Journal
LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY
Volume -, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1017/lap.2023.35
Keywords
bureaucracy; distributive politics; informality; land policy; cities
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This article examines how bureaucrats implement public policy in the distribution of land rights to informal settlements in Sao Paulo, Brazil, when faced with political intermediation. The study finds that bureaucrats adopt a twofold approach, documenting informal settlements and enacting eligibility criteria, and then managing and prioritizing beneficiaries based on political demands. They reconcile nonprogrammatic politics and policy rules by separating eligibility assessment from beneficiary selection.
How do bureaucrats implement public policy when faced with political intermediation? This article examines this issue in the distribution of land rights to informal settlements in the municipality of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Land regularization is a policy established over three decades, where politicians' requests for land titles to their constituencies play a relevant role. Based on interviews and documents, this study finds that bureaucrats adopt a twofold approach to regulate distribution: they document informal settlements, enacting eligibility criteria; then, they manage and prioritize beneficiaries, accommodating qualifying political demands. In this process, they enforce eligibility rules consistently across cases, constraining political intermediation to a rational scheme. Therefore, bureaucrats reconcile nonprogrammatic politics and policy rules by separating eligibility assessment from beneficiary selection. This paper bridges urban distributive politics and street-level bureaucracy literature by revealing that policy implementers may use technical expertise to curb political influence and negotiate conflicting interests and constraints.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available