Arranjos produtivos locais no Brasil e na Paraíba: uma análise teórico-conceitual, normativa e experiêncial de um modelo de desenvolvimento

Abstract

This dissertation approaches the subject of Local Productive Arrangements (LPAs) from three different dimensions: conceptual, normative and experience based. This research’s objective was to analyze the understanding of the concept of LPAs in Brazil (specially by RedeSist), in public policies implemented both in federal and state levels for the promotion of development, and in the perception of agents from institutions that take actions for the development of such arrangements in the Brazilian state of Paraíba. Three methods were used, complying to the fulfillment of the above objective. Initially, a literature review was made from scientific articles, books chapters and other publications relevant to the subject; then a documentary research based on various sources of secondary data, in order to understand some limitations and possibilities for the establishment of a national policy that is locally articulated for the support of LPAs; and, finally, a field study based in the scripted interview of seventeen agents from fourteen public and private institutions that take action for LPAs in the state of Paraíba. It was possible to verify the existence of plural understandings of the concept of LPA, in accordance to theoretical and empirical perspectives of those who discuss this theme. In the normative dimension it is possible to see that, even if the approach of LPAs have been initially considered as a guidance strategy for the policy of innovation, science and technology, it has behaved rather as an instrument of territorial policy, since the Ministry of Regional Development (previously Ministry of National Integration) holds the greater number of actions of this segment in federal level, in which the Route of National Integration mainly prevails as focus for the concept in state intervention level. As for the experience based dimension, the profiles taken by the concept of LPAs adjust to the forms established by institutional cultures and theoretical knowledge from public and private agents involved direct or indirectly with actions to promote LPAs. The institutions have identified LPAs from the demands of their economic actors for their services. Generally, although inserted in the context of both federal and state policies as an option for economic development, neither in the state of Paraíba nor in the federal level there are state or national policies that support the development of LPAs. There are only isolated actions that overlap and favor some sectors, leading to the maintenance of the tendency to reproduce the inequalities which the approach of LPAs should serve as a counter action in first place.