The state of the art of institutional capacity: a scoping review of the literature in Portuguese

Abstract Government institutional capacity is generally understood as the set of skills observed in governmental institutions, which are necessary to achieve public goals. However, there are numerous conceptualizations in the literature. This study aimed to breakdown institutional capacity, into its constitutive dimensions. The search for proxies active in the Brazilian context and that empirically allow measuring the operationalization of institutional capacity took place after an extensive literature review from three perspectives: a) analysis of the network of authors, identifying the main researchers exploring the topic of institutional capacity, b) a descending hierarchical classification technique aimed to distinguish the classes (if any) that represent distinct forms of discourse on the concept of institutional capacity, and c) the word tree technique, which identified connections between the keyword institutional capacity, and the entire textual corpus. We conclude that it is possible to advance empirically in studies on institutional capacity by examining the government’s fiscal, administrative, and political dimensions.