The promises and results of new public management in Brazil: the case of social health organizations in São Paulo

Abstract

The new public management (NPM) model has spread through the world with its promise of attacking two bureaucratic evils: an excessive number of procedures and the low accountability of bureaucrats vis-à-vis the political system and society. NPM’s basic proposal was to make public administration more flexible and increase its accountability through a new way of providing services that is based on the creation of public non-governmental entities like social organizations (SO). In Brazil, reformist experience begins in 1995 started with the ideas of the Master Plan for Reforming the Public Administration. In the Health field, the experience in Sao Paulo constitutes a paradigmatic case study for evaluating the introduction of NPM in Brazil. The promise of greater accountability has advanced, but has not yet changed the insulating of the Executive Branch and the reduced capacity of institutional and society for controlling it.