Why do some policies diffuse faster and to more countries than others? That is the core question of my dissertation. The literature analyzes strong cases of diffusion almost exclusively, neglecting slower cases with a small number of adoptions. This collective selection bias led to an oversight of domestic factors that might hinder diffusion. My work looks directly at the role of chief executives in adopting or rejecting policy models from abroad.
The dissertation builds on my expertise in Latin America to follow the different diffusion processes of three relevant policies in the region. Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) are a stunning case of fast diffusion. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) diffused widely but at a slower pace. Finally, electronic voting machines (EVMs) failed to diffuse to more than a handful of countries, despite the innovation’s promising results in Brazil. Archival data from eighteen countries shows that presidents used decree powers to single-handedly enact CCTs and rushed bureaucrats to implement the program quickly. Regarding PPPs, presidents initiated the bills but let Congress and bureaucrats work on the policy in their own time. Finally, for EVMs, presidents applied their powers to veto the policy and even stall its implementation by controlling the budget whenever possible.
During fieldwork in Colombia and Argentina, I collected interviews to understand the reasoning behind the executive’s behavior. In both countries, presidents wanted CCTs because they expected the policy to boost their popularity. PPPs did not generate the same expectation, and therefore there was no interest in hasting their adoptions. Finally, presidents stalled the adoption of EVMs for fear that changes in elections could reduce their electoral prospects in the future.
In the early months of 2020, governments faced the rapid spread of COVID-19. To navigate the storm of conflicting information about the danger posed by this new disease, countries sought guidance about when and how to respond to it. We argue that the World Health Organization (WHO) played a central role in the diffusion of policies against COVID-19 by exercising leadership. We develop the concept of leadership as a diffusion mechanism to explain how the WHO influenced governments to close schools and workplaces and cancel public events within weeks, despite its lack of strong enforcement mechanisms. Results from five event-history models show the significance of the WHO’s pandemic declaration on March 11, 2020 that mobilized countries to adopt the measures recommended by the organization. However, that declaration did not affect the diffusion of policies that the WHO advised against adopting.
Conditional cash transfers (CCT) are a striking case of policy diffusion in Latin America. Almost all countries in the region adopted the model within one decade. While most theories of diffusion focus on the international transference of ideas, this article explains that surge of adoptions by analyzing presidents’ expectations. Out of all ideas transmitted into a country, only a few find their way into enactment and implementation, and the executive has a key role in selecting which ones. Policies expected to boost presidents’ popularity grab their attention. They rapidly enact and implement these models. A process-tracing analysis comparing CCTs and public-private partnerships (PPPs) shows that presidents fast-tracked the first hoping for an increase in popular support. Adoptions of PPPs, however, followed normal procedures and careful deliberations because the policy was not expected to quickly affect popularity – which, in the aggregate, leads to a slower diffusion wave.
Populist politicians surrounded by military allies are common in countries that have experienced democratic backsliding. Despite the recent wave of populism, the burgeoning literature on it has not devoted due attention to the populist-military relationship. This article analyses the Brazilian military’s re-appearance under President Jair Bolsonaro. Absent the usual institutional support bases on which Brazilian presidents rely, Bolsonaro has cultivated military support with resources and positions that allow officers expanded political power and privilege. An equilibrium held for the government’s first two years. Thereafter, growing reservations about propping up an increasingly unpopular president, especially by heeding orders that would threaten their professional integrity, put in question the future of the armed forces as a pillar of the Bolsonaro administration. At the same time, the military’s substantial expansion in government and state positions under Bolsonaro raises the specter of elevated military autonomy under future administrations.
The policy diffusion literature has focused on highly successful cases, leading to theories built around policies quickly adopted by many countries. This paper overcomes this selection bias by analyzing the slow diffusion of electronic voting machines (EVMs) compared to the widespread diffusion of voting from abroad (VFA). Both policies’ spread in Latin America reveals the centrality of presidents’ interests in adopting foreign models. Considerations about policies’ effects in domestic politics decisively motivate decisions to enact and implement these ideas. EVMs diffused slowly because most presidents feared the machines could reduce their prospects in future elections. VFA’s adoptions in almost all the region, on the other hand, were pushed by presidents who believed emigrant voters would favor them in the future. In-depth case studies in Argentina and Colombia provide further evidence of executives’ decision-making.
Racial minorities in Brazil would participate in more cultural activities than white people if they had the same conditions of income and education. When it comes to gender disparities, women and men participate in a similar number of activities while they do not have children. However, once they have children, men's participation increases while women's decreases. These findings resulted from my statistical analysis of a survey made in Brazil with 10,630 individuals in twelve cities. The research covered people's cultural habits and practices, with details about their preferences and motivations to join activities like reading, going to the movies and theatre, or even consuming media like TV, radio, and games. The public-funded research had important implications for cultural policy in the country.
(Click here to see the project's website with the data visualizations or download the book)