The Role of Policy Makers in the Formulation and Implementation of Public Policy for Brazilian Agriculture

Abstract

A processual approach to public policy analysis rather than the more common instrumental one can help us to understand the experience of policy makers involved in government programs related to rural Brazil and to evaluate the extent to which the implementation of rural policy is influenced by the networks and institutional environments in which administrators are engaged. A broader analytical framework for agrarian and agricultural policies, particularly those implemented during the two terms of the Lula administration (2003–2010), can be arrived at by examining the strategic political games in which public administrators were involved, the different forums in which these games were institutionalized (the spaces in which rural policies are created and implemented), and the institutional environments that structured and regulated the creation of these policies.

Este trabalho aborda a experiência e a participação de gestores de políticas públicas envolvidos em programas governamentais relacionados ao meio rural brasileiro, visando compreender em que medida o ambiente institucional e as redes nas quais os mesmos estão inseridos condicionam o processo de implementação das ações observadas setorialmente, reforçando o emprego das análises de políticas públicas centradas na sua dimensão processual e não necessariamente instrumental, como é mais comum na literatura especializada. Focalizando os jogos políticos nos quais o corpo administrativo e técnico esteve envolvido (marcados por conflitos, barganhas e/ou negociações e envolvendo diversas administrações, grupos de interesses e outros stakeholders), os diferentes fóruns onde estes jogos foram institucionalizados (constituindo-se em loci privilegiados da produção e condução das políticas agrárias), e o ambiente institucional que estrutura e regula a produção destas políticas buscou-se desenhar um quadro mais amplo da análise de políticas agrárias e agrícolas, particularmente aquelas implementadas durante os dois mandatos do governo Lula (2003–2010).

Keywords

Public policy Policy makers Agrarian policy Agricultural policy

Much has been written about late-twentieth-century agricultural policy in Brazil and the different instruments used by government to implement it. Comparatively less consideration has been given to the role played by policy makers and administrators in the actual management of these programs. One could point to Helfand (1999), Lamounier (1994), and Romano (2009), whose studies examine what might be called the “political determinants of agricultural policy.” In the international literature, however, the topic has been analyzed extensively, focusing on the United States and Europe. Two general hypotheses have predominated.

On the one hand are studies influenced directly or indirectly by public choice theory and the new political economy of regulation (Buchanan, 1977; Lindert, 1991; Tullock, 1986). The main argument here is that public policy serves to benefit specific sectors or segments rather than the general welfare. Pressure groups are motivated to enter the political arena in order to influence public officials and take advantage of their decisions. Institutional rent seeking flourishes when decisions are made in an increasingly narrow context. This dynamic would help to explain why agricultural policy in the United States or Europe seems of little benefit to most producers and why it is difficult to monitor the decision-making process and implement reforms (Dunleavy, 1997; Moyer and Josling, 1991; Orden et al., 1999; Petit, 1985; Nedergaard, 1995).

On the other hand are studies that stress the importance of institutional arrangements and their influence on the behavior of economic actors. From this perspective, institutions represent the rules of the political game and are therefore a determining factor in the formulation and implementation of public policy (Alston et al., 2004; Dixit, 1996; North, 1990). Interactions between pressure groups and politicians or among politicians are conditioned by each country’s institutional arrangements. The specific structure of governance that emerges will determine both the possibility of changing public policy and the commitment of policy makers and managers to its faithful implementation (Flexor and Leite, 2007). The reform of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy, for example, has involved broad negotiations to modify the system of benefits. National agriculture ministers dissatisfied with the proposals of the European Commission can attempt to negotiate the policy’s new design (Delorme, 2004; Dunleavy, 1997; Rieger, 1996). At the same time, organizations can attempt to influence the decisions of commissioners or the agriculture ministers of member countries in order to take advantage of a possible institutional rearrangement. All of this leads to the institutional inertia, transaction costs, and politicking that condition the formulation and implementation of public policy.

