Tracy Beck Fenwick | The Australian National University (original) (raw)
Books by Tracy Beck Fenwick
Beyond Autonomy, 2021
Beyond Autonomy forces us to rethink the meaning of autonomy as a central organising pillar of fe... more Beyond Autonomy forces us to rethink the meaning of autonomy as a central organising pillar of federalism. Can federations exist beyond the autonomy realm designed to promote territorial self-governance and direct representation among various levels of government? How do governments of federal systems interact over the design and implementation of policy in highly topical areas such as security, where the optimal distribution of authority is blurred? Which mechanisms promote the compromise necessary in many of today’s democratic federal systems? How do newly emerging federations in Africa and Asia design federal institutions in order to decrease conflict while promoting national solidarity? How can federal systems protect the rights of non-territorial minorities such as many indigenous peoples?
https://brill.com/view/title/59464
With the goal of showing the effect of domestic factors on the performance of poverty alleviation... more With the goal of showing the effect of domestic factors on the performance of poverty alleviation strategies in Latin America, Tracy Beck Fenwick explores the origins and rise of conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) in the region, and then traces the politics and evolution of specific programs in Brazil and Argentina. Utilizing extensive field research and empirical analysis, Fenwick analyzes how federalism affects the ability of a national government to deliver CCTs.
One of Fenwick’s key findings is that broad institutional, structural, and political variables are more important in the success or failure of CCTs than the technical design of programs. Contrary to the mainstream interpretations of Brazilian federalism, her analysis shows that municipalities have contributed to the relative success of Bolsa Familia and its ability to be implemented territory-wide. Avoiding Governors probes the contrast with Argentina, where the structural, political, and fiscal incentives for national-local policy cooperation have not been adequate, at least this far, to sustain a CCT program that is conditional on human capital investments. She thus challenges the virtue of what is considered to be a mainly majoritarian democratic system.
By laying out the key factors that condition whether mayors either promote or undermine national policy objectives, Fenwick concludes that municipalities can either facilitate or block a national government’s ability to deliver targeted social policy goods and to pursue a poverty alleviation strategy. By distinguishing municipalities as separate actors, she presents a dynamic intergovernmental relationship; indeed, she identifies a power struggle between multiple levels of government and their electorates, not just a dichotomously framed two-level game of national versus subnational.
“Tracy Beck Fenwick makes a compelling argument about the conditions that either facilitate or retard one of the most important social policy innovations of the contemporary period, which is the turn toward the use of conditional cash transfers to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Her core interest in how different levels of government interact in the provision of social services has become a question of great import. With respect to the recent literatures on decentralization, federalism, and subnational governments in Latin America more generally, Avoiding Governors is by far the most sophisticated attempt yet to integrate municipal governments more directly into the theoretical frameworks we use to study intergovernmental relations.” — Kent Eaton, professor of politics, University of California, Santa Cruz
Papers by Tracy Beck Fenwick
Cuadernos Manuel Giménez Abad
Revisiting Unity and Diversity in Federal Countries, 2018
Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research
Global Social Policy, Sep 7, 2022
Policy Studies, 2017
By drawing on the five Brazilian case studies presented in this special issue we propose five 'fa... more 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.
Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 2020
Throughout Latin American federations, programmatic welfare spending is increasingly nationally o... more Throughout Latin American federations, programmatic welfare spending is increasingly nationally oriented and bureaucratically delivered. By explaining the logic and the effects of combining two types of federal spending, discretionary and non-discretionary, this article uncovers an additional driver that contributes to understanding policymaking and its implementation not only in Argentina, but potentially in other robust federal systems such as Brazil, Canada, and the United States. Using original data on federal infrastructure and programmatic social welfare spending for the twenty-four provinces of Argentina between 2003 and 2015, we provide empirical evidence that both forms of spending penalize opposition districts and more populated urban provinces (regardless of partisan affinity), and thus undercut the ability of key governors to become future presidential challengers. This research suggests that presidents of territorially diverse federations with strong governors can utili...
Scholars have long studied the politics behind the distribution of discretionary grants and the c... more Scholars have long studied the politics behind the distribution of discretionary grants and the conditions under which incumbents choose to craft programmatic policies. In terms of what is often referred to as geographically targeted-spending, presidents tend to disproportionally favour allied territories when distributing discretionary funds. The established literature shows that voters are often targeted to support political parties via a top-down strategy of distribution, as well as subnational politicians in federal countries, who are often targeted with federal funds in order to favour support in congress or influence the legislative arena. We know the top-down provisioning of public funds to constituent units is a powerful tool available to presidents to either generate political loyalties or penalise political enemies.
