by Christopher L. Gibson
Scholars of the post-neoliberal state in Latin America commonly trace universal social policies to ruling left parties and deepened democracy. Yet, such accounts often overlook how subnational politics in highly decentralized democracies like Brazil’s can mediate this relationship. Examining such politics in the Brazilian município of Porto Alegre since 1988 suggests that structural constraints and competing programmatic agendas of Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT) governments complicated expansion of the public health sector. The município’s surprisingly modest delivery of such services is traceable to enduring deemphasis on critical dimensions of state building in this sector by several PT administrations and the integration of civil society actors into multiple participatory governance institutions with little power over this process. Even in such contexts, far-reaching participatory democratic institutions are no panacea for fulfilling the universal social policy ambitions of local post-neoliberal states that depend heavily upon high-level political appointees for their effectiveness.