In the case of Brazil, these factors and the strategic role of policy makers in the formulation and implementation of agricultural policy have yet to be explored more systematically with an eye to assessing the utility of current theoretical perspectives. In addition to the approaches just mentioned, other interpretations (of a more critical orientation) could be invoked. Without abandoning an institutional perspective, Evans (1995), Fouilleux (2002; 2011), Mahoney and Thelen (2010), and Muller (2004), among others, explore the cognitive dimensions of public policy, in which the possibility of change solidifies when new ideas gain traction and prove capable of redefining both collective problems and the governance structures needed to confront them. Their work also addresses topics familiar to historical neoinstitutionalist approaches, particularly the analysis of paths and reorientations observed in institutional contexts and in policies themselves over the course of a given period. The present study adopts a similar approach in order to problematize both the experience of policy makers and the analysis of agricultural and agrarian policy in Brazil while steering clear of the more common rational-choice brand of institutionalism (Hall and Taylor, 2003).

My goal is to analyze the experience and activity of administrators and policy makers working in the commercial arena, food security, agrarian reform, territorial development, rural credit, and bioenergy.¹ Drawing on the broad experience of these administrators, I examine the extent to which public policy for the sector is supported by the networks and institutional contexts in which these administrators are involved. Beyond gathering and synthesizing bibliographic and documentary sources, I have drawn particularly on a series of interviews with those responsible for these programs on the national level, probing the maneuvers and networks in which technical and administrative staff were involved—political chess games marked by conflict, bargaining, and/or negotiations and involving different administrative units, interest groups, and stakeholders. I also consider the context in which these strategic games were institutionalized, the privileged space of production and implementation of sectorial policies, and the institutional environment that structures and regulates the process.² The interview schedule was designed to elicit information on (1) how policy makers evaluated their experience in formulating and implementing public policy, (2) the primary uncertainties and problems they encountered, (3) the major technical, economic, and institutional restrictions they faced, (4) their relations with the other players involved, and (5) their possible avenues for action and those of other parties. This information provides a basis both for interpreting the role of administrators in the agricultural policy network and for understanding the institutional factors that structure and organize the policy-making process.

In general, this exercise of observation helps us address two main areas: (1) The differences and similarities in the ways these sectorial policies were administered once the emphasis shifted from the policy dimension, where content and operationalization are key, to that of polity and politics, concerned more with the skeleton around which programs take shape and the so-called sausage making that characterizes an activity that is fundamentally processual in nature. (2) The continuities and changes that emerged in the transition from the administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2002) to that of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–2010), especially in the institutional context around the two ministries responsible for the agriculture sector, the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Food Supply and the Ministry of Agrarian Development.

The Brazilian government’s approach to intervention has shifted over time from a national-developmentalist approach strongly oriented toward agricultural modernization via rural credit in the 1980s to reform and monetary stabilization in the 1990s and a partial return to planning and diversified policies since 2000 (see Leite, 2006). The institutional changes flowing from the period of crisis and subsequent redemocratization have conditioned the horizon of possibility for Brazilian agricultural policy. In this context, policies based on negotiation, involving extensive information sharing, have facilitated the political and managerial learning process. Policies aimed at consensus building in contrast to greater centralization of the decision-making process can be more effective than those based on a cost/benefit analysis, in which information problems can lead to misguided decisions.³ This is especially the case in a social, economic, and political context marked by uncertainty and complexity such as that of recent years and one in which policies draw upon the construction and affirmation of new ideas (for example, the emergence of the family-farmer category and its application in policies such as the Programa de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar [National Program for the Strengthen-ing of Family Farming —PRONAF] and the Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos [Food Purchase Program—PAA]) (Grisa, 2012). Here we see, as Santos (2011) observes, a certain continuity between the Cardoso and Lula administrations in the formulation of targeted policies for agriculture.

