catalogued papers were then analysed, one by one, as to the elements of policy

orientation, each with its own specific criteria.

The first item to be analysed was “problem orientation” For this we read the

introduction and the final considerations of each paper of each conference, so we could verify

whether the paper was a description of the context or whether it presented counseling,

suggestions or reference to possible changes to practical reality, with improvements in

decision- making of public managers.

When the paper had rules, tips, requirements for future action in the area of public

policies, it was catalogued as having “problem orientation”. Some papers pointed to possible

future research, but since the research was not on public policy advice or organisational

change, they were not catalogued as having “will...”.

The next step was the identification of multidisciplinarity. We reunited the

bibliographical references of all the papers initially catalogued and separated by event. The

resulting bibliographical references was set to a default view, then organised in alphabetical

order. The objective of reuniting all the references was to find the most cited authors in each

event we were working with. The authors that were cited four times or more were put in

another file and later put in a spreadsheet. Because the spreadsheet initially had a small

number of authors, and this would make it difficult to classify multidisciplinarity, we decided

that the criterion in the event CBS was the citation of an author three times or more.

When the spreadsheet was complete with the full name of the authors, we searched the

Lattes platform for information about their area of training and work. When an author was a

1 This first step of the research originally dealt with the implementation of public policies.

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foreigner, we searched his resume in the site of the University he worked for or in sites which

provide biographies of authors, so we could have information on his major and Ph.D..

In this step, the major and Ph.D. of the selected authors were used as analysis

criterion. When one author had his major and Ph.D. in different areas, we assigned 0.5 for

each area, so the number of recorded areas was equivalent to the number of catalogued

authors. Having this information on the authors, we filled out the author spreadsheet: 31

authors were selected in the event CBS, 22, in the event ABCP, 30, in the event EnANPAD

and 49, in the event EnAPG.

In the last step of the analysis we aimed at verifying the multidisciplinarity of the

catalogued papers. If 50% or more of the most cited authors in a paper belonged to the same

area of training (administration, sociology, etc), the paper was classified as unidisciplinary. If

less than 50% of the authors belonged to the same area of training, then the paper was

classified as multidisciplinary.

In the end, the papers that presented characteristics of multidisciplinarity and

normativity were classified as policy oriented.

3.2 Second part of the research: analysis of the research groups

The population group of the research were the research groups registered at the CNPq

Directory of Research Groups in Brazil (Lattes Groups). The groups were sought in the search

engine of the CNPq by the term “políticas” (policies or politics). The first search brought

2.508 groupsi. This tool met the needs of the research, as it is a well-known nationwide

database.

We filtered the search in order to select only the research groups where the word

“política” meant policy and not politics. The procedure was to read the names of each

research group and their description, so we could know what the term “política” meant in

each name. The result was that there are 393 research groups that work with public policy in

Brazil. To find out more about the selected 393 groups, we looked for the following

information of each group: name of the group, name of the leader, Higher Education

Institution (HEI), state and telephone number. Finding the e-mail address of these research

groups was very difficult, and it required an additional search. We used the Google site to

search the name of the group’s leader and the name of the HEI to which he was linked.

In the second part of the research we began preparing a semi-structured questionnaire

to be sent to the leaders of the research groups. The questions were intended to detect the

presence or not of a policy orientation in the groups’ activities. So we made questions about

normativity, multidisciplinarity and problem orientation as well as questions on institutional

identification and others. The questionnaire was revised and pre-tested for clarity and

operability.

In the next step we e-mailed the questionnaires to the 393 group leaders. To send the

e-mails we used Google docs spreadsheets, which allows the recipient to mark his or her

answers in the body of the e-mail. The groups that did not respond, or did not receive the e-

mail because of invalid address, were contacted by phone and asked to provide another e-mail

address. Of the 393 research groups on public policy in Brazil registered at Lattes Groups, 45

did not receive the questionnaire, either because of invalid address or because we could not

find an alternative way to send the electronic form. After the deadline for responding to the

questionnaire, 64 groups (18.39%) had responded to it.ii.

The answers were tabulated automatically and later converted into an Excel table.

Each answer was then analysed so as to detect the presence of policy orientation and its

specific criterion.

The first criterion we analysed was multidisciplinarity. To classify a group as

multidisciplinary, or not, we took into consideration the area of training of the three most

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important members of the group (question 11 in the electronic form), more specifically, the

lowest and the highest titles of the three members. Thereby, each group had six answersiii

. If

the sum of the subject areas was equal to or higher than four, the group was classified as

multidisciplinary.

