The School
The Graduate Program in Public Policy, Strategy, and Development, offered at the master and doctoral levels, in the context of the transformation of the role of the state and its politics, seeks to add to the theoretical and pragmatic renewal of development practice, while also keeping in mind the innovative strategies social actors and enterprises deploy.
The program aims to train students not only to identify priorities, gaps, and possibilities for interventions in public policy, but also to prepare them for effective strategic decision-making processes and work directed at institutional change and development issues. The teaching and research activities are committed to the cross fertilization of the dimensions and issues below.
Among the most significant moves in the first decade of the new millennium is the rupture of a consensus that in the early nineties had assured the supremacy of the pro-market agenda and the minimalist approach for state’s role. In such a way, new historical circumstances created unique opportunities to reopen a debate on a development model, able to answer to the challenges middle-income countries face before the inexorable process of globalization.
The SPIDER WEB’s intellectual field of action is grounded in this double challenge, both in theoretical studies as well as empirical research and comparative perspective. Through this perspective, which distinguishes the program, it hopes to advance knowledge in the underexplored area of the development and implementation of public policy capable of dealing with emerging countries’ contemporary issues, incapable of being separated from innovative development policies and compatible with changes in the international context.
SPIDER WEB SCHOOL
The SPIDER WEB is an initiative of the Graduate Program in Public Policies, Strategy and Development of the Institute of Economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (PPED/IE/UFRJ), in partnership with the National Institute of Science and Technology for Public Policies, Strategies and Development which it is part of INCT-PPED (http://inctpped.ie.ufrj.br). Other academic institutional partnerships belong to the network.
SPIDER WEB, as any PPED academic initiative, is open to graduate students and to civil servants interested in the knowledge produced. The School’s target audience, however, is mainly doctoral and post-doctoral students, from Brazil and abroad, Professors, other academics, public servants, policy makers and company managers interested in updating their understanding of theory that seek to contribute to the practical and theoretical renewal of development-oriented public action.
The SPIDER WEB School of Advanced Studies’ Goals
Main Objective:
To become a high-level program for teaching and research, with specifically the aim of creating a post-doctoral program:.
1.1 – That it be relevant to reflection on public policies and strategic decision-making processes related to development;
1.2 – That it contribute, through academic thinking, to the strengthening the Brazilian state’s strategic nucleus.
Specific Objectives:
1. Rethink academic curricula according to relevant theoretical approaches:
1.1 – Use concrete examples to think through challenges brought byvisions of the future;
1.2 – Evaluate the execution of more socially effective and politically responsible proposals.
2. Map Brazilian public policy issues that can directly benefit from innovative, theoretical reflection and from the challenges proposed by future visions or prospective:
2.1 – Emphasize the institutional matrix in comparative perspective;
2.2 – Emphasize the axes of innovation and sustainability (low carbon economy and energetic matrix), present in the proposal of disciplines to be taught.
3. Study specifically the Chinese model of development, as well as other models of emergent middle-income countries:
3.1 – Specific Objectives: Reconceive Brazil’s international insertion, as well as its inter-regional, bilateral and multilateral relations;
3.2 – Evaluate the outcome of a potential structure of international order that combines multipolarity and multilateralism;
SPIDER WEB was approuved by CAPES (Coordenação do Pessoal de Estudos Superiores) Edital 023/2006-CGCI/CAPES.
