Organizações & Sociedade

The Trajectory of Accountability in Brazilian Public Administration: From Redemocratization to Democratic Backsliding during Bolsonaro’s Presidency

2025-09-20T01:12:05+00:00

This study aims to analyze the theoretical, conceptual, and institutional development of accountability in Brazil, from the period of redemocratization to the Bolsonaro administration. It is a theoretical essay that examines accountability from a public administration perspective, identifying legal and institutional advances that enabled the materialization of the concept in the following decades, and from a political science perspective, revisiting the theoretical-conceptual framework of democratic accountability, anchored in modern democratic theory, exploring its political dimension and its relationship with power dynamics within the Brazilian democratic context. The timeframe adopted spans from the 1990s, taking Campos’s work as a reference, through Bolsonaro’s presidency (2019-2022), in order to understand the extent to which this period aligns with the structural characteristics identified by Campos, and how it affected the advancement and consolidation of democratic accountability in Brazil. Although the national literature highlights persistent difficulties in implementing accountability in Brazilian public administration, over the years there has been a gradual evolution of the concept in legal, institutional, and societal terms, as democratic foundations were progressively restored. Bolsonaro’s presidency, however, represents a period marked by attempts to revert to the parameters initially described by Campos, such as authoritarianism and the delegitimization of institutions.

How Organizations Control Narratives in the Public Defamation Process in Cases of Human Rights Violations

2025-09-23T18:20:57+00:00

Violations of human rights and labor analogous to slavery remain serious problems in the private sector. When these scandals become public, a narrative dispute emerges between corporate communication efforts aimed at mitigating reputational damage and initiatives of denunciation, defamation, and boycott against the organizations involved. However, the online environment enables segments of the public to articulate defenses of these companies, even in the face of severe accusations. This study examines the influence of online narrative disputes on the normalization of cases of human rights violations. The research draws on Critical Document Analysis, employing inductive coding of organizational statements, open letters, news articles, and tweets about the scandal of labor analogous to slavery involving an outsourced company and three major Brazilian wineries. The wineries relied on mechanisms widely discussed in the literature, such as denial of the facts, outsourcing of responsibility, and, subsequently, attempts at reparation. The study argues that online narrative disputes contribute to the normalization of human rights violations by illustrating how organizational strategies shape the creation of narratives that seek to anonymize, relativize, selectively compare, and construct counter-narratives in defense of the organizations. Such strategies constitute a discursive mechanism aimed at neutralizing initiatives of denunciation, defamation, and boycott, thereby exerting control over the debate in the digital space. However, the tools mobilized by the companies’ defenders ultimately distort the public debate without effectively addressing the persistent and serious problem of human rights violations in business activities.

Alternative Food Networks: Characteristics and Dynamics that Define Alternativeness in the Academic Production

2025-08-25T14:58:08+00:00

This article analyzes the characteristics and dynamics that define alternative food networks (AFNs) as an alternative to the conventional food system. The relevance of the study lies in the growing importance of AFNs as transformative agents that challenge the hegemony of industrial agriculture and point to more equitable, sustainable, and integrated food systems. A systematic review of 106 articles indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus databases was conducted. The methodology involved searching for specific terms, reading the full texts, and creating a database for systematization and qualitative analysis. As a result, 34 characteristics attributed to AFNs were identified, with the ten most cited being: close relationships between actors; economic, social, and environmental concerns; an emphasis on location; differentiated and diverse organizational structures; education, conscious choice, and responsible consumption; shared values; a challenge to the dominant paradigm; activism and political awareness; and challenges to the maintenance and adaptability of AFNs and unconventional agricultural practices. The analysis of the results indicates that alternativeness is not a fixed attribute but rather a concept that is interpreted in various ways, reflecting the coexistence of different values, practices, and organizational structures. In this sense, the study systematically organizes these elements and the findings, offering a comprehensive view of the various ways in which alternativeness is conceived in AFNs. This broadens the theoretical understanding of the phenomenon and provides support for future investigations that wish to further the debate in different contexts.