In highlighting the organizational and processual dimensions of public policy and the scale on which it was formulated and implemented—as well as the networks in which public administrators are involved—my goal is to recover the political and institutional determinants at play in specific contexts of agricultural policy making. This is not a matter, as Evans (1995) warns, of seeing the hand of bureaucracy as absolute in the context of competing political interests. Rather, we should focus on recovering the intricacies, practices, knowledge, competencies, and worldviews tied to the particularities of the moment, evaluating the extent to which this web of interactions contributed to the enactment of the policies at hand, observed retrospectively. In this regard, the state is not a deus ex machina, nor is it outside the political game being played as conventional theories about the opposition between “government failures” versus “market failures” would have it (Przeworski, 1993). Just the opposite: the state or government is a strategic actor that brings together in its internal structures—which are both differentiated and hierarchically unequal—the conflicts that permeate the relations among those interest groups or class segments. This challenges us to see state action as something much more complex than a more superficial or Manichean analysis would suggest (Flexor and Leite, 2007).

The approach adopted here, inspired by other studies in the field (Frey, 2000; Lamounier, 1994; Romano, 2009; among others), views policy (and its mechanisms) through the lens of the actors involved in it and the resources and alliances they make use of, the decision-making spaces in which these policies are discussed and/or deliberated, and the institutional context that undergirds these interactions. In the following section I analyze the continuities and discontinuities marking state action in the Brazilian agricultural sector (and consequently the performance of public administrators), with particular emphasis on the 2000s. Finally, by way of conclusion, I consider some recent changes in the modus operandi of agricultural policy and the ever-controversial game in which those who administer it are engaged.

Actors, Institutional Arrangements, and Public Policy

Romano (2011), examining the period of import-substitution industrialization in Brazil (particularly between 1950 and 1980), stresses that the action of administrators was moved by the dispute between two groups: those aligned with the “agents of modernization” (represented by the bureaucracy committed to carrying forward the industrialization process) and those who sided with the “administrators of agriculture” (which included officials in sectorial agencies committed to the process—a conservative one—of agricultural modernization but critical of the priority given to the industrialization and urbanization of Brazilian society).

The crisis of this model during the 1980s and the intense movement toward openness (commercial and financial) seen throughout the following decade led to a shift in the profile of agricultural policy and a repositioning of administrative action (Helfand and Rezende, 2001), influencing the direction of foreign trade policy and the agenda for financing and prices. Agribusiness, after observing the political exhaustion of “classical” policies from the period of agricultural modernization (such as farm credit) and of those implemented during the period of macroeconomic crisis (such as the Minimum Price Guarantee Program), had wagered on the “withdrawal” of the state as an alternative for renewed growth in the sector, with the sphere of government action limited to programs that would increase competitiveness (a reduction in the tax burden, including on exports, greater flexibility in labor relations, lower costs for transportation and shipping, compensatory taxation, and so on). However, such a demarcation of tasks between the state and the private sector is still not sufficiently clear as a component of the private sector’s broader agenda, where a contrast emerges between the defense of a theoretically “liberal” state and a call for “protectionist” policies in practice. As one interviewee, drawing on ample leadership experience in major organizations representing the interests of agribusiness, put it, “The private sector preaches the death of the state but refuses to write its obituary.”⁴ The business community’s somewhat dubious position leads us to rule out a more conventional explanation of policy as the exclusive result of pressure applied by interest groups and to rethink both the action of agricultural policy makers and the role of the state in the institutional context ushered in during the 1990s.

During the military regime an intimate relationship had developed between the partners of modernization—the state and big business (both urban and rural), as mediated by the government bureaucracy. As a direct result of this partnership, “the land market runs through the state,” as Palmeira (1994: 54) puts it. This intertwining of finance, industry, and big business with the state machine worked to undermine the agency responsible for land issues: given the high volume of resources subject to dubious negotiations and the primary beneficiaries involved, its merely technical decisions were rendered moot.

The 1990s witnessed institutional innovations with the creation of the Special Ministry for Rural Land Policy in 1996 (and its later transformation into the Ministry of Agrarian Development in 2000), as well as the creation of a specific funding policy for family farmers (PRONAF). However, the proposal taken up by administrators at the time, known as the “New Rural World,” attempted to interpose a “managerial” relation between the government and the beneficiaries of agricultural programs (referred to in the ample documentation as clients subject to contractual negotiation with the state), in accordance with the administrative reform being proposed by the Ministry of Administration and State Reform (Bresser Pereira, 1997). Regarding land issues, the period was further marked by the transfer of World Bank policies, among them the so-called market-led agrarian reform, which later resulted in the creation of a land credit policy—the Cardoso administration’s alternative to the high political cost of negotiating a program for agrarian reform (Leite and Medeiros, 2004).

