By JOSÉ CELSO CARDOSO JR.; ALEXANDRE GOMIDE & RAFAEL RODRIGUES VIEGAS*
To reinforce the public nature of state action and combat the capture of the state by corporations, several strategies can be employed
Corporatism is commonly defined as a system of representation, processing and implementation of specific collective interests within the established public power. It is not appropriate here to discuss its historical-institutional variants, that is, whether state corporatism (organized and supervised by the State) or societal corporatism (animated and sustained by the pluralism of interests present in society), as well as the combinations and derivations empirically observed of both main models over time.[I]
For the purposes of this article, it is enough to say that corporatism has established itself in the history of contemporary capitalism (basically after the Second World War) as a politically legitimate and relatively effective way of making actors and interests explicit and of channeling and resolving conflicts, both in the relationship between public and private sectors and within the public sector. Within the public sector, this occurred due to the great diversity of areas of state activity, bureaucracies, decision-making arenas, interests and institutional processes involved.
But, in both cases, in addition to the State decisions emanating from the traditional rules of representative democracy, corporatism (via formal and informal activities of LOBBY, advocacy etc.) also came to be considered a form – complementary and more direct, although less regulated – of manifestation, negotiation and intermediation of organized interests, corporately, aiming to influence and shape decision-making processes in governmental spheres.
So far, then, nothing special, just things as they actually are and function in contemporary capitalist societies. But the problem begins when, leaving the formal and abstract discussion about concepts and categories of analysis, we get to the bottom of politics as it is.
And it is dominated, in Brazil and elsewhere, by groups and categories that are more powerful and privileged than others. This hierarchy and asymmetry of power and resources (economic and symbolic) distorts the legality, legitimacy and concrete results obtained by the various organized groups in society (public and private) that have corporate relationships with the State. Ultimately, it distorts one of the fundamental principles of a democratic, pluralistic and inclusive society: the supremacy of the public interest.
In this sense, whenever the State acts only as a channel for transmitting the strongest and best-represented interests in its decision-making circuits, it contributes to sacralizing the economic and social inequalities present in society, in addition to reinforcing the asymmetry of resources and the (formal) voting and (informal) veto power of the most influential actors. Ultimately, it is politics itself in formally democratic regimes that loses its transformative power, since through “predatory corporatism” the positions of power of already privileged groups are consummated and the positions of actors with fewer resources and less powerful voices in society and within governments are weakened.
In practice, the State accepts, processes and implements, differently, decisions and public policies, more in favor of some social groups than others, since the interests of the most powerful and well-organized groups tend to be overrepresented, while the interests of the less organized majority or those not endowed with the same power resources can be neglected.
It can be said that the same phenomenon occurs in intrastate relations, where certain bureaucratic elites are able not only to impose and maintain their own class privileges, but also, through this, to distance their actions from truly public interests and needs. We already know that this is the rule for private corporations, but that such behavior is the norm for bureaucracies overrepresented within the public sector is a terrible sign of the substantial weakening of republicanism and democracy in our country.
A good example of this concerns the remuneration privileges that guide the actions of certain public organizations and their unions and associations of civil servants. Although some of the demands for periodic salary adjustments are fair and legitimate, nothing justifies selective remuneration privileges granted to a subset of public careers that are already the most privileged from a salary and institutional point of view.
Groups capable of mobilizing and making governments give in to their demands have often managed to have their demands met, culminating in privileges concentrated in specific sectors or public careers. This occurred during the government of Jair Bolsonaro through measures that guaranteed real salary increases for military personnel, simultaneously with many years of salary restrictions for civil servants, but it has also been occurring since 2016 through the implementation of variable remuneration mechanisms for civilian categories that have always been at the top of the salary pyramid in the public sector, consolidating themselves as an elite of salary privileges, among other disproportionate advantages, which cement immense salary inequalities within the State's functional body.
