Resumo

The translation of the economic approaches is not enough to perceive all the features enrolled in the innovation applied to the public sector. The governments are worried not only about the efficiency or the economic results, but they need to conduct their proposes in an intricated context to deliver public value. It is related to the capacity of governments in transforming new ideas in value to society. In other terms, when the society perceives that the new practices are positive for improving public services, democratic relations, or education, health care, and security services.

The paper explores historical aspects of the countries for understanding their unique trajectories in terms of public innovation. There is a lack in the current study of public innovation, and it refers to the difficulty to understand how historical and local conditions is crucial to understand the capacity of governments to create and co-create solutions. We compare two cases in Brazil and Romania, aiming to illustrate the connection between innovation, modernization, and path-dependence. The paper focuses on innovation in public administration and the impacts of history on innovation.

Public innovation means the new practices adopted by governments, which become possible to improve processes, services, products, and public policies (Fuglsang & Ronning, 2015; Stewart-Weeks & Kastelle, 2015). However, most studies present innovation as something decontextualized of the historical, cultural, and material aspects. We explore Path-dependence (Pierson, 2000; Voicu, 2018), and the Actor-network Theory (Greener, 2002; Czaniawska, 2009; Latour, 2005) as a mean to extend the comprehension of innovation in the public sector, especially considering its specific contingencies.

We explore two cases of innovation in the public services education from Brazil and Romania and promote comparative analysis of the cases. One is the Brazilian Pathway School Program. The second is the Romanian School Bus Program. Both countries lived periods of transition, which we considered fruitful for historical analysis. We based on documents and the experiences of the authors about the histories.

The Romanian case goes in the opposite direction as the Brazilian one. Brazil is a federation, and the Pathway School Program proved to be a success 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 the local community and the central government. Both cases show how change can occur as a response to unmet public need. However, the two paths go in the opposite direction, as the outcome of the historical circumstances.

Even considering influences of the past episodes of non-democratic regimes in Brazil and the communism in Romania over the citizen engagement in public policies, especially in Romania the success of the case was dependent of the involvement of local citizens. The path-dependent approach is limited when it does not perceive the contingencies of local engagement in a country where civil liberty was suspended for 42 years. In Brazil, the curious situation was around the peculiar federation. The subnational states developed an extraordinarily economical and budgetary dependence of the Union.

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