Romano (2011), adopting the classical approach of categorizing policies by specific area, develops a framework around the construction of distinct networks in the sphere of agricultural policy, in which different actors, particularly policy makers, are involved. Following Lamounier (1994) and Frey (2000), we could begin to make distinctions among distributive policies (such as rural credit), regulatory policies (such as those related to agricultural prices), redistributive policies (such as agrarian reform), and institutional or constitutive policies (such as the creation of municipal, regional, and/or national councils). In the first instance those who are targeted by or excluded from government policy do not interact with each other, since they are subject to the state’s indirect mediation. In the second instance, public-state interaction is determined by a set of norms and procedures agreed upon by the participants involved in the process, demarcating the arena in which policy instruments are operationalized. In the case of redistributive policies, despite government mediation there is a strong possibility for conflict to the extent that the result of redistribution vis-à-vis a particular set of assets (land, for example) is made apparent. Regarding institutional policies, it is the structure of the administrative framework itself (which will guide the formulation and implementation of new government programs) that is the outcome of policy, as in the creation of a new ministry or the definition of a specific space for deliberating or deciding upon particular policies (councils, chambers, and so on).

In the framework proposed by Romano (2011), agricultural policy creates distinct networks of public policy consisting of distinct actors, always involving government representation. In the case of distributive policies such as rural credit, there is a policy community in which public bank administrators (especially the Bank of Brazil) hold a position of privilege. As I have said elsewhere (Leite, 2009), the management of decision-making bodies responsible for offering and/or regulating credit became the privileged realm of bureaucrats who had migrated from the Bank of Brazil: this is the case of the relevant positions in the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Food Supply. Financial agencies in the public sector—such as the Bank of Brazil itself or the Brazilian Development Bank—have been influential in the creation of policy for Brazilian agriculture, whether according to the “old model” or in recent years.

In the case of the agrarian reform program beginning in the 1980s, Romano (2011) sees the construction of three different networks, each of which mobilizes a distinct set of actors and, one might add, different ideas with regard to this controversial issue. What Romano calls the pluralist pressure network (including social movements, rural workers, nongovernmental organizations [NGOs], and the Land Policy Ministry) defends the implementation of agrarian reform policy (whether as social policy or economic policy) and mobilizes administrators to act despite a very adverse climate. In contrast, the two clientelistic antireform networks, whether pluralist (including agribusiness, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the macroeconomic ministries and secretariats) or not (including agricultural elites, land speculators, officials of the Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária [National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform—INCRA], governors, secretaries of agriculture, and congresspeople) argue that land distribution would lead to more violence and perpetuate extreme poverty (and here the voices of those who continue to uphold the unquestionable right to private property are perhaps not entirely muffled).

Obviously, this difficult environment undermined the creation of a strategic plan for agrarian reform. As one high-ranking Ministry of Agrarian Development official reminds us:

In the public debate—in public opinion—agrarian reform came down to whether or not “the target had been met” and whether or not the numbers were legitimate. This impoverished the debate about agrarian reform, in a governing context in which it was not the central item on the agenda. . . . It was there given its significance, given the sensitivity of the issue, its seriousness, but not as a strategic option.

This scenario invariably led to constant conflict over implementing—or blocking—instruments for intervening in land policy and to divergent interpretations of the regulatory and legal framework, even between the administrators responsible for carrying out the measure “on the ground” and those responsible for formulating and managing policy from their offices in Brasília. As one INCRA official informed us,

An official from INCRA needs to have a basic knowledge of the legislation, and even that can be quite precarious, very, very, very precarious. . . . What’s the regulation? What’s the law? On the one hand, it’s precarious; on the other hand, every time I read a law, I can interpret it this way, or that way, do you see? And that’s the question that the official has to ask: how to use existing legislation to resolve an issue. . . . So, there are different ways of reading the legislation.

This statement reinforces the fact that the policy dimension, strictly speaking, cannot always help us understand the outcomes around implementation: this underscores the appropriateness of turning to the processual character of public policy as an alternative approach.

