Decision making, political centrality, and bureaucratic entropy: Mitigating transactional costs in public management

Abstract

This article investigates the effects of bureaucratic and sociopolitical capacities on the processes of formulating and implementating public policies. This work carries out a comparative study of four institutions at the level of the federal executive power in Brazil. By tracing the institutions' respective historical paths, this work seeks explanations for their current situations in terms of their aforementioned capacities. In addition, a study of programs developed by these institutions is carried out, investigating how each institution's current capacity tends to influence the development of these programs. The analysis shows that the thematic area of action of the institutions has an important influence on their potential development of capacities. In addition, the joint development of these capacities seems generally to lead to satisfactory results in the institutions' development of policies.