To analyse normativity we considered two situations. The first are Regonini’s (2001)

concepts on the four types of study on public policy: rational analysis of public policy, policy

inquiry, public choice and studies in policy-makingiv

. The groups that said they made

“rational analysis of public policy” and “policy inquiry” type researches were defined as

normative, and the groups that made “public choice” and “studies in policy-making” type

researches were considered as non-normative. In this question there was an option “other”

with a textbox for the groups to describe their answer. Normativity was measured according

to the answerv.

We also identified normativity by a direct question about the groups’ involvement in a

cause or in defending a value. If the answer was yes, the group was classified as normative,

but if the answer was no, it was classified as non-normative. To operationalise the outcome of

both questions and attest the presence of normativity, we established a value of 50% to each

question. If the group’s result was equal to or higher than 50%, the activities of the group

were said to follow normativity.

To evaluate the last criterion, “problem orientation”, we asked two questions to the

groups. The first question involved a 11-point Likert scale. Choosing from 0% to 100%, the

groups had to indicate the percentage of research projects that actually take the form of direct

action to change societies and organisations. In the second question we asked directly which

was the purpose of the research group. The choices were: academic production, practical

actions, both. The group was considered as having “problem orientation” if they chose

“practical actions” and/or “both”. Similarly to the analysis of normativity, each question had a

value of 50%. So if the group’s result was equal to or higher than 50%, the group was

considered as having “problem orientation”.

After we defined the classification criteria and analysed each of the criterion

mentioned above, we analysed the policy orientation. For a group to be classified as policy

oriented it must have been classified cumulatively as multidisciplinary, normative and with

problem orientation.

The analysis of the tabulated data, which were the responses of the 64 research groups,

was made by a simple statistics analysis. Each question of the electronic form was individualy

analysed and we constructed graphics to help interpreting the results. Based on the answers to

the questions, we were able to make a general picture of the groups: the region where they

work, the type of institution they work for, and other information obtained with the answers to

the questions about policy orientation.

4. Results and discussion

In this section, we present the quantitative results of the research and of the data

collection through the analysis of the graphics below, which show the percentage of papers

that were classified as having “problem orientation” and multidisciplinarity. Below are the

graphics that show the percentage of the areas of expertise of the authors cited in most of the

bibliographical references of the selected papers.

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Graphic 1 – Normativity in the papers that address the implementation of public

policies

Above are the graphics concerning the problem orientation. We can observe that the

events relating to the area of public administration and governance (EnAPG e ENANPAD)

have a comparatively higher percentage of normative papers (34% and 37%, respectively),

that is, papers that to go beyond theoretical contributions and actually influence the process of

implementation of public policies.

The event ABCP presented the lowest number of papers with problem orientation.

This can be explained by the fact that, in Brazil, Political Science is still predominantly a

descriptive science. The same fact explains the low percentage of normativity in the papers

presented at CBS.

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Graphic 2 – Multidisciplinarity in the papers that address public policy implementation

The second group of graphics concerns multidisciplinarity. It can be observed that the

EnANPAD and EnAPG have the highest percentage of multidisciplinary papers (58% and

73%, respectively). That means that the bibliographical references of the papers on public

policies presented in both events have different areas of knowledge.

Some papers were not classified because their bibliographical references did not

include the most cited authors.

It can be noticed that in the four events, the percentage of multidisciplinarity papers is

high, varying between 40% and 73%.

The event CBS presents the lowest percentage of multidisciplinary papers (40%) and

the highest percentage of unidisciplinary papers (45%). This can be explained by the high

number of authors with a training in Sociology in this event. In the other events we observed

more diversity of academic areas.

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Event WG in Public

Policies

N. of papers with

PP implementation

N. of papers

with policy

orientation

% of papers with

policy orientation

ABCP

2008 23 papers 10

1 5.26% ABCP

2006 19 papers 9

CBS 2009 100 papers 8

2 10% CBS 2007 79 papers 6

CBS 2005 15 papers 6

EnANPAD

2008 53 papers 25

8 18.60% EnANPAD

2007 44 papers 9

EnANPAD

2006 42 papers 9

EnAPG

2008 178 papers 32

11 16.12% EnAPG

2006 144 papers 30

Total 697 papers 144 22 15.28%

Table 1 – Percentage of papers with Policy Orientantion

Table 2 shows that the total number of analysed papers is 697. The terms

“implementation” and “public policy” were mentioned in 144 papers . Of the 144, only 22

presented, cumulatively, multidisciplinarity and problem orientation. In other words, only

15.28% had the right elements to be defined as having policy orientation.

The events EnAPG and EnANPAD had a higher percentage than ABCP and CBS.