The 2000s: Between Institutional Innovation and “Rural Dualism”

The first decade of the new century saw the emergence of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT) at the helm of the federal government, with a new wave of public administrators recruited from unions, universities, and NGOs, in addition to administrators and congressional staff with experience in state and local government—this in contrast to the administrative profile of the Cardoso era, which had been strongly marked by those with a background in the private sector (particularly finance), academia, and certain professional bodies or associations. Even a brief analysis of the documents that lay out the focal points of federal policy during the two terms of the Lula administration (2003–2006 and 2007–2010) reveals the existence of certain priorities in relation to the agricultural sector at the start of each term.

As N. Delgado, Leite, and Wesz Jr. (2010) point out, Lula’s Carta ao povo brasileiro (Letter to the Brazilian People) of 2002 had already spoken of agrarian reform, increased exports, and support for both agribusiness and family farming—announcing the continuation of a somewhat dualistic approach to agricultural policy reinforced by the administrative structure inherited from the previous administration. The curious fact of dual ministries might at first sight suggest an inconsistency in the government’s approach to the agricultural sector, but the presence of both has actually proven to be necessary without undermining other administrative arrangements. The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Food Supply has historically been a space for negotiating, formulating, and implementing public policy concerned with the interests and specific requirements of commercial agriculture. The Ministry of Agrarian Development’s fundamental objective has been the creation of programs for family farmers, settlers of agrarian reform projects, traditional and riparian communities, extractivists, and so on—something that is relatively recent in the Brazilian case.⁵

Lula’s 2002 platform underscored Brazil’s capacity for commodity production and the importance of selling agricultural goods on the international market; at the same time, it called for strengthening the domestic market through programs that would offer financing to family farmers, for example, or provide them with better technical assistance and incentives for agroindustrialization. Agrarian reform, which became the object of a specific program at the end of Lula’s first year in office (the Second National Agrarian Reform Plan), also appeared in the platform, which focused on expropriating land in the interest of society, increasing the number of jobs in the countryside, and effectively distributing land assets. These measures were to be strengthened by agricultural research and extension centers. Food security also emerged as a strategic focus, particularly with the announcement of the Zero Hunger Program. The platform referenced food production (rice and beans, for example) but also incentives for alcohol production, in an explicit allusion to the bioenergy program (Leite, 2007).

The platform for Lula’s second term, released in 2006, emphasized the idea of a “new model of development” based on greater support for technical innovation and a better balance among family farming, agrarian reform, and agribusiness. It focused on the need to improve conditions for credit and financing for both commercial agriculture and family farmers. It also addressed agrarian reform and called attention to social diversity in the rural context, along with the need for higher wages and fuller citizenship for those living in the countryside. A more mature biofuel strategy was also a strong point of the platform, an area in which both family farming and commercial agriculture were to play a role. Food security and the human rights of specific populations (the indigenous, quilombolas,⁶ settlers, and homesteaders) also appeared in the platform, as well as support for artisan fishers.

The use since the mid-1990s of the multiyear plan as a state-planning instrument indicates a certain continuity between the Cardoso and Lula administrations vis-à-vis the state’s recovery capacity in the government planning process. This approach became even more evident during the Lula administration, when the plan for 2004–2007 called for a broad public conversation regarding the strategic points that would guide national development. The eradication of hunger and promotion of food security were among the plan’s objectives, leveraging the expectation of low food prices for the domestic market. Other important items on the agenda included effective agrarian reform, the consolidation of family farming, the promotion of sustainable development, and a revision of the productivity indexes used in designing land policy. Incentives for the productive sector, in particular for agribusiness, and a shift in the technological model for agricultural production also figured as strategic elements in the reduction of Brazil’s vulnerability. In addition to sectorial programs (prices, credit, products) tied to the two ministries, a policy for rural territorial development was announced.

