From patronage politics to community deliberation: The recent experience of democratic school management in Brazil

Abstract

The article discusses the limits and possibilities of school empowerment within education systems plagued by pervasive patronage politics. The analysis focuses on reform initiatives implemented by Brazilian sub-national governments throughout the 1980s and 1990s to allow for the election of school principals by parents, teachers and students. Until the implementation of this reform, state and local authorities had relied on the school system as a source of patronage resources, and principals were nominated according to political criteria. The new system of democratic school management was expected to undermine this patronage-based system and foster community participation in school decisions. The article relies on secondary evidence to assess the impact of school elections in what concerns the participation of parents, students and teachers in school affairs and the relationship between schools, party politicians and education administrators. It concludes that high levels of social inequality and the lack of a universalistic and effective system of welfare provision constitute serious obstacles to the empowerment of disadvantaged groups in developing societies such as Brazil. On the other hand, the article argues that school empowerment has the potential to undermine resilient patronage structures, by introducing universalistic mechanisms of decision-making and making school administrators more accountable to their constituencies. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.