Coprodução na implementação de políticas públicas : controle vetorial do dengue em Campo Grande – MS

The overall objective of this doctoral dissertation was to propose, on theoretical and empirical grounds, a conceptual model of policy implementation via coproduction. Coproduction is a strategy of governmental action in which users of public policy are considered to be active elements in the implementation process providing essential resources for carrying out necessary actions. The choice of the coproduction approach as theoretical framework is justified by a literature stream that focuses on the need for a more democratic approach to policy implementation, identified as a gap yet to be filled in the literature. To achieve the research objective, a comparative analysis was carried out of the implementation of the Programa Nacional de Combate a Dengue (PNCD) in five districts of the municipality of Campo Grande in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul: two with a ‘very high’ incidence of the disease and three with ‘zero’ incidence. The sources of evidence were principally qualitative in nature, obtained principally by means of semi-structured interviews using scripts with open questions applied, respectively, to co-producers (43 interviews), residents (40 interviews) and the municipal coordinator of the program, a total of 84 interviews in all. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and transferred to Atlas-ti 7 software, specific for the analysis of qualitative data. Initially content analysis was carried out on the data collected, followed by Crisp-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA). The results of the study revealed: (i) interdependence among the conditions of coproduction and the need for balancing them for effective policy implementation; (ii) the need to include ‘cognitive conditions’ and ‘structural conditions’ among those necessary to undertaking actions involving coproduction; (iii) the existence of different motivating factors for participation among different types of actors involved in the dynamics of coproduction and the need for equilibrium among them if coproduction actions are to take place; and (iv) that the direct participation by users of the public service in the cases studied cannot be characterized as democratic participation in view of the fact that users are ‘charged with’ rather than ‘empowered by’ the actions they carry out. Based on results propositions were formulated that can be tested in future research. One contribution of this research is the attempt to operationalize a more democratic approach to policy implementation, producing evidence of how this might be achieved. In addition, it contributes new elements to the theoretical and empirical underpinnings that support the coproduction approach, refining concepts and showing how contextual and process characteristics influence the dynamics of implementation via coproduction.