| Popis: |
We compare two cases of innovation in public services in Brazil and Romania, aiming to illustrate the connection between innovation, modernization, and path-dependence. One case is the Brazilian Pathway School Program, and the second is the Romanian School Bus Program. Both countries experienced periods of transition, which we considered fruitful for historical analysis. We based our investigation on two comparative case studies, using secondary data and employing document analysis and previous researches’ reports. While Brazilian Pathway School Program proved to be a successful story of designing a centralized policy, Romania walked in the opposite direction, from a centralized state, under the communist rule, to a polity where innovation occurs at the intersection between local community and central government. In Romania, it would be difficult to perceive the contingencies of local engagement in a country where civil liberty was suspended for 42 years. In Brazil, the inquiry was connected to the atypical federation, where the subnational states developed an extraordinary economic and budgetary dependence on the Union. |