The 2008–2011 plan emphasized the creation of both a social and an economic agenda and would also influence the creation of the Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (Growth Acceleration Program—PAC) and its corresponding “Social PAC” (which recognized the public policy demands of groups such as quilombolas and indigenous communities, while also stressing the importance of gender equality). The PAC itself bolstered the production of biodiesel through the Brazilian National Biodiesel Program and its integration with PRONAF (Flexor et al., 2011). Two other important points of the plan involved the stabilization of the agricultural sector and an emphasis on renewed productivity through increased financing capacity. On the social agenda, the PAA figured as a central mechanism in the social integration process, as did the fight against slave labor and the strengthening of measures geared toward food and nutritional security. The fight against social and regional inequalities would be waged through measures such as agrarian reform, the consolidation of family farming, and the implementation of the territorial development program.

The goal of officials in top-tier ministries such as the Ministry of Agrarian Development and the Ministry for Social Development and the Fight against Hunger was to shift the policy axis from one centered only on growth to a broader one with a stronger social dimension. The statement of one interviewee makes this explicit:

Lula tasked the ministries with the creation of programs to tackle the issue of regional and social inequality. So, there’s a recognition that the PAC only addresses investment and infrastructure, not agriculture specifically; it doesn’t address agrarian reform. So, . . . it’s part of what they called a social PAC, but for us it has a substantial economic dimension: for us it’s another agenda for development, more so than a social agenda. The idea is—and this is going to create some instability within the ministry— . . . to create 120 territories. We took 30 with the worst indicators (19 in the Northeast, but including every region) and in these microterritories we’re putting together a strategy to universalize access to policy—to universalize or expand, as the case may be—and to fundamental rights: education . . . so it involves the MDA, the MDS, the Ministry of Education (MEC), and Health. We’re proposing that the chief of staff coordinate this, so as not to suggest that it’s the responsibility of a ministry and end up making things harder. So, what do we want to do? Well, we’re going to think of these territories more holistically. . . . It’s not just a matter of targeted policies. Rather, it’s an effort to integrate those policies with a territorialized vision, but in order to . . . integrate them, empower them to tackle concrete problems.

The Territories of Citizenship Program arose in this context, but, as Leite and Delgado (2011) and others have observed, it did not have the political backing it needed to shift the emphasis away from growth and allow the administrators involved with territorial development to obtain greater legitimacy and recognition. Notwithstanding, the policy of territorial development emerged as an important institutional innovation, especially as a constitutive policy, and a point of departure from the Cardoso legacy.

Perhaps the main general commitment of the Lula administration from its first term on was the support given to both agribusiness and family farming: the former because of its ability to increase exports and affect the balance of trade and the latter because of its particular relevance to food production, job creation, and the reduction of inequality in rural areas. The administration recognized the importance of both forms of agriculture, each with its own interest groups working to influence public policy and the overall direction of agricultural and rural development (G. Delgado, 2005; Heredia, Palmeira, and Leite, 2010). Indeed, analysis of the information collected from interviewees confirms that it implemented a diversified blend of public policies aimed at supporting both family farming and agribusiness.

In relation to family farming, the administration established legal frameworks that guaranteed the recognition of the sector as an important recipient of public policy, among them the Organic Law on Food and Nutritional Security, the Family Farming Law, and the Technical Assistance and Rural Extension Law. Furthermore, the Family Farming Harvest Plan represented a central instrument for implementing policy aimed at supporting the agricultural production of families. Resources for PRONAF were significantly increased and its lines of financing expanded; the Family Farming Insurance Program was created; a marketing policy was defined in relation to the PGPM and the PAA; and an attempt was made to restructure the policy around the Technical Assistance and Rural Extension Law (Grisa et al., 2011).⁷

In addition, the agenda during Lula’s second term emphasized the idea of a “new model of development” for rural areas, anchored in a better balance among family farming, agrarian reform, and agribusiness and a significant effort to support technological innovation in family farming. Although particular initiatives have helped put this model into practice, we are still far from being able to say that it has been the guiding principal behind the implementation of government policy for rural areas. Undoubtedly, the Lula administration’s recognition of social diversity in the Brazilian countryside (rather than reducing everything to either family farming or agribusiness) represented a crucial step toward promoting a new model, although recognizing the right of these diverse populations to the land they occupy is a matter of serious political conflict (both within and outside the government), particularly for officials in the Ministry of the Environment.