2 The quality of democracy, then, depends on social democracy, on long-sustained policies of soci... more 2 The quality of democracy, then, depends on social democracy, on long-sustained policies of social protection and solidarity.-D. Rueschemeyer The central goal of this paper is to analyse from a functional perspective how federalism has impacted on the development and implementation of conditional cash transfer programs (noted hereafter as ―CCTs‖) designed to alleviate poverty in two Latin American federations, Brazil and Argentina. This specific issue area is recognised from a policy perspective as being nationally-oriented, and is increasingly conceived from a citizen rights-based framework.1 Each of these countries chose to adopt non-contributory social protection programs as a solution to visually growing poverty towards the end of the 1990s. The outcomes of the two most recent national social programs in Argentina and Brazil have been varied. Brazil‘s most recent national program, Bolsa Família, was very successful in terms of numbers, territory and social groups covered. By 20...
Publius: The Journal of Federalism
The Covid-19 pandemic produced more significant immediate intergovernmental conflict in the U.S. ... more The Covid-19 pandemic produced more significant immediate intergovernmental conflict in the U.S. than in Australia and Canada. This article considers three variables for this cross-national divergence: presidentialism versus parliamentarism; vertical party integration; and strength of intergovernmental arrangements. We find that the U.S. presidential system, contrary to parliamentarism in Canada and Australia, provided an opportunity for a populist outsider skeptical of experts to win the presidency and pursue a personalized style that favored intergovernmental conflict in times of crisis. Then, the intergovernmental conflict-inducing effect of the Trump presidency during the pandemic was compounded by the vertical integration of political parties, which provided incentives for the President to criticize Democratic governors and vice-versa. Third, the virtual absence of any structure for intergovernmental relations in the United States meant that, unlike Australian states and Canadi...
Policy and Society
The concept of instrument constituency provides students of public policy with a new analytical t... more 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.
Development Policy Review, 2017
The changes in Brazil's pro-poor strategy from the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silv... more The changes in Brazil's 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 government's 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.
Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 2020
Throughout Latin American federations, programmatic welfare spending is increasingly nationally o... more Throughout Latin American federations, programmatic welfare spending is increasingly nationally oriented and bureaucratically delivered. By explaining the logic and the effects of combining two types of federal spending, discretionary and non-discretionary, this article uncovers an additional driver that contributes to understanding policymaking and its implementation not only in Argentina, but potentially in other robust federal systems such as Brazil, Canada, and the United States. Using original data on federal infrastructure and programmatic social welfare spending for the twenty-four provinces of Argentina between 2003 and 2015, we provide empirical evidence that both forms of spending penalize opposition districts and more populated urban provinces (regardless of partisan affinity), and thus undercut the ability of key governors to become future presidential challengers. This research suggests that presidents of territorially diverse federations with strong governors can utilize the dual-punishment spending strategy to alter the balance of power, reinforcing the dominance of the center.
The concept of instrument constituency provides students of public policy with a new analytical t... more 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.
The changes in Brazil’s pro-poor strategy from the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to tha... more The changes in Brazil’s 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, semistructured
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 government’s 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.
Revisiting Unity and Diversity in Federal Countries Changing Concepts, Reform Proposals and New Institutional Realities, 2018
In this chapter, I want to highlight that the case of Brazilian federalism challenges the concept... more In this chapter, I want to highlight that the case of Brazilian federalism challenges the conceptualization of "unity" and "diversity" in democratic federal systems. In order to do so the chapter will broadly consider whether the politics of federalism over the country's major historical waves, up until the contemporary period, promoted unity and if so how, and for whom. Inevitably, there will be some necessary oversimplification with using such broadly defined categories over such an extensive time period. It is well established that federalism as a system of democratic governance is both paradoxical in its desired goals, to simultaneously "unite" and "divide" a political community, and complex in how it is "designed" to achieve these ends. Applying Elazar's concepts to Brazil is difficult because of the starting premise of his claims. First, Elazar's interpretation of the "federal idea" is that its political relationships are established by "communities of equals on an equal basis by pacts reflecting agreement and consent" (Elazar 1994, 13). Therefore, although the idea of "federal liberty" throughout Elazar's works precedes that of "equality", an underemphasized contextual condition for some sort of basic equality underlies political relationships within a federation. Stated simply, 'relative' equality leads to liberty, liberty leads to diversity, and the basis of a unified political community is acceptance of these premises.
In order to identify the causal mechanisms (rational learning, adaptation, and innovation) drivin... more In order to identify the causal mechanisms (rational learning,
adaptation, and innovation) driving changes in the area of antipoverty
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.
By drawing on the five Brazilian case studies presented in this special issue, we propose five ‘f... more 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.
