New Public Management and the Brazilian food control system

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the influence of New Public Management (NPM) on the administrative structure of Brazil’s food control system, investigating its organization at both federal and state levels, as well as the contexts and processes that led to its current configuration. The analysis is grounded in theoretical frameworks related to bureaucracy, state administrative reforms, public management, regulation, and institutional isomorphism. This is a descriptive study based on documentary research and content analysis of bibliographic sources. The results show that, at the federal level, the Secretariat of Agricultural Defense remained under direct administration, while the Secretariat of Sanitary Surveillance was transformed into a regulatory agency - Anvisa. At the state level, sanitary surveillance largely remained under direct administration (81%), whereas agricultural defense followed the opposite trend, with 81% of agencies under indirect administration, including the creation of 15 executive agencies, indicating the absence of mimetic institutional isomorphism with federal models. The findings suggest that the creation of regulatory and executive agencies reflects the influence of NPM on the Brazilian food control system.