This new model of rural development was also furthered by a focus on food and nutritional security and by the strategic action of the Conselho Nacional de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional (National Council on Food and Nutritional Security—CONSEA), in addition to the creation of legal frameworks and a new constitutional amendment making food a basic right. As one former president of the CONSEA noted, the idea of the right to food was a watershed moment and created a reference point for rural and social policy and the action of administrators in the area. Public consultation through municipal, state, and national conferences on food security and specialized forums like the CONSEA lent credence to the legitimacy and effectiveness of new programs. The literature on the cognitive analysis of public policy has noted the significance of these kinds of spaces in producing innovative ideas that later result in new policies and new administrative approaches (Fouilleux, 2011; Grisa, 2012). Moreover, the territorial development policy adopted in 2003 by the Ministry of Agrarian Development (the Program for Sustainable Development of Rural Territories) laid important groundwork along these lines and led to the creation of the aforementioned Territories of Citizenship Program in 2008. This initiative helped define a more appropriate space for decentralized government intervention and drove the creation of more democratic regional institutions that could provide an interface between social actors and public policy (Leite and Delgado, 2011).

Despite these and other initiatives, the support given to agribusiness served to reinforce the rural development model that had been inherited, even while policies to support family farming paved the way for new producers, in particular during Lula’s first term, and led to greater social inclusiveness (for example, PRONAF, the PAA, and infrastructure programs). Yet in the end a new rural development model failed to coalesce, with shortcomings being particular evident in areas such as technology, the environment, and land tenure. Regarding land tenure in particular, the implementation of an agrarian reform policy fell short of the goals announced at the beginning of the first term. Three points should be noted here: (1) The political difficulty of revising productivity indexes, a commitment that official proposals had made explicit. The pressure against new legislation had been completely underestimated, resulting in a counterproductive process of successive announcements that new parameters for measuring productivity, consistent with agricultural mechanization, were to be introduced. (2) Limited use of the expropriation process as a mechanism for assigning land for agrarian reform projects, partly due to legal issues. (3) Relatively poor performance in the area of rural settlements as the object of social policy and a vehicle for economic growth and productivity in regions targeted by the agrarian reform program (N. Delgado, Leite, and Wesz Jr., 2010).⁸

There was a substantial increase in resources allocated to rural financing, whether for family farming or commercial agriculture, in both cases accompanied by a gradual reduction in interest rates. This measure certainly had an impact on agricultural production and on the volume of supplies and equipment purchased by farmers. Notwithstanding, in both family and commercial farming a reconcentration of resources began to occur in 2007, whether through prioritizing higher-value contracts, privileging producers from the South (in the case of PRONAF), or favoring specific products as in the case of soybeans. Parallel with increased lending, the level of indebtedness of the agriculture sector increased (especially in the period from 2004 to 2006), as did the burden borne by the public sector in the debt renegotiation process. This triggered constant alterations of the coalition of interests supporting family or commercial agriculture.

Continuing a tradition already established during the two terms of the Cardoso administration, agribusiness spared no expense in lobbying Congress and other high-level decision-making bodies such as the National Monetary Council (Graziano da Silva, 2010). This became explicit in 2003, when a prominent rural business leader was named minister of agriculture (Heredia, Palmeira, and Leite, 2010).

Finally, public spaces (not necessarily governmental) were created for discussing agricultural policy and programs in which administrators and civil society representatives interacted to differing degrees (see Abramovay, 2001): reactivating the CONSEA and the Ministry of Agriculture’s sectorial product chambers, creating new territorial development councils, and bolstering the National Council for Sustainable Rural Development. Local, territorial, state, and national conferences were also held, helping to mobilize people and institutions in various fields of government action and facilitate interaction between administrators and beneficiaries of agricultural policies (N. Delgado, 2010; Leite and Delgado, 2011).

