Is local planning more efficient? An analysis of 14 small municipalities from Sergipe

This study aims to investigate the framework of local planning in municipalities located in Sergipe having up to 20 thousand inhabitants. Such municipalities represent 70% of the Brazilian and Sergipian municipalities. They face tasks arising from autonomy vested by the new institutional / legal demands as well as the shift of the planning focus from the national to the local sphere. In the first section, the reasons for such a shift are examined. This section also discusses planning at the local level, considering theoretical reasons which presume more efficiency in local expenditures. The second section describes the methodological features of the paper. The findings from this study are based on field research and a cluster analysis conducted by the authors. The third section presents and discusses these results, which confirm our hypothesis of poor planning of most of these subspaces.

planning; efficiency; small municipalities; cluster analysis; State of Sergipe (Brazil)