THE ROLE OF COMPLEMENTARITIES AND HIERARCHIES IN THE PROCESS OF INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE: INSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND THE ASSIMILATION OF STATE REFORMING IN THE 1990S

Abstract

Institutions play a key role in shaping and operating a model of economic development. In Brazil, from the 1930s to the present day, the executive branch's leadership and its wide margin of political discretion are a striking feature in the structuring and operation of the institutional environment related to development. The reforms of the 1990s, as an attempt to reconfigure a development model through intervention in the institutional environment, reproduce this striking feature. However, the political capacity to reformulate a development model undergoes a number of constraints. Among these constraints, the complex process of interaction and synthesis between the institutions introduced with the reform of the 1990s and those that had already consolidated and strengthened during the previous political-institutional trajectory is of crucial interest. We believe that, in the context of this discussion, examining the role of control institutions in a reform context can help to improve our understanding of institutional change mechanisms. What role could a relevant external control institution, such as the Brazilian Court of Audit (“Tribunal de Contas da União” - TCU), have played in the process of absorbing new institutions brought with the reformist agenda? In facing such questions, we will take as an object of empirical examination some of the TCU's responses - whether in the context of its administrative reorganization or in the exercise of its final activity - to certain institutional environment reforms between the second half of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s. We evaluate if the case examined presents the characteristics of a synthesis process, in the context of which we may discuss how complementarities and hierarchies can influence the assimilation of reforms in the institutional framework.