This article looks into the explanatory dimensions of social services governance in São Paulo and Belo Horizonte. It considers the vertical axis of the interconnections between levels of government and the horizontal axis of interactions between state and non-state actors. We argue that it is necessary to advance in integrated explanations on how these multilevel interactions restructure local governance patterns over time in order to fill a gap in the literature on multilevel governance. Cases are compared based on the […]

This article analyzes the relationship between federative institutions and social policies in the new constitutional order in Argentina and Brazil. It draws on literature and data to describe two characteristics of federalism in both countries and relate this with the equitable advancement of policies such as education, health, and social assistance: jurisdictional centralization, which refers to the capacity of the central government to produce legislation about policy design; and fiscal federalism, concerned with the definition of revenues and social expenditure […]

Using a factor decomposition of the Gini coefficient, we measure the contribution to inequality of direct monetary income flows to and from the Brazilian State. The income flows from the State include public sector workers’ earnings, Social Security pensions, unemployment benefits, and Social Assistance transfers. The income flows to the State comprise direct taxes and employees’ social security contributions. Data come from the Brazilian POF 2008–09. We do not measure indirect contributions to inequality of subsidies granted to and taxation […]

This paper analyzes the construction of the social assistance policy at the federal level in Brazil over the last two decades. It focuses on the Federal Constitution of 1988 and subsequent infra-constitutional legislation, especially that enacted during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) administrations, which showed very different conceptions of social policy. For both administrations, we analyze the consequences of the institutional changes and legal framework introduced as well as the social policy ideas […]