This discrepancy is due to the fact that EnAPG and EnANPAD accept a higher percentage of

“practical” papers (around 35%) and because these events assemble authors with a

multidisciplinary academic training (73% and 58%, respectively).

It has also been observed that the majority of the research groups on public policy in

Brazil (78.13%) are unidisciplinary, i.e., less than a quarter of the groups are

multidisciplinary.

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Graphic 3 – Multidisciplinarity of the research groups on public policy

Despite the dissemination of and consensus around the existence of multidisciplinarity

in this area, the groups whose members have a high academic diversity are still in the

minority (21.88%). This becomes manifest in the isolation of these groups when compared to

groups belonging to other areas of knowledge and in the weak interdisciplinarity, so necessary

to effective policy oriented researches.

Gráfico 4 – Normativity of the research groups on public policy

The two questions that assessed normativity inquired about the type of analysis on

public policy that the groups made and about causes they might defend. The analyses of the

answers showed that the majority of the research groups on public policy in Brazil (75%) are

not normative, that is, they describe the policy making process avoiding expressing their

values. This could be a reflection of scientific neutrality of Brazilian academic circles, which

thinks that clarifying values is an error that derogates academic researches.

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Graphic 5 – Problem orientation of the research groups on public policy

To investigate the last aspect, the research groups were asked about the objective of

their research and the percentage of projects that resulted in practical actions. The majority of

the groups (65.63%) were classified as having their activities turned to academic production

and practical actions. 44.84% of the research projects take the form of direct action to change

societies and organisations. The combination of these two variables resulted in the percentage

of the groups (56.25%) that were classified as not having problem orientation. Yet the

responses were more balanced here than in the other aspects, and there was a significant

number of groups that has problem orientation (43.75%).

The analysis of the three aspects (multidisciplinarity, normativity and problem

orientation), which used the method of direct investigation, enabled us to find only four

research groups that are clearly policy oriented: the Group Cultura Política, Políticas

Públicas e Sociais, from the University of Caxias do Sul (UCS), led by professor Mara de

Oliveira, the Grupo de Análise de Políticas de Inovação, coordinated by professor Renato

Peixoto Dagnino, from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), the Grupo de

Pesquisa em Políticas Sociais, from the Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Paraná

(Unioeste), led by professor Maria Lucia Frizon Rizzotto, and the Grupo de Pesquisa

Instrumentos de Gestão da Universidade de Brasília (UnB), coordinated by professor Magda

de Lima Lúcio. Our research group, which undertook this study, was not classified as policy

oriented.

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Graphic 6 - Policy Orientation of the research groups on public policy

The general result is that only 6.25% of the respondent groups use a policy orientation

in their activities, which shows that this kind of orientation in the study of public policy does

not have too many followers in Brazil. This conclusion is corroborated by the fact that of the

total number of respondent research groups, 32.81% do not present any of the analysed

aspects of policy orientation.

% of

Multidisciplinary

groups

% of

Normative

groups

% of groups

problem orientation

% of groups

without elements

of policy

orientation

% of groups

with policy

orientation

21.9% 25% 43.75% 32.81% 6.25%

Table 2 – Percentage of research groups with a policy orientation

The group also analysed the area of public policies researched by the research groups.

The Education Area was the most researched (32.81%), followed by Social Policy (14,06%)

and Health Policies (10,94%).

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Graphic 8 - Areas of public policies researched by the research groups

Public policies occur in several areas, therefore, it is important that the academic

production also be diversified. But the research showed that much progress is still needed in

this area, as we can see by the results we obtained on the multidisciplinarity aspect. Lack of

multidisciplinarity made explicit the deficit in the variety of researched areas.

Graphic 9 - Actors responsible for the public policy according to the research groups

We also analysed the actors considered by the research groups as playing a key role in

the elaboration of public policies. The grahic below shows that the great majority of actors

(87.5%) are affiliated with the multicentric line of thought, and only 12.5% contend that

public policy are exclusively done by governmental actors. It must be considered in their

production that the various actors have reflections in the areas of knowledge, in prescription

of values and objectives, and in implementation of actions.

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We also analysed the main actors studied by each research group. Each group had to

provide their six main references (3 papers and 3 books). The table below show the results:

Name of author Number of

citations

MARX, Karl 9

FREY, Klaus 5

MÉSZÁROS, István 5

SILVA, Maria Ozanira 3

BEHRING, Elaine Rossetti 3

BOBBIO, Norberto 3

GRAMSCI, Antonio 3

HOWLETT, Michael 3

Table 3 – Most cited authors by the research groups

The reference list was one of the main surprising results. Klaus Frey, professor of

public policy at Universidade Federal do ABC, São Paulo, and Michael Howlett, professor at

Simon Fraser University (Canada) work specifically in the field of studies of public policy.

