TY - JOUR
T1 - What explains equity-enhancing reforms under centre-right governments? Evidence from Brazil
AU - Alves, Daniel H.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2025.
PY - 2025/1/2
Y1 - 2025/1/2
N2 - Inequality levels declined across Latin America between the 1990s and 2010s, but research remains incipient on how equity-enhancing initiatives sometimes emerged in centre-right governments. This article checks which mechanisms enabled education reform and cash-transfer schemes during the PSDB-led administration in Brazil (1995–2002), considering electoral competition, left-wing legislative strength, social mobilisation, and coalition dynamics. By combining multiple data sources, it is possible to observe the president promoting his party’s electoral ‘brand’ and cultivating a large multiparty alliance as the equalising policies passed through Congress. Meanwhile, leftist legislators comprised a relatively weak group, and bottom-up pressures were almost non-existent. As validity checks, the study first engages with two alternative explanations: personal leadership and bureaucratic action. Second, it proposes applying competitive elections and cross-party cooperation as possible explanatory factors for the persistence of the two analysed redistributive programmes in the governments of the left-wing Workers’ Party (2003–2016) and the far-right Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022).
AB - Inequality levels declined across Latin America between the 1990s and 2010s, but research remains incipient on how equity-enhancing initiatives sometimes emerged in centre-right governments. This article checks which mechanisms enabled education reform and cash-transfer schemes during the PSDB-led administration in Brazil (1995–2002), considering electoral competition, left-wing legislative strength, social mobilisation, and coalition dynamics. By combining multiple data sources, it is possible to observe the president promoting his party’s electoral ‘brand’ and cultivating a large multiparty alliance as the equalising policies passed through Congress. Meanwhile, leftist legislators comprised a relatively weak group, and bottom-up pressures were almost non-existent. As validity checks, the study first engages with two alternative explanations: personal leadership and bureaucratic action. Second, it proposes applying competitive elections and cross-party cooperation as possible explanatory factors for the persistence of the two analysed redistributive programmes in the governments of the left-wing Workers’ Party (2003–2016) and the far-right Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022).
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85213983436&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/02633957241310577
DO - 10.1177/02633957241310577
M3 - Article
SN - 0263-3957
JO - POLITICS
JF - POLITICS
ER -
