A atuação dos burocratas de nível de rua no Brasil: os casos dos fiscais do IBAMA e dos agentes do ICMBio na implementação da política ambiental

Abstract

This work investigates the elements that define street-level bureaucrats’ action in the implementation of Brazilian environmental policy and how they are articulated, taking as case studies the IBAMA inspectors and ICMBio agents, before and after the beginning of president Bolsonaro’s term. A theoretical model integrating three different analytical dimensions was developed to evaluate street-level bureaucrats’ action: the institutional, the individual and the relational dimensions. Based on this, a case-oriented investigation was carried out, in which significant cases were selected to illustrate the two different profiles of environmental agents (cross-case analysis). Thus, through semi-structured and in-depth interviews, the testimonies of twenty-eight street-level bureaucrats from the said institutions were collected, in addition to the examination of regulations and other relevant documents. The information obtained was examined using Systematic Content Analysis (SCA), with the help of NVivo 12 Plus software. The SCA included the codification of the texts, the analysis of their contents and the statistical description of the codifications, systematized according to the indicators of the theoretical model. Based on this, the meanings posed by the interlocutors were compared across different cases and corroborated through documentary analysis. Complementarily, a cross-time poll was conducted on the institutional changes that occurred before and after the beginning of the Bolsonaro government. The results of the work show comparatively, between IBAMA inspectors and ICMBio agents, what are the elements that define the street-level bureaucrats’ action in Brazilian environmental policy and how they are articulated, with their peculiarities in each of the institutions. Furthermore, the research points out that the changes undertaken by the Bolsonaro administration currently in power have led, in just three years, to the weakening of institutions, the freezing of bureaucratic capacities and the deconstruction of environmental governance in Brazil. Besides empirically testing the model mentioned above, this thesis intends to contribute to the management of Brazilian public administration by offering an in-depth and updated analysis of the role of bureaucracy in the process of implementing public policies and, in particular, environmental policy, towards understanding the importance of solid and autonomous institutions, the limits necessary for the exercise of discretion, the full use of public capacities and the functioning of institutional and inter-institutional relations networks. Based on these results, the work concludes that, in order to ensure the enforcement of environmental preservation, within the national and international regulatory frameworks, environmental policy needs to be reaffirmed, in Brazil, as a State policy, not only constitutionally defined, but also fully regulated, so that the potential of its institutional, individual and relational components can be explored, regardless of the particular and corporatist interests of the government in power at the time.