In contrast to this recent trend of dispersion of salaries within the public sector, it is important to note that during Lula's second presidential term (2007 to 2010) there were efforts to provide greater rationality and equity in salaries for various public careers in the federal administration. The replacement of numerous forms of payment through financial aid and benefits with the payment of salaries through subsidies was a step forward in this direction and had a positive impact on the salaries and institutional performance of a wide range of careers, organizations and public servants.[ii]
Since then, there has been a movement through which more powerful organizations and careers within the State have been able to circumvent the logic of basic salary as a subsidy, as well as the constitutional salary ceiling itself. Thus, the fragmentation of salaries with heterogenization of the performance of organizations and careers within the State apparatus contributes to the loss of organicity among civil servants, reinstitutes undesirable distributive conflicts in the public sphere and worsens the sectoral and aggregate performance of the State, with deleterious consequences, ultimately, for the economy itself and national society.
Unfortunately, a bureaucratic culture is proliferating in many categories of public servants who see themselves as “owners” of portions of the public budget that they claim they are responsible for collecting or monitoring. It is as if agents and organizations that should be guided by the supremacy of the public interest and the well-being of the community were to say “we act to monitor, collect, win lawsuits, increase the rates of a certain service and, therefore, we are entitled to a part of these resources”.
They forget the obvious: every public servant already receives a predictable and adequate remuneration to perform their duties and the results eventually arising from the performance of this duty, even for a moral reason and in respect for the ethos of the public service, should not be perceived as property or exclusivity of that body and civil servants who contributed to its achievement, but rather of society. Civil servants are expected to take actions and positions that benefit the public interest, placing the interests of society above personal interests or those of certain groups.
If this logic of financial autonomy is implemented and disseminated, what will happen to areas in which public policies do not aim at revenue collection or monitoring, but rather at providing services to the population, such as health, social assistance, education and even public safety, among many others? If each area of government action claims a remunerative share in the portion of tax collection to which they directly contributed, the loss of relative autonomy and discretion of governments over the multiple uses of public funds will further reduce the State's capacity for action and render recent attempts to politically legitimize elections, the representative system and democracy itself ineffective.
Not to mention the obvious conflict of interests when a public agent receives extra pecuniary payments for actions that are specific to him/her, that is, those that are already included in the list of specific and primary duties of the respective positions, and whose indicators and results have very little transparency, practically no social control and can only be effectively collected and measured by the same civil servants and organizations that will benefit from these monetary values.
Some may argue that good regulation is enough for mechanisms of this type to achieve the goal of increasing efficiency and individual productivity in their respective areas. This does not seem to be in line with reality, since once implemented in the public sector, flexible remuneration proposals will tend to increase – rather than reduce – the financial insecurity and emotional instability of the affected employees, leaving them more exposed to situations of moral harassment, external capture, extortion attempts or any other type of active or passive corruption in the performance of their duties.
Thus, instead of stimulating greater and better individual performance, or increasing individual or organizational productivity, measures of this nature will actually tend to intensify internal competition and deteriorate personal and collective health and well-being conditions in the work environment.
In the private sector, competition, disguised as cooperation, is encouraged through individual pecuniary (but not limited) penalties and incentives in the workplace, due to the relative ease with which the private calculation of productivity and monetary costs and gains per worker can be individualized. In the public sector, on the other hand, the operation of individualizing deliveries (goods and services) aimed directly and indirectly at the community is a methodologically difficult task, while also being politically and socially undesirable, simply because the objective function of the public sector is not to produce economic value in the form of profit, but rather to generate social value, citizenship and well-being in an equitable and sustainable manner for the entire population throughout the national territory.
In short, given the immense qualitative differences that exist between functions of a public nature (whose ultimate reason is of a socio-political nature) and those of private motivation (whose ultimate reason is of an economic nature, more easily quantifiable and measurable), and given the extreme difficulty in identifying and isolating the relevant variables necessary to calculate productivity (individual or aggregate) in the public sector, it is concluded that proposals of this type are incompatible with the public essence of the State and its needs for planning, management and implementation of policies aimed at citizenship.
It is no wonder that international interlocutors are surprised to learn that in Brazil there are Productivity Bonuses for retirees and even pensioners. The argument that these professionals contributed to the institutional results while they were active and, therefore, deserve to participate in the bonus distributed, seems to make sense only up to a certain point. What is the logic behind a retiree receiving, indefinitely, even if at a lower percentage, a productivity bonus after having been inactive for 10 or 15 years?
The appropriation of parts of the public budget by specific professional categories also constitutes a one-way claim: if there are positive results, the agents understand as an unquestionable right the private appropriation of part of the corresponding public resources. However, if the result is negative, there is no loss or individual compensation. It is not surprising that all categories seek similar conditions, under the astonished eyes of Brazilian society and the embarrassment of jurists and other defenders of this type of claim.
