In the context of Information Society, proposals for the development of new conceptions of government and its functions have been causing disputes between different schools of thought about how the current reconfigurations of sociopolitical relations should be understood. As a main challenge has to be tackled the development of new forms of governance able to guide processes of public policy-making and implementation by networks of actors defending quite different interests in an environment prone to instability and complexity. The main objective of this paper is to analyze systems of local governance and of socio technical policy networks aiming at the proliferation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the Brazilian cities of Porto Alegre and Curitiba. In order to capture and analyze the logic of action that determines the behavior of actors and institutions within sociotechnical networks, theoretical references have been sought in the field of Policy Network Analysis and the related basic concepts of Social Network Analysis and Policy Analysis. The analysis relying on these references is justifiable and gains its importance due to the potential contributions of ICT, in both material and symbolic terms, to the capturing and understanding of social, political and strategic aspects that determine the action environment of local public management.
Sociotechnical networks; Policy networks; Local governance; Information and communication technologies; Social network analysis