Analytical capacity as a critical condition for responding to COVID-19 in Brazil

Natália Massaco Koga, Pedro Lucas, Pedro Arthur, Bruno Gontyjo do Couto and Marcos Luiz Vieira Soares

Policy and Society, 2023, vol. 42, issue 1, 117-130

Abstract: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic posed several challenges to the Brazilian health system, among them the general context of ambiguity and uncertainty and the conflicting positioning of the government in power concerning scientific advice resources. Different aspects can be analyzed to explore the dynamics of strengthening and resilience of the system. This paper focuses on its analytical capacity, examining how it was developed and recently challenged. The investigation employed survey data, analysis of official documents and newspaper articles, and in-depth interviews with specialists and federal bureaucrats. The research shows the magnitude and relevance of that dimension of policy capacity in the federal health system and how it was crucial to the resilience of the system in defining the directions of the fight against COVID-19 in Brazil, although scientific-based recommendations were rejected by political leaders.

Keywords: policy capacity; analytical capacity; COVID-19; evidence-based policymaking; Brazilian health system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/polsoc/puac028 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:polsoc:v:42:y:2023:i:1:p:117-130.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Policy and Society is currently edited by Daniel Béland, Giliberto Capano, Michael Howlett and M. Ramesh

More articles in Policy and Society from Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().