In the view of one influential administrator, there was a clear perception of change during Lula’s first term vis-à-vis previous administrations, a perception not always held by scholars and activists:

In these four years [2003 to 2006], there has been a repositioning of the Brazilian state, of the interests of rural populations, a repositioning of the MDA [Ministry of Agrarian Development], of agrarian reform, of rural populations—of the interests of rural populations—and of the ministry in the Brazilian state. This repositioning has made it possible to create a series of instruments, of policies with differing degrees of institutionalization, that have already shown their capacity to stabilize living conditions for rural populations. Insufficient, uneven, but clearly evident. The nationalization of credit, insurance, marketing tools, regulatory programs, policies . . . targeted action directed toward quilombola populations. This has the capacity to contribute to a stabilization of life conditions in the rural sphere. Does it have the capacity to change the model? No. . . . But it makes for greater socioeconomic strength, which is key to promoting a paradigm shift.

Notwithstanding, this more optimistic perspective was forced to confront difficult coalitions in Congress, dominated in part by the so-called rural caucus that had been formed during the Cardoso administration (Leite and Medeiros, 2004). There was also a complex relationship with the keepers of macroeconomic policy, in particular the Ministry of Finance, with regard to the allocation of budgetary resources for programs that the literature closest to rational-choice theory might call “pork-barrel policies,” quite tangential to the core policies (monetary, fiscal, exchange rates) administered by the macroeconomic sector. Several interviewee statements repeatedly raised these two kinds of issues.

Conclusion

There is a relatively broad set of programs and policies aimed at the agricultural sector in Brazil. However, we still know little about the dynamics and processes of these public initiatives. My goal here, beyond demonstrating the complexity of the situation, has been to contribute to a more accurate understanding of the role of policy makers in the process of developing and implementing policies. In this regard, I would like to make the following suggestions by way of conclusion:

The transition from an institutional context of industrialization and rapid growth to one of crisis, liberalization, reform, and administrative restructuring has certainly marked the role and shape of public policy, which became increasingly subordinated to macroeconomic policy. Policy makers in the agricultural sector were not exempt from this state of affairs and were also forced to confront the bureaucracy responsible for economic policy during both the previous period and that of monetary stabilization. The experience of democratization during the second half of the 1980s led to a continual learning process for those in public administration, especially in their relationship with Congress in its role as an important forum for the emergence and validation of the ideas that would guide rural and environmental policy (Fouilleux, 2011; Palmeira and Leite, 1998).

Given the dual administrative structure that has shaped agricultural policy in Brazil, it is not possible to posit a single line of action for policy makers managing government programs for agriculture; they bring different backgrounds to the table and operate in networks, spaces, and interfaces that are quite distinct (Romano, 2011). In the case of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Food Supply, for example, a considerable number of officials came from academia, business, and professional associations, while in the case of the Ministry of Agrarian Development there was a preponderance of administrators with previous experience in NGOs, social movements, and unions. Given these considerations, the maintenance of two ministries for one sector has been validated by the different policies and networks that have been established, even though this increases competition for influence and budgetary resources.

An important question that remains is how to analyze the possibility of institutional change in agricultural policy and the role played by public administrators in the process. An examination of the path taken in the 1990s and 2000s reveals more continuities than discontinuities in the sector. As Santos (2011), drawing on advocacy coalition and path dependency models, observes, the coalitions established in the mid-1990s generated “lock-in” effects that inhibited deeper change, suggesting that institutional innovations in the 2000s were more adaptive than structural (perhaps with the exception of territorial development and food security policies). This conclusion is controversial and would require a deeper analysis of policy trajectories in order to pinpoint critical, change-producing moments. For example, why not consider the agrarian reform program of the 1980s, with its own ministerial division (Leite and Medeiros, 2004), or even the emergence of the sustainability paradigm in the 1990s and its impact on the bifurcation of policy directions (Leonard et al., 2009)? For now, suffice it to say that, regardless of the signposts marking the locations of change, it is essential to consider not only the instrumental nature of individual policies but the strategic game that informs their processual and organizational dimensions, in which the activity of public administrators is particularly important.

Footnotes

Notes

Sergio Pereira Leite is a professor in the Graduate Studies Program in Social Sciences for Development, Agriculture, and Society of the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and coordinator of the Observatory on Public Policies for Agriculture. Timothy A. Thompson is a metadata librarian (Spanish/Portuguese specialty) at Princeton University.

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