Entre expectativa e realidade: a regulamentação e implementação dos benefícios eventuais nos municípios de Sergipe

Abstract

The study analyzes the process of regulation and implementation of occasional benefits in municipalities of Sergipe. Since its establishment and recognition in the Organic Social Assistance Law, the regulation and operationalization of these benefits in Brazilian municipalities have faced challenges related to aspects of a trajectory linked to clientelism and welfare dependency. Despite the implementation of the Social Assistance Policy in the country, imprecision and uncertainty regarding the management and execution of these benefits persist. The normative vacuum of over a decade after its recognition is seen as a demonstration of the difficulty in ensuring the effectiveness of these benefits in the municipalities. The dissertation seeks to understand the regulation and provision of occasional benefits within the empirical reality of the state of Sergipe, under the concept of social rights, addressing the particularities of their implementation. The research method adopted was historical-dialectical materialism, observing the constitutive categories of the object with a view to analyzing the totality. This was an exploratory research with a quantitative-qualitative approach, using bibliographical and documentary sources through consultation with primary and secondary sources, as well as empirical research with professionals involved in the management of occasional benefits in 18 municipalities of Sergipe. To this end, the use of an online questionnaire administered via Google Forms was the chosen technique. In the studied municipal realities, progress is evident in the normative framework for occasional benefits; however, difficulties and contradictions persist in their implementation, whether in meeting demands competing with obligations of other sectoral policies, in the tightening of eligibility criteria, the volatility of service due to resource limitations, or, in some cases, the perpetuation of clientelist and welfare-dependent practices. It is concluded that this provision, with weak alignment to the perspective of ensuring rights within the Social Assistance Policy, produces negative effects on the affirmation of occasional benefits in Sergipe municipalities as a social protection right.