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17212 results in Latin American government, politics and policy

Page 329 of 861

  • 5 - Conditional Cash Transfers in Argentina and Brazil

  • Sara Niedzwiecki, University of California, Santa Cruz
  • Book:
    Uneven Social Policies
    Published online:
    17 August 2018
    Print publication:
    06 September 2018, pp 118-159

  • Summary

    This chapter analyzes the mechanisms that shape the successful implementation of non-contributory cash transfers in Argentina and Brazil, policies for which government responsibility (or “attribution of responsibility”) is clear. For these types of policies, political alignments matter for their implementation. When recipients can identify the national government as the source of a popular policy, and therefore potentially reward it in the elections, opposition subnational units will hinder the policy’s implementation and aligned subnational units will facilitate it. In addition, territorial infrastructure –in the form of subnational state institutions and their collaboration with civil society – also contributes to the implementation of these CCTs. Finally, positive policy legacies can enhance the implementation of CCTs, such as the existence of previous national or subnational policies that automatically transfer recipients to the new policy or that prepare local institutions by providing similar conditionalities. The focus of this chapter is the implementation of Argentina’s Asignación Universal por Hijo (Asignación or Universal Child Allowance) and Brazil’s Bolsa Família (Family Allowance).

  • 4 - Subnational Statistical Analysis

  • Sara Niedzwiecki, University of California, Santa Cruz
  • Book:
    Uneven Social Policies
    Published online:
    17 August 2018
    Print publication:
    06 September 2018, pp 82-117

  • Summary

    This chapter quantitatively analyzes the factors that shape social policy implementation across states in Brazil and provinces in Argentina over time. These include political alignments, policy legacies, and territorial infrastructure. It tests the effects of these variables on social policy implementation in four different policies: two conditional cash transfers and two health policies in Argentina and Brazil. While recipients of the conditional cash transfers can generally attribute them to the federal government, recipients of the health policies tend not to identify who is responsible for the service. Therefore, political alignments are only significant in the cash transfers in each country. Additionally, having strong territorial infrastructure allows the state to successfully implement policies. Finally, policy legacies can hinder the implementation of new policies when strong interests from previous policies are contrary to the current one. The regression models are Prais Winsten regressions (panel corrected standard errors and first order autoregressive corrections) that include a number of robustness checks to rule out multicollinearity and influential outliers driving the overall results.

  • 1 - Politics of Social Policy in Decentralized Countries

  • Sara Niedzwiecki, University of California, Santa Cruz
  • Book:
    Uneven Social Policies
    Published online:
    17 August 2018
    Print publication:
    06 September 2018, pp 1-26

  • Summary

    Broadly targeted and patronage-free social policies in Latin America have the potential to promote the well-being of a given population. Yet in reality, national policies are only partially implemented in subnational units. As a result, their transformative potential has been limited. While a considerable literature has focused on the development of welfare states and the challenges of decentralization, far fewer scholars have studied variation in the actual implementation of policies. This is paramount because it connects the design of policies to their socio-economic outcomes. Existing approaches shed light on the reasons behind policy choices but are less equipped to explain why some policies are implemented better than others, why this variation is particularly relevant within countries, and why some policies deliver votes to incumbent governments while others do not. On the latter, while there are a number of studies on the role of clientelistic distribution of policies, it is crucial to analyze a less studied topic – the political determinants of patronage-free policy implementation. The main contribution of Uneven Social Policies is to account for subnational variation in social policy implementation through a combination of political motivations and capacity across multiple territorial levels within countries.

  • 2 - Explaining Social Policy Implementation

  • Sara Niedzwiecki, University of California, Santa Cruz
  • Book:
    Uneven Social Policies
    Published online:
    17 August 2018
    Print publication:
    06 September 2018, pp 27-50

  • Summary

    Chapter 2 lays out the theoretical framework. It identifies the importance of four variables—attribution of responsibility, political alignments, territorial infrastructure, and policy legacies—to social policy implementation. As a first step it disaggregates social policies into two types: those in which attribution of responsibility is blurred, and those in which attribution of responsibility is clear. For the latter, the national government can potentially gain electorally and therefore multilevel political alignments matter. Governors of sub-national units that are not aligned with the national government have incentives to obstruct the implementation of this type of policies. Finally, it addresses the ways that policy legacies and territorial infrastructure affect the implementation of national social policies. Policy legacies enhance the implementation of social policies when previous processes and empowered actors’ interests at the different subnational levels are compatible with the new policy. Conversely, entrenched interests in previous policies that are contrary to the current one will obstruct its implementation. Additionally, having capable institutions facilitates policy implementation. Territorial infrastructure includes subnational state institutions and their relationship to civil society.

Page 329 of 861