Policy Diffusion in Brazil and the USA: Process, Actors and Institutions.

• In Event: Processos doméstico e internacional de Difusão de Políticas: EUA, Brasil e América Latina Comparados

Abstract

This paper analyzes the politics of policy diffusion in Brazil and the USA. The study is a first attempt to compare two nations and to go beyond patterns of adoption explained as geographic clustering, by exploring the attributes of the policies in terms of institutional arrangements - shared power, rules, effective oversight. It focuses mainly on the adoption of a mix of public policies by state and federal governments between 1990 and 2012. The literature has focused the role of internal and external determinants to explain the phenomena of dissemination of innovations. These studies have shown many important aspects like the relevance of political competition, ideology, social networks, levels of socioeconomic development and neighborhood effect. Policy diffusion, however, is also closely associated with an institutional capacity problem because it requires the implementation of rules to take place. With a few exceptions, much less work has been done on the effect of institutional designs and formal rules concerning how political actors change their actions over time - a decision on whether to adopt or reject a policy. In this paper, I propose to explore comparatively the dilemmas faced by political actors to adopt new policies in highly decentralized federations. How many policies have spread between the american and brazilian states? Do rules matter (coordinated versus uncoordinated process)? Does government capacity determine levels of adoption between states of each country? Why are the american states more emulative among themselves than the brazilian states? To answer these questions I describe the political and institutional mechanisms that drives diffusion in two countries. I also use an event history analysis to test statistically the impact of internal and external factors on policy diffusion. To control and to adjust the comparison the analysis covers the biggest states in terms of economic development and size of population.

Author

• Denilson B Coelho, Universidade de Brasília