Brazilian Political Science Review E-ISSN: 1981-3821
[email protected] Associação Brasileira de Ciência Política Brasil Pereira de Andrade, Fabio; Lima-Silva, Fernanda High-level Federal Bureaucracy and Policy Formulation: the Case of the Bolsa Família Program Brazilian Political Science Review, vol. 10, núm. 3, 2016, pp. 1-26 Associação Brasileira de Ciência Política São Paulo, Brasil Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=394348912007 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative High-level Federal Bureaucracy and Policy Formulation: the Case of the Bolsa Família Program* Fabio Pereira de Andrade Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil Fernanda Lima-Silva Fundação Getúlio Vargas-SP, Brazil This article is a contribution to the study of the decision- making behind social policies. The literature usually stresses the role of elected politicians and the parliament in framing policies and underestimates governmental stakeholders, who do not hold elected offices, and bureaucrats. This article aims to highlight the active role of high-level federal bureaucrats in the design of policies. The analysis reclaims the classical categories and concepts developed by Lindblom (1980) and Crozier (1964), which points to the hybrid behaviour of bureaucrats and politically-appointed actors. Our aim is to show that decision-making is the result of the interactions between elected politicians and hybrid high-level federal bureaucracy, who organize themselves in groups around different technical-political projects.