Public sector inter-organizational challenges and strategies to address cross-cutting policy issues : The case of Brazil Without Extreme Poverty Plan

Inter-organizational coordination in the public sector has become a central concern for scholars and practitioners as governments are increasingly demanded to address complex and cross-cutting issues, such as poverty. From 2011 to 2014, the Brazilian government implemented an ambitious initiative to overcome ex-treme poverty in the country, Brazil without Extreme Poverty Plan. It sought to go beyond the income dimension of poverty to tackle non-monetary deprivations experienced by the poor, specifically lack of access to public services and lack of productive inclusive opportunities. In spite of its daring objectives and challenges, and unlike previous attempts to address multidimensional poverty in the Brazilian context, the initiative yielded a high level of output delivery. This research assesses how coordination among public sector organizations was produced within the initiative, by using three alternative theoretical modes of explanation of coordination processes - hierarchy, network and market. It also seeks to identify the incentives and the coordination instruments put in place to enable collaborative behaviour. To uncover these elements, an analysis of qualitative data collected through interviewees with key informants of the initiative’s leading organization and informants of partner organizations was undertaken, in addition of an extensive review of the policy’s secondary data. In doing so, the research reveals a complex interplay of sources of coordination capacity, in which authority, negotiation and trust played a pivotal role.