Participatory institutional innovations: an exploratory approach to the Brazilian literature on Public Administration in RAP and EnAPG (1990-2014)

Abstract

This article aims to conduct an exploratory survey of the Brazilian literature on Public Administration, to verify the investigations carried out by the community of scholars addressing institutional innovations with a participatory nature, in order to outline an overview of the limitations and advances of these studies, pointing out gaps and establishing a research agenda. To do this, we discuss the changes in relationships between State and society and the institutional innovations with a participatory nature. Then, we approach the research methodology, which consisted in a research that has a qualitative and quantitative design, in order to select and classify articles on participatory institutional innovations, in Revista de Administração Pública (RAP), within the period from 1990 to 2014, and in the 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014 editions of the Encontro de Administração Pública e Governança da Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação em Administração (EnAPG). To analyze data and discuss the results, we resorted to absolute and relative frequency distributions, displayed in tables and graphs. In the conclusion, we present the status of studies on participatory institutional innovations in the field, as well as a research agenda to guide further investigations on the theme.

Keywords:
Social participation; Institutional innovation; Public management