Public action and social innovation: an analysis of the System of Protection of the Rights of Children and Adolescents Florianópolis-SC

Abstract

Brazil has an advanced legislation related to the guarantee of children and adolescents’ rights. However, these institutional innovations do not seem to promote an effective transformation in the social reality, given the numerous cases of violation registered every day against children and adolescents in the country. In this paper we discuss this problem and aim to understand how the policy of protection of children and adolescents´ rights in Florianópolis is performed and its consequences in terms of social innovation in the public arenas where it is embedded. In order to do so, public policy is examined as “public action”, and a pragmatist perspective in the study of the case is adopted. We present the analytical framework and its application in different scales of analysis: macro, meso and micro, and relate these scales showing advances and limits of the public action in this area in the municipality. The conclusions highlight that in local practices, the policy is performed in a backdrop of institutional and political fragility. This results in more regularity than social innovation producing the opposite of what is expected in its legal framework: full protection, and leading to a process of stigmatization of the children, adolescents and families attended by this public policy.

Keywords:
Public Policy; Public Action; Children and Adolescents’ Rights; Social Innovation; Florianopolis