Beyond Autonomy, 2021
Beyond Autonomy forces us to rethink the meaning of autonomy as a central organising pillar of fe... more Beyond Autonomy forces us to rethink the meaning of autonomy as a central organising pillar of federalism. Can federations exist beyond the autonomy realm designed to promote territorial self-governance and direct representation among various levels of government? How do governments of federal systems interact over the design and implementation of policy in highly topical areas such as security, where the optimal distribution of authority is blurred? Which mechanisms promote the compromise necessary in many of today’s democratic federal systems? How do newly emerging federations in Africa and Asia design federal institutions in order to decrease conflict while promoting national solidarity? How can federal systems protect the rights of non-territorial minorities such as many indigenous peoples?
https://brill.com/view/title/59464
With the goal of showing the effect of domestic factors on the performance of poverty alleviation... more With the goal of showing the effect of domestic factors on the performance of poverty alleviation strategies in Latin America, Tracy Beck Fenwick explores the origins and rise of conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) in the region, and then traces the politics and evolution of specific programs in Brazil and Argentina. Utilizing extensive field research and empirical analysis, Fenwick analyzes how federalism affects the ability of a national government to deliver CCTs.
One of Fenwick’s key findings is that broad institutional, structural, and political variables are more important in the success or failure of CCTs than the technical design of programs. Contrary to the mainstream interpretations of Brazilian federalism, her analysis shows that municipalities have contributed to the relative success of Bolsa Familia and its ability to be implemented territory-wide. Avoiding Governors probes the contrast with Argentina, where the structural, political, and fiscal incentives for national-local policy cooperation have not been adequate, at least this far, to sustain a CCT program that is conditional on human capital investments. She thus challenges the virtue of what is considered to be a mainly majoritarian democratic system.
By laying out the key factors that condition whether mayors either promote or undermine national policy objectives, Fenwick concludes that municipalities can either facilitate or block a national government’s ability to deliver targeted social policy goods and to pursue a poverty alleviation strategy. By distinguishing municipalities as separate actors, she presents a dynamic intergovernmental relationship; indeed, she identifies a power struggle between multiple levels of government and their electorates, not just a dichotomously framed two-level game of national versus subnational.
“Tracy Beck Fenwick makes a compelling argument about the conditions that either facilitate or retard one of the most important social policy innovations of the contemporary period, which is the turn toward the use of conditional cash transfers to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Her core interest in how different levels of government interact in the provision of social services has become a question of great import. With respect to the recent literatures on decentralization, federalism, and subnational governments in Latin America more generally, Avoiding Governors is by far the most sophisticated attempt yet to integrate municipal governments more directly into the theoretical frameworks we use to study intergovernmental relations.” — Kent Eaton, professor of politics, University of California, Santa Cruz
Cuadernos Manuel Giménez Abad
Revisiting Unity and Diversity in Federal Countries, 2018
Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research
Global Social Policy, Sep 7, 2022
Policy Studies, 2017
By drawing on the five Brazilian case studies presented in this special issue we propose five 'fa... more 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.
Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 2020
Throughout Latin American federations, programmatic welfare spending is increasingly nationally o... more Throughout Latin American federations, programmatic welfare spending is increasingly nationally oriented and bureaucratically delivered. By explaining the logic and the effects of combining two types of federal spending, discretionary and non-discretionary, this article uncovers an additional driver that contributes to understanding policymaking and its implementation not only in Argentina, but potentially in other robust federal systems such as Brazil, Canada, and the United States. Using original data on federal infrastructure and programmatic social welfare spending for the twenty-four provinces of Argentina between 2003 and 2015, we provide empirical evidence that both forms of spending penalize opposition districts and more populated urban provinces (regardless of partisan affinity), and thus undercut the ability of key governors to become future presidential challengers. This research suggests that presidents of territorially diverse federations with strong governors can utili...
Scholars have long studied the politics behind the distribution of discretionary grants and the c... more Scholars have long studied the politics behind the distribution of discretionary grants and the conditions under which incumbents choose to craft programmatic policies. In terms of what is often referred to as geographically targeted-spending, presidents tend to disproportionally favour allied territories when distributing discretionary funds. The established literature shows that voters are often targeted to support political parties via a top-down strategy of distribution, as well as subnational politicians in federal countries, who are often targeted with federal funds in order to favour support in congress or influence the legislative arena. We know the top-down provisioning of public funds to constituent units is a powerful tool available to presidents to either generate political loyalties or penalise political enemies.
2 The quality of democracy, then, depends on social democracy, on long-sustained policies of soci... more 2 The quality of democracy, then, depends on social democracy, on long-sustained policies of social protection and solidarity.-D. Rueschemeyer The central goal of this paper is to analyse from a functional perspective how federalism has impacted on the development and implementation of conditional cash transfer programs (noted hereafter as ―CCTs‖) designed to alleviate poverty in two Latin American federations, Brazil and Argentina. This specific issue area is recognised from a policy perspective as being nationally-oriented, and is increasingly conceived from a citizen rights-based framework.1 Each of these countries chose to adopt non-contributory social protection programs as a solution to visually growing poverty towards the end of the 1990s. The outcomes of the two most recent national social programs in Argentina and Brazil have been varied. Brazil‘s most recent national program, Bolsa Família, was very successful in terms of numbers, territory and social groups covered. By 20...
