This article seeks to understand the reasons for the persistence of corruption in the Brazilian federal government, despite strong public accounting and financial control systems in the country. More than two-thirds of the states in the world, including Brazil, face the challenge of plundering public finances by political, economic, and bureaucratic elites. In this context, the exclusive use of the dominant approach of economic theories for the structuring of public control systems is limited. It is more appropriate to consider corruption as a problem of collective action. Hence, the theoretical reference chosen includes Bourdieu’s theory of practice and Tocqueville’s and Ostrom’s collective action theories, as they have been understood respectively by Mungiu-Pippidi and Rothstein. The methodological strategy adopted is an exploratory analysis of the cases of contemporary day Brazil, based on the lessons learned from nineteenth-century Sweden, and Italy in the 1990s. The results indicated that overcoming systemic corruption requires more than control systems. It demands, at least, a trigger to disrupt the perverse social imbalance, institutional capacity to offer normative effectiveness and a cohesive and active civil society.

Th is article seeks to understand the reasons for the persistence of corruption in the Brazilian federal government, despite strong public accounting and fi nancial control systems in the country. More than two-thirds of the states in the world, including Brazil, face the challenge of plundering public fi nances by political, economic, and bureaucratic elites. In this context, the exclusive use of the dominant approach of economic theories for the structuring of public control systems is limited. It is more appropriate to consider corruption as a problem of collective action. Hence, the theoretical reference chosen includes Bourdieu's theory of practice and Tocqueville's and Ostrom's collective action theories, as they have been understood respectively by Mungiu-Pippidi and Rothstein. Th e methodological strategy adopted is an exploratory analysis of the cases of contemporary day Brazil, based on the lessons learned from nineteenth-century Sweden, and Italy in the 1990s. Th e results indicated that overcoming systemic corruption requires more than control systems. It demands, at least, a trigger to disrupt the perverse social imbalance, institutional capacity to off er normative eff ectiveness and a cohesive and active civil society.Análise de limites dos sistemas de contabilidade e controle para o enfretamento do problema da corrupção sistêmica no Brasil: lições dos casos da Suécia e da Itália.JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION | Rio de Janeiro 54(1):79-98, Jan. -Feb. 2020 RAP | Limits of Brazilian public accounting and control systems to address the systemic corruption problem: lessons from the Swedish and Italian cases 80 ser más apropiado buscar soluciones derivadas del enfoque de las teorías de acción colectiva. Él utiliza la teoría de la práctica de Bourdieu y las teorías de la acción colectiva de Tocqueville y Ostrom, conforme adoptadas por Mungiu-Pippidi y Rothstein, respectivamente. La estrategia metodológica es un análisis exploratorio del caso brasileño, a la luz de las lecciones de Suecia en el siglo XIX, e Italia en la década de 1990. Los resultados indican que superar la corrupción sistémica puede requerir más que establecer sistemas de contabilidad y de control fuerte. Es necesario, por lo mínimo, un gatillo que desestabilice el equilibrio social perverso existente, cierta capacidad institucional para conferir efectividad normativa y una sociedad civil activa y cohesiva.