Maria Ozanira Silva and Elaine Rossetti Behring do research work in related areas to public

policy (poverty and social policies), and are only subsidiarily interested in the disciplinary

field of general public policy. Karl Marx, István Mészaros, Antonio Gramsci are marxist

references, and Norberto Bobbio is a Political Philosopher. These authors contributed more to

the debate of the state functions (what to do) than to the management of public policies (how

to do).

The fact that only two of the eight most cited authors work in the field of public policy

is a matter for reflection. The marxist intellectual heritage is very strong in Brazilian social

sciences, and to this day influence the theoretical and methodological framework of their

research. The field of policy studies, consolidated in Europe and, especially, in the United

States, stemmed from other references, that have no connection with the contributions of

marxist political economy and marxist political philosophy. This field of study addresses

actors, institutions, behaviors during the elaboration process, implementation and evaluation

of public policies.

5. Conclusion

The results show that both researches and research groups’ activites are not policy

oriented, as proposed by Lasswell (1951). Lasswell’s policy orientation, originated in the

United States, in the 50s, has not yet found many followers in Brazil.

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A small percentage of papers (15.28%) presented characteristics of both

multidisciplinarity and will to solve problems. Only 6.25% of the research groups, as

declared by themselves, combine multidisciplinarity, problem orientation and normativity.

Academic research in Brazil is still an enterprise that happens between the four walls

of the University, where there is a discrepancy between the world of scholarship and the

practictioner’s world. In the social sciences, especially, the research focus is theoretical

development, with little immediate use for solving organisational problems and those of

public policy.

Normativity was assessed in the second research on the groups’ activities. Low

normativity was perceived in only 25% of the research groups on public policy in Brazil.

This can be a consequence of the “ideal of neutrality”, that prevails in the espistemic

community in Brazil, where clarifying values is seen as a weakness of the scientist.

The analysis of both papers and research groups showed that the indices for

multidisciplinarity were low. The organisational structure of the academic departments of the

Brazilian universities is a disincentive to the exchange of knowledge between the academic

areas. Research groups usually are born within a department, and members of other

departments many times assume supporting roles in the group, since they originally belong to

research groups in their own departments.

As an indication of future research, we suggest the continuation of this research, so as

to verify temporal changes in the results of this research (monitoring trends). Moreover, other

classifications or typologies that identify policy orientation can serve as a basis for later work.

Also, research can be done on other elements that can influence the results we obtained.

Finally, in addition to implementation, other stages of the public policy process can be

studied.

The effects of departmentalization of the Brazilian universities, of the isolation of the

Brazilian epistemic community in relation to the international research community on public

policy, and of the isolation of the “public policy scientists” in relation to the decision makers

in public administration, could be further investigated, and they are interesting explanatory

hypotheses that might be investigated as cause for the low policy orientation of the researches

in public policy in Brazil.

6. References

DROR, Y. (1971) Design for policy sciences. Nova York: American Elsevier Pub. Co

EVANS, K. G.; LOWERY, D.. Prescriptive Thinking: Normative Claims as Scholarship.

Administration & amp; Society 2006; 38; 147.

FARAH, M. F. S.. Administração pública e políticas públicas. Revista de Administração

Pública, Rio de Janeiro, vol. 45, n. 3, p. 813-36, May-June, 2011.

HOOD, C.; JACKSON, M. Administrative Argument. Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth, 1991.

HOWLETT, M.; RAMESH, M. Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy

Subsystems. 2nd Ed. Oxford (UK): Oxford University Press, 2003.

JAPIASSÚ, H. Interdisciplinaridade e patologia do saber. Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1976.

LASSWELL, H. D. (1951). The policy orientation. In: LERNER, D.; LASSWELL, H. D.

The policy sciences; recent developments in scope and method. Stanford, California: Stanford

University Press.

REGONINI, G. Capire le politiche pubbliche. Bologne: II Mulino, 2001.

i This number kept changing during the 30 days of the research conducted in the Lattes Groups platform, due to

accreditation and disacreditation of groups in the platform.

16

ii In the calculation of the percentage of answered e-mails, we removed from the total of sent e-mails the returned

e-mails. Therefore, 18.39% is the percentage corresponding to the result of the division of 64 (answered e-mails)

by 348 (research groups). iii

To construct the disciplinary areas, we utilized the CNPq’s table of knowledge area, restricting ourselves to the

second level of the area. In this way the respondent had 75 options to choose from. iv For each of the options of the types of public policies, there was a brief explanation.

v In this analysis, we considered normative those groups whose answers made reference to a critical analysis of

public policies and/or an analysis of the feasibility of public policies.