O conceito normativo do Regime de Colaboração enquanto construção e ampliação de espaços públicos de direitos: mediações no percurso institucional da atuação do Prof. Dr. Neroaldo Pontes de Azevedo.

Abstract

The object of this study is the institutional interlocution that could turn viable a Collaboration Regime among the Spheres or Levels of Government − a constitutional clause aiming at organizing and developing all Brazilian educational systems: Municipal, State, Federal District and Federal Union, in a country with deep regional inequalities. The macro-structural aspects that constraint the definition of public policies are not underestimated, but we chose an approach that focuses on the contradictory and conflicting performances of a restricted number of people that take part in the proposition and management of educational public policies. The indefinite character of the Collaboration Regime is treated in the perspective of a possible construction and enlargement of the Public Sphere of Rights, as an interface of educational policy in its indissoluble relation to political life. Our subject-matter is situated in a field of tensions delineated by, and based on, the state of the art. What is the meaning of that Collaboration Regime for the proposition of democratic management of educational policies? How does it relate to the contents of democratic management thought in the light of the State/Society relation? We argue that one of the innovative institutional facts generated in the process of democratization of the Brazilian society is the performance of people striving to construct and enlarge the public spaces for proposing and managing public policies. The methodology is based on interpretative ethnography, using ideas of Geertz, Ricoeur, and Lakoff, and moves towards Habermasian tradition on the configurations of the public sphere, which is understood in the spirit of Habermas endeavour to widen the idea of rationality by constructing a discursive theory of rationality for politics and rights. The empirical target of our ethnographic investigation is Prof. Dr. Neroaldo Pontes de Azevedo s professional itinerary as an educational manager. His professional route from 1992 to 1996 as a Rector of the UFPB, and then as a Municipal Secretary of Education of João Pessoa (from 1996 to 2001) made it possible for him to earn a national projection through the presidency of Undime during a period of educational reform. The results of this investigation highlight the Collaboration Regime as a mechanism of reciprocal regulation of the performances of common and concurrent competences among the spheres of Government, supported by institutional interlocution. The silence on the Collaboration Regime points to the interlocution as something to which we should pay attention when we think about the contents of democratic management, in spite of the conceptual and empirical indefinite character of the constitutional clause under discussion.