Internationalization is a trend that is gradually taking hold within the fields of administration, public administration and the social sciences in general. However, what the term "internationalization" actually means, in practice, to those involved in assessing and developing these fields (Capes, CNPq or Scielo), to their teaching and research institutions or to their field researchers is still subject to a good deal of interpretation and controversy. While development agencies and quality accreditation organizations step up the pressure to increase the number of articles being written and the number of authors writing in the English language in Brazilian journals, at the same time, researchers and associations in these fields, including The National Association of Post-Graduate Studies and Research in Social Sciences (Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Ciências Sociais - Anpocs), The Brazilian Association of Anthropology (Associação Brasileira de Antropologia - ABA), The Brazilian Association of Political Science (Associação Brasileira de Ciência Política - ABCP) and The Brazilian Society of Sociology (Sociedade Brasileira de Sociologia - SBS) criticize such measures, claiming they might potentially have a negative impact on the quality of research carried out in the realm of social sciences.
Based on the assumption that a strategy of internationalization, when reduced to the metrics of "Englishification" alone, can contribute little to improving the quality of research in our field, while at the same time seeking to respond with a set of appropriate measures to the pressures being brought to bear to internationalize the contribution made by our specific field of public administration, RAP has adopted a policy of internationalization that attempts to achieve three prime objectives:
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a) To expand RAPs contribution to an international community of researchers and practitioners in public administration;
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b) To encourage the submission of papers in the English language, increasing the number of such submissions in English made by both Brazilian and international researchers;
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c) To improve and construct the interfaces that facilitate and expand the journal's communication with prospective authors and readers of RAP in the English language.
In this editorial, we present the first initiative aimed at realizing the journal's new internationalization strategy. This initiative involves: carrying out a process of selection to produce a special edition of the journal over the course of 2016.
This special edition of the journal will obey certain guidelines:
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a) Each proposal should be submitted to a team of editors, made up of at least one Brazilian researcher and one foreign researcher, both recognized for their contributions to the specific field being proposed;
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b) Each proposal should focus on key topics that have the potential to attract articles from both national and international sources.
Proposals for this "Special Edition" should be sent to the journal's e-mail address: <rap@fgv.br>, by August 31. Those submitting their proposals should provide details with regard to the potential of the article and justify the pertinence of its subject matter to the field of public administration. These proposals should be structured around a description of the subject matter, research questions to be explored and a basic bibliography. The proposals will then be analyzed by the journal's editorial committee and the proponents will be notified as to whether their proposal has been accepted within a maximum of two weeks.
We sincerely hope that such processes of collaborative editing, combined with the subjects being proposed will then form part of the overall contributions of a community of both Brazilian and international researchers, thereby helping to consolidate RAP's contribution to knowledge in the field of public administration.
Finally, we offer a brief presentation of the articles included in this third issue of the journal. The transversal theme that pervades most of the contributions to this issue of the journal focuses on dimensions relating to citizenship and the participation and engagement of citizens at different stages of public policy. The issue offers a conceptual article that looks at the centrality of the idea of social justice, and other theoretical-empirical contributions that deal with different aspects of the relationship between the public sphere and citizenship. These range from the role of new information technologies and the conflicts experienced in participatory practice to the barriers that exist to the greater participation by the people. Two other articles debate the question of development in its local and sustainable dimensions, proposing a sustainable development methodology and evaluating the impact of public policies on local development.
In the article entitled Clashes over the idea of social justice in relation to social conflicts and inequalities, by Alex Pizzio, talks about the issue of social justice and its progress in adopting models aimed at the development and management of public policies.
The article entitled The impetus of experience from the bottom up as a mechanism for contributing to the design of public services by Martí Oliver-Mora and Lupicinio Iñiguez-Rueda analyzes participative public management in the design of public services aimed at primary healthcare in Spain, seeking to understand how healthcare professionals, in using information and communication technologies, are able to detect the social needs of their patients and try to respond to these same needs.
The article Methodology for leading indicators on sustainable regional development, by José Francisco de Carvalho Rezende and Maria Cristina Fogliatti de Sinay, attempts to put forward a proposal for constructing a set of sustainability indicators based on scores and hierarchies, which can then be used to monitor the sustainable regional development of metropolitan regions.
In the article entitled An analysis of the effectiveness of public policies relating to Local Productive Arrangements (LPA'S) on local development from the perspective of institutional theory, Márcio Jacometti, Marcos de Castro, Sandro Aparecido Gonçalves and Mayla Cristina Costa use an institutional perspective to identify the role of public policies and social relations on the economic development of a Local Productive Arrangement.
The article Master plans and political participation: public planning policies to establish a link between entrepreneurship and city ordinances, by Jefferson Oliveira Goulart, Eliana Tadeu Terci and Estevam Vanale Otero analyses the effectiveness of participatory master plans, concluding that these still lack effectiveness, both in terms of regulating and implementing the urban tools provided by City Statutes, as well as in terms of democratizing the decision-making processes relating to public policies of urban management.
Finally, the article entitled Contexts (un)suitable for citizens' engagement in social control, by Marjorie Angélica Sabioni Ferreira, Marco Aurélio Marques Ferreira, Marcelo José Braga and Fernanda Maria de Almeida seeks to understand the characteristics and the conditions under which citizens participate in the municipalities of the state of Minas Gerais, highlighting the disparities that exist in the dimensions of the Municipal Structure, the Institutional Context and the Social Mobilization that limit the potential of municipalities in terms of citizen engagement in social control.
The forum entitled "A Practical Perspective" also offers two articles which focus on the subjects of participation and development: Participatory innovations, social dialogue and consensus building, by Priscilla Ribeiro dos Santos, and Territorial development policies in Brazil: the Ribeira Valley case (SP), by Joaquim Alves Silva Jr.
Pleasant reading!
Alketa Peci
Editor-in-chief
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
May-Jun 2016
