O planejamento como subsistema subfuncional da política: uma observação luhmanniana heterodoxa

Abstract

The long-lasting or even permanent crisis of governmental planning in the New Republic can be considered a sociological triviality. In parallel, planning is prescribed for the Brazilian State to face growing social complexity, but it is uncommon to describe the complexity of planning itself. In light of this, starting from the heterodoxic Luhmannian approach of Josep Vidal, this research investigates an original, neosystemic sociological answer to the question about how governmental planning operates communicatively. The general objective is to describe

governmental planning as a subfunctional subsystem of politics, i.e., of the political- administrative functional system. The specific objectives are: (i) to describe the autopoiesis of

governmental planning; (ii) to describe the typical binary code, programs and communication medium of the subsystem of governmental planning; and (iii) to describe the subfunction of the subsystem of governmental planning in reference to the function of the political-administrative

system. The research is qualitative, exploratory and descriptive, eminently conceptual- theoretical, yet inspired by a specific empirical milieu. The construction of the theoretical

framework proposes a rereading of the development of the concept of planning in Niklas Luhmann’s work, also arguing that the mature Luhmann, in principle, and relevant neosystemic authors, in practice, admit the availability of the form of (sub)functional differentiation for new differentiations inside functional systems. The research’s methodological nucleus integrates: (a) functional analysis; (b) positive heuristics; and (c) second-order observation. Functional analysis formulates the question about how governmental planning operates communicatively in terms of a comparative observation between, on the one hand, the social problematics addressed by planning and, on the other, its manifest and latent solutions. Heuristically, the transduction that planning can be observed with the form of a functional system allows, by analogy, the application of the same conceptual apparatus that Luhmann used to observe the most important functional systems. Second-order observation implies that to observe the “world of planning” one is required to observe how planning observes the “world”. Aligning itself with a circular logic of knowledge construction, such a research design is the cause and effect of a proto retrospective participant observation conducted by this researcher in view of his professional experience, from March 2017 to February 2023, as a career public servant in the ranks of the Federal System of Planning and Budgeting (Law 10.180/2001). This “native” experience has been, since March 2023, assessed and reconstructed in conceptual-theoretical triangulation with the research’s supervisor and the Research Group on Governance, Organizations, Public Policies and Accounting in Amazônia. The results corroborate the

possibility of describing governmental planning as a subfunctional subsystem of politics. Tentatively, the research works with: binary code “plan/improvisation”; typical programs, conforming to Brazil’s bureaucratic jargon, “national, federal, state and municipal plans, policies and strategies, ex ante and ex post public policy evaluations, regulatory impact analyses, regulatory result evaluations, spending reviews”, among others; communication medium “public policy”; and subfunction “constant actualization/updating of strategic expectations”.