The Periphery of Governance:

The Periphery of Governance: Why Public Policy Fails in Marginalized Economic Regions

The persistent underdevelopment of economic peripheries—such as the Brazilian Amazon—is widely framed as a technical dilemma: a byproduct of weak administrative capacity, bureaucratic silos, and poor policy design. However, treating the coordination failures of state agencies as mere operational flaws obscures a deeper structural reality. The fragmentation of public policy in peripheral regions is rooted in the political economy of capital accumulation and the ideological narratives that sustain it.

In the Brazilian Amazon, state-led regional development historically relies on three institutional pillars: Suframa (managing tax incentives and industrial development), Sudam (regional planning and development funds), and BASA (the regional development bank directing constitutional credit lines). Despite their theoretical complementarity, these entities operate in isolated, competing, and fragmented spheres.

This institutional misalignment is not an accident of administrative friction. It is a structural outcome produced by the Amazon’s position on the spatial margins of national and global capital reproduction.

Throughout history, dominant political and economic elites have constructed competing ideological narratives around the Amazon—alternating between viewing it as a resource-extraction frontier, a low-yield demographic void, or an untouchable ecological sanctuary. These narratives, embedded in the ideological superstructure of capital, systematically devalue state planning and public investment in peripheral areas. By framing regional development through the lens of short-term private accumulation or secondary budget allocations, the hegemonized core restricts the state's capacity to build long-term, sovereign, and integrated developmental strategies.

The consequence is a path-dependent institutional trap:

• Fiscally detached incentives operating without alignment to territorial planning;

• Credit allocation mechanisms that reinforce existing spatial concentration rather than reducing inequality;

• Bureaucratic silos that prevent data sharing, joint decision-making, and strategic synergy.

Overcoming these barriers requires moving beyond superficial administrative tweaks. Bridging the gap between fiscal incentives, spatial planning, and developmental credit demands a Second-Generation Integrated Governance Framework. Such an architecture must unify data infrastructure, align strategic planning agendas, and deploy cross-agency funding mechanisms to counter peripheral reproduction.

To build sustainable and equitable economic futures in marginalized regions, public policy research must bridge Critical Political Economy with Policy Design. Only by dismantling the ideological assumptions that marginalize peripheral space can we construct shared governance models capable of steering structural transformation.