Abstract:
The article examines the role of the Public Prosecution Service and the Court of Auditors of the state of Rio Grande do Sul in the national policy of early childhood education, especially regarding the expansion of enrollments in public schools. The analytical axes, researched through documents and interviews with prosecutors, auditors, and public managers, contemplate the characteristics of their performance, the institutional changes and the interaction between both institutions. The results show that those are more than simple monitoring agencies, because they influence directly the public policies of early childhood education, acting like co-managers (Hoffmann and Bentes 2008Hoffmann, Florian F. e Bentes Fernando R. N. M. 2008. Accountability for social and economic rights in Brazil. In Courting social justice: judicial enforcement of social and economic rights in the developing world, organizado por Varun Gauri e Daniel M. Brinks, 100-145. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511511240.005.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511511240...
) or fixers (Bardach 1977Bardach, Eugene. 1977. The Implementation Game: what happens after a bill becomes a law. Cambridge: MIT Press.; Sabatier and Mazmanian 1993Sabatier, Paul e Daniel Mazmanian. 1993. La implementación de la política pública: um marco de análisis. In La implementación de las políticas, organizado por Luis F. Aguilar Villanueva, 323-372. México: Miguel Angel Porrúa; Weimer e Vining 2017Weimer, David e Aidan R. Vining. 2017. Policy analysis: concepts and practice. London: Routledge,) of its implementation in the municipalities. It was also found that these accountability institutions have taken on new roles in the area of education since the 2000s, within an incremental development path (Mahoney e Thelen 2009Mahoney, James e Kathleen Thelen. 2009. Explaining institutional change: ambiguity, agency, and power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.), marked by a variety of actions that included inter institutional cooperation.
Keywords
Public Policy; Child education; Implementation; Court of Audit; Public Prosecutor's Office