This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of variations in subnational policies and the factors that explain them. Some studies attribute these differences to the uneven distribution of state infrastructure and capacity at the subnational level, while others emphasize the role of policy legacies, actors, ideology, ideas, and networks to explain subnational policy variations. This study, analyses variations in policy changes in secondary education across Brazilian states and the factors that influenced them through a qualitative and comparative approach […]

Abstract Studies on the relation between decentralization reforms and the performance of governments and their policies have presented a myriad of theoretical developments but inconclusive results on the empirically verifiable effects of these propositions. Many of the reviews carried out thus far in this field merely criticize these propositions without proposing alternatives for analysis. This article presents a review of this debate in a very specific way: it selects the propositions that points towards the causal factors explaining government’s responsiveness […]