Publius: The Journal of Federalism
The Covid-19 pandemic produced more significant immediate intergovernmental conflict in the U.S. ... more The Covid-19 pandemic produced more significant immediate intergovernmental conflict in the U.S. than in Australia and Canada. This article considers three variables for this cross-national divergence: presidentialism versus parliamentarism; vertical party integration; and strength of intergovernmental arrangements. We find that the U.S. presidential system, contrary to parliamentarism in Canada and Australia, provided an opportunity for a populist outsider skeptical of experts to win the presidency and pursue a personalized style that favored intergovernmental conflict in times of crisis. Then, the intergovernmental conflict-inducing effect of the Trump presidency during the pandemic was compounded by the vertical integration of political parties, which provided incentives for the President to criticize Democratic governors and vice-versa. Third, the virtual absence of any structure for intergovernmental relations in the United States meant that, unlike Australian states and Canadi...
Policy and Society
The concept of instrument constituency provides students of public policy with a new analytical t... more 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.
Development Policy Review, 2017
The changes in Brazil's pro-poor strategy from the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silv... more The changes in Brazil's 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 government's 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.
Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 2020
Throughout Latin American federations, programmatic welfare spending is increasingly nationally o... more Throughout Latin American federations, programmatic welfare spending is increasingly nationally oriented and bureaucratically delivered. By explaining the logic and the effects of combining two types of federal spending, discretionary and non-discretionary, this article uncovers an additional driver that contributes to understanding policymaking and its implementation not only in Argentina, but potentially in other robust federal systems such as Brazil, Canada, and the United States. Using original data on federal infrastructure and programmatic social welfare spending for the twenty-four provinces of Argentina between 2003 and 2015, we provide empirical evidence that both forms of spending penalize opposition districts and more populated urban provinces (regardless of partisan affinity), and thus undercut the ability of key governors to become future presidential challengers. This research suggests that presidents of territorially diverse federations with strong governors can utilize the dual-punishment spending strategy to alter the balance of power, reinforcing the dominance of the center.
The concept of instrument constituency provides students of public policy with a new analytical t... more 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.
The changes in Brazil’s pro-poor strategy from the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to tha... more The changes in Brazil’s 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, semistructured
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 government’s 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.
Revisiting Unity and Diversity in Federal Countries Changing Concepts, Reform Proposals and New Institutional Realities, 2018
In this chapter, I want to highlight that the case of Brazilian federalism challenges the concept... more In this chapter, I want to highlight that the case of Brazilian federalism challenges the conceptualization of "unity" and "diversity" in democratic federal systems. In order to do so the chapter will broadly consider whether the politics of federalism over the country's major historical waves, up until the contemporary period, promoted unity and if so how, and for whom. Inevitably, there will be some necessary oversimplification with using such broadly defined categories over such an extensive time period. It is well established that federalism as a system of democratic governance is both paradoxical in its desired goals, to simultaneously "unite" and "divide" a political community, and complex in how it is "designed" to achieve these ends. Applying Elazar's concepts to Brazil is difficult because of the starting premise of his claims. First, Elazar's interpretation of the "federal idea" is that its political relationships are established by "communities of equals on an equal basis by pacts reflecting agreement and consent" (Elazar 1994, 13). Therefore, although the idea of "federal liberty" throughout Elazar's works precedes that of "equality", an underemphasized contextual condition for some sort of basic equality underlies political relationships within a federation. Stated simply, 'relative' equality leads to liberty, liberty leads to diversity, and the basis of a unified political community is acceptance of these premises.
In order to identify the causal mechanisms (rational learning, adaptation, and innovation) drivin... more In order to identify the causal mechanisms (rational learning,
adaptation, and innovation) driving changes in the area of antipoverty
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.
By drawing on the five Brazilian case studies presented in this special issue, we propose five ‘f... more 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.
Book Review in Journal of Latin American Studies
Competitive federalism has the potential to produce a "race to the top" in vaccination roll-outs.... more Competitive federalism has the potential to produce a "race to the top" in vaccination roll-outs. This has been witnessed in both Canada, and the United States, where public health decisions for administering the vaccines is left to their states, provinces, and territories. In both of these federal countries, like Australia, it is the federal government who is responsible for both procuring, paying for, and supplying vaccines, but unlike Australia, not in administering them. Compared to all of the OECD federal democracies, Australia is last with 7.09 per cent total coverage, with the U.S. leading at 47 per cent, and Mexico above Australia at 15 per cent. European federations are hovering around 30 per cent. So why do Australian politicians, the media, and a good chunk of the public keep scapegoating federalism?
Op-ed about 2015 Argentinian elections