Resumo Inglês:
One of the most pervesive concepts in recent pollicy analysis has been incrementalism. Incrementalism has been used varioulsy to refer either to the system of decisionmaking in complex organizations or to the pattern of change in policy outputs over time. The strength of the concept has been preciselly this merger of decision-making theory and budgetary practice. In spite of the inherent plausibility of the concept of incrementalism, however, this framework is not without weakness. In this paper the authors have suggested that the incrementalist framework tends to divert attention from the most interesting aspect of public policy - the manner in which policy varies over time and across functional areas. They suggest that the incrementalist logic is devoid of explanatory power if one is concerned with why public policies display variations over time in shares of governmental budgets, in size of increments vis-a-vis previous increments in the same policy area, or in size of increments vis-a-vis other policy areas. The failure to provide a conceptual apparatus for understanding variations in change stems from a more fundamental problem with the notion of incrementalism - the understimation of the independent effect, above and beyond external and organizational contraints, which can be exerted by policy - makers to alter outcome. The incrementalist notion, like that implicit in the work of those who emphasize the socioeconomic determinants of public policy, assumes a colectivity of policy makers who can exert little independent influence on policy. lnstead, they are, by implication, portrayed as the passive conveyors of the social and bureaucratic contraints which impinge upon them. If not entirely lacking the power to shape policy outcomes, they are nevertheless seen as individual actors who share neither the objective of implementing policy change nor the collective ability to mobilize resources to fulfill these objectives. There is, in short, the implication that the policy process has little to do with implementation of public values through the identification and utilization of "leverage points" in the political system. In a sense, then, notion of incrementalism simply continues the tradition, first manifested in group theory and pluralism, and later in social determinism, of viewing the political system as passive arbiter of external forces and constraints. The research reported here has derived its impetus from the failure in conceptions of social, bureaucratic, or prior-policy determinism to view actors in a political system as concerned with the implementation of public values through the identification and utilization of "leverage points". It suggests that the purposive use of such "leverage points" in the policy process, in order to alter policy outcomes by altering the resources and constraints associated wilh policy, is a more accurate description of the policy precess than is thal provided by incrementalism and determinism. In the analysis presented here, they investigated whether there was evidence, even in such a mundane and apparently routinized area as education finance, of the utilization of certain "leverage points" within the policy process in order to generate change in policy outputs, they found evidence that two such means of altering the resources available and constraints impinging on education existed during the 1960's: the alteration of the struclure of intergovernmental relations, and the alteration of the structure of revenue generation. Specifically, they found that relatively large rates of expansion in education funding derive from the expansion of the role of state funding. vis-a-vis other levels of government and from the expansion of the available revenues from personal income taxation. Equally important as the identification of certain '"leverage points" in the policy process was out conclusion that the utilization of these leverage points depended in part on certain aspects of the mass political environment of the states. In particular, they found that the expansion of the reliance on personal income taxation depended to a considerable extent on the growth of democratic strength in the legislature, while the expansion of the state's role in funding depended on the growth in support for democratic gubernatorial candidates. Taken logether, these findings clearly suggest that not only is the mass political environment salient to the policy process but also that policy change is dependent upon a particular type of change in the partisanship of the states. This suggested that lhe primary means by which dramatic and non-incremental policy change occurred was through the change in composition of the political elites of the policy system. In conclusion, then, picture of the policy process which emerges from our analysis dlffers substantially from that suggested by those who emphasize inerementalism and social determinism. Briefly stated, the process of policy change is immersed in politics rather than simply in the bureaucratic constraints of large organization. Markedly different definitions of publilc value become implemented in policy as the composition of elected officials changes over time. And finally. it is through the utilization of process related "leverage points" that policy makers exert an independent impact on outcomes as they implement these varying definitions of public value.
Citação ABNT:
CAMERON, D.; CAMERON, S.; HOFFERBERT, R. Não-incrementalismo na política pública: a dinamica de mudança. Revista de Administração Pública, v. 10, n. 2, p. 149-220, 1976.
Citação APA:
Cameron, D., Cameron, S., & Hofferbert, R. (1976). Não-incrementalismo na política pública: a dinamica de mudança. Revista de Administração Pública, 10(2), 149-220.
Link Permanente:
http://www.spell.org.br/documentos/ver/15659/nao-incrementalismo-na-politica-publica--a-dinamica-de-mudanca/i/pt-br