Thus, one way to mitigate or combat predatory corporatism within the public sector is to remember and reinforce the public nature of both the bureaucratic configuration and the state's actions. This is because there are important differences between the public (State) and private (market) sectors with regard to the essence, general objectives and ways in which each of these spheres of contemporary life operates. Such differences help us to better understand the different perspectives and specificities of action between the two, and also help us to better position ourselves in relation to our own preferences and options for professional action.
Although in a very simple and schematic way, it is possible to say that the actions of people in the private sector are anchored in imperatives of survival and self-interest, whose main objective is to meet the desires and needs of individuals through the sale of goods and services of a commercial nature, whether directly as an individual (self-employment, self-employment), or through formal or informal companies (legal entities).
Furthermore, it is important to understand that in the private sector, for reasons linked to the internal logic of the capitalist system, companies and people who produce for the market are induced to prioritize the short/medium term, adopt micro/mesoeconomic perspectives and aim to accumulate economic value in the form of monetary profit.
In turn, work in the public sector should ideally be motivated by personal attributes linked to a vocation for the public sphere, altruism, integrity and a desire to provide services to the population as a way of enabling or improving government service to the community. Furthermore, working for the State – but always in the service of society – implies understanding that this is the main entity, historically created by humanity, which can and should guide and direct its actions based on a long-term vision for national development, with macroeconomic, macrosocial and territorial perspectives as guides, as well as the production of social value in a non-monetary sense as a paradigm.
In this sense, boldness and courage are needed to block the process of capture and privatization of public funds that has been spreading throughout the Brazilian public administration, whether in the form of productivity bonuses or attorney fees, or through numerous bills and proposed constitutional amendments that advocate for the financial autonomy of certain organizations. If carried out, these trends will reduce what remains of the State's capacity and relative autonomy to act in favor of democracy, the republic and national development. It will be the end of the very idea of the State as a public sphere and agent of the positive transformation that Brazil so desperately needs.
Finally, it is important to emphasize that not all public bureaucracies fit into the predatory corporatism model discussed in this text. Many public servants perform their duties with integrity and dedication, genuinely seeking to serve the public interest and contribute to the well-being of society. These professionals play a fundamental role in the implementation of essential public policies, such as health, education, public safety, among others, often facing significant challenges without the privileges perceived by other categories.
To reinforce the public nature of state action and combat corporate capture of the state, several strategies can be employed. These include implementing recruitment processes to select individuals committed to public service and the common good, and improving transparency and accountability mechanisms. Strengthening civil society participation in decision-making processes and promoting a culture of ethics in the public sector are also crucial.
To combat predatory corporatism, in short, it is essential to foster a more inclusive and equitable dialogue between government and civil society, ensuring that other voices are heard and considered in decision-making processes.
*José Celso Cardoso Jr. He is a planning and research technician at IPEA and current Secretary of Human Resources Management at the Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services..
*Alexandre Gomide He is a planning and research technician at IPEA and current director of Advanced Studies at ENAP..
*Rafael Rodrigues Viegas is a postdoctoral fellow in Public Administration and Government at FGV.
Notes
[I] In addition to the definitions and bibliographical references present in the entries on corporatism contained in Public Policy Dictionary, edited by Geraldo Di Giovanni and Marco Aurélio Nogueira (Editora Unesp, 3rd edition, 2018), and Dictionary of 20th Century Social Thought, this edited by William Outhwaite and Tom Bottomore (Editora Zahar, 1996), see one of the classics on the subject in SCHMITTER, Philippe. Still the Century of Corporatism? The Review of Politics, vol. 36, no. 1, p. 85-131, 1974.
[ii] On the topic see NUNES, W.; TELES MENDES, J. The Salary Elite of the Federal Public Service: suggestions for a more efficient administrative reform. Public Management and Citizenship Notebooks, São Paulo, v. 26, n. 84, 2021. AND NUNES, W. The Salary Elite of the Federal Public Service: conceptual identification and empirical dimensioning. In CARDOSO JR., JC (org.). Bolsonaro/Guedes Administrative Reform: authoritarianism, fiscalism, privatization. Brasilia: Afipea, 2022.
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