Tracy Beck Fenwick

Stuck between the past and the future: Conditional cash transfer programme development and policy feedbacks in Brazil and Argentina

Do policy feedbacks interact with transnational policy ideas? How do they impact domestic policy development? Using a qualitative research method based on a comparison of two poverty alleviation strategies in Latin America, this article asserts that in all likelihood, if a previously implemented policy initiative was ‘locked-in’ through domestic policy experimentation and resultant state-building and interest group policy effects, it will not easily be replaced by alternative, transnational policy ideas that appear on the radar screen of national policymakers at a later date. However, if transnational policy ideas and models can draw on or build upon already established ideational and symbolic beliefs, they can actually be used to further the motivations of key political actors and societal interests – here, diffusion opens up great reform opportunities and opens the door to further policy institutionalization.

How instrument constituencies shape policy transfer: a case study from Ghana

Abstract The concept of instrument constituency provides students of public policy with a new analytical tool for the analysis of policy change. In this article, we use the example of cash transfer programs to show how this concept also makes a direct contribution to the analysis of transnational policy transfer. More specifically, the analysis shows how, over the last dozen years, actors forming an instrument constituency promoted the diffusion of cash transfers as a policy instrument from Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa and, more specifically, from Brazil to Ghana. This case study of Ghana’s adoption of a cash transfer program is grounded in semi-structured, expert interviews conducted with both domestic and transnational actors. Overall, the analysis demonstrates how the concept of instrument constituencies can enrich the literature on policy transfer, a key source of policy change in both developed and developing countries.

Presidents and policy-making: has Brazil’s CCT-led anti-poverty agenda gone far enough?*

ABSTRACT In order to identify the causal mechanisms (rational learning, adaptation, and innovation) driving changes in the area of anti-poverty policy in Brazil, this article traces the micro-level decision-making processes across three presidents. It begins by laying out the politics of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in Brazil and presidential usage of this targeted social policy instrument since the 1990s. In contrast to previous presidents, President Dilma Rousseff’s decisions did not enable her rationally intended policy agenda. Why? The President him or herself is privileged as the central actor whose decision-making processes impact policy development and its subsequent performance. I will argue that prior to the most recent changes under Dilma, was the demise of CCTs being ‘good enough’ from a policy perspective. The major challenge for any president in Brazil remains low levels of political and societal consensus over the kind of social reforms required to end the intergenerational transmission of poverty in Brazil; a policy dilemma confounded by the absence of a single unifying institutional actor and the extent of power diffusion in Brazilian federalism.

Five faces of presidential governance: insights from policy-making in democratic Brazil

ABSTRACT By drawing on the five Brazilian case studies presented in this special issue, we propose five ‘faces’ of presidentialism as a guide for examining the role of president in the public policy process: face to the general public; face to the bureaucracy; face to the subnational executives; face to congressional coalitions; and face to the outside world. How effectively the president succeeds in formulating and implementing their public policy priorities depends on their ability to execute the roles of each of these faces. A president’s ability to successfully pursue their policy agenda is both constrained and facilitated by exogenous factors that impact the amount of attention, authority, and engagement that they are able to exert across the five faces they wear in the public policy process.

From CCTs to a social investment welfare state? Brazil's ‘new’ pro-poor strategy

The changes in Brazils pro‐poor strategy from the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to that of Dilma Roussef have received little analysis. Based on a qualitative research approach that includes media analysis, semi‐structured interviews with local level elites, NGO representatives and Brazilian policy experts, the central argument here is that, although it is true that this ‘new’ approach closely approximates a European‐style social investment agenda that goes beyond the policy intentions of Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs), in reality it continues to prioritize ‘expanding access to complementary services’ over improving the ‘quality’ of publicly provided services. Using the example of Brasil Carinhoso, one of the federal governments priority programmes within the Brasil Sem Miséria programme designed to be complementary to Bolsa Família, the article outlines the initial challenges facing this emerging agenda, along with its key political constraints.

Diffusion of Good Government: Social Sector Reforms in Brazil by Natasha Borges Sugiyama (review)

benefits of trials for past human rights violations. Skaar argues that whereas truth commissions bring only truth, trials bring both truth and justice. However, because of the aforementioned legal and political problems associated with those trials, the outcome might also be disappointing. As a former East German victim said after a transitional justice trial: “We wanted justice, but we got the rule of law.”