Call for papers: Public Planning in Latin America - models, capacities and experiences.

Encuentro Latinoamericano (ELA), a journal affiliated to the International Association for Political Science Students (IAPSS), invites the academic community to submit papers for evaluation and possible publication in the dossier "Public Planning in Latin America - models, capacities and experiences".

This thematic issue aims to bring together theoretical, methodological and empirical analyses on public planning in Latin America, understanding it as a political and technical function intended to guide present decisions towards desired futures. We are interested in how countries, subnational entities, and public organizations design, implement, and sustain strategic plans, what state capacities they mobilize, what governance mechanisms they use, how they navigate government transitions, and how they monitor the concrete results for society.

The dossier pays special attention to the interface among institutional design, political process and evidence. Public planning is considered an ecosystem that involves qualified social participation, coordination of actors, alignment with budgetary instruments, territorialization of actions, risk and crisis management, continuity strategies, futures literacy and prospective methods. Contributions discussing implementation challenges, ethical dilemmas, technological capabilities and the use of open data in measuring impacts are also welcome.

The suggested topics for the publication are:

• Institutional framework and governance: legal frameworks, coordinating bodies, councils, intersectoral and intergovernmental arrangements;
• State capacities and results-based management: planning, budgeting, data, monitoring and evaluation;
• Continuity and transition of government: mechanisms that preserve guidelines, goals and commitments;
• Foresight and futures literacy: scenarios, roadmaps, participatory methods, emerging technologies and responsible use of data;
• Territory and inequalities: subnational and sectoral analyses, with attention to distributive impacts;
• Risks, crises and resilience: strategies for dealing with uncertainty, climate change and critical events;
• Transparency and participation: qualified social engagement, control and accountability;
• Impact measurement: indicators, open data, reproducibility and counterfactual evaluation where applicable.

 

Manuscripts must be submitted through ELA’s website ( https://ela.iapss.org/index.php/journal/index ) by February 28, 2026. Papers in Portuguese, English, and Spanish are welcomed and all manuscripts will undergo a double-blind peer review process. Complete information on submission guidelines can be found at https://ela.iapss.org/index.php/journal/submissions.

 

The dossier is scheduled to be published in the first semester of 2026.

Organizers: Prof. Dr. Fernando de Souza Coelho (LabGov / University of São Paulo, Brazil) and Prof. MSc. Jerônimo Santos Lima (LabGov / University of São Paulo, Brazil).