A new history of Brazilian public administration: theoretical assumptions and alternative sources

Abstract

In recent years, several isolated initiatives mark the rediscovery of the history of public administration and the usefulness of its study to understand the contemporary state as social order, institution and representation. Those articles represent an advance in relation to historiographical production published until the 1980s. However, there are still conceptual and methodological weaknesses that slowly begin to be overcome. Besides that, one of the major difficulties of researchers who engage in this effort is the identification and the access to more diverse sources for the development of a new history of public administration, based on advances in more recent historiography. This article aims to discuss theoretical and methodological principles for the development of this new history and contribute to the identification, presentation and analysis of these sources. From the statement of theoretical and methodological assumptions, the establishment of a timeline of the Brazilian State and the identification of emerging issues, six categories were defined into which these sources may, at first, be framed to group themes, collections or databases, namely: directory of laws on governmental organization; speeches from the throne and presidential messages; reports of the federal court of accounts (TCU); statistics; personal files; life stories. The survey is not intended to cover fully unpublished sources nor be exhaustive, but to offer clues for the use of materials not typically utilized in studies of the history of public administration.