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Statecraft, Social Policy, and Governance in Latin America
Author(s) -
MALLOY JAMES M.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.46
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1468-0491
pISSN - 0952-1895
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0491.1993.tb00145.x
Subject(s) - bureaucracy , latin americans , elite , corporate governance , authoritarianism , civil society , state (computer science) , public administration , political science , implosion , nexus (standard) , power (physics) , democracy , political economy , democratic governance , economic system , sociology , economics , politics , law , management , physics , plasma , algorithm , quantum mechanics , computer science , embedded system
This article develops an analytical framework designed to examine social policy as a strategic approach to issues of state‐society relations and the problem of governance in Latin America. It argues that in Latin America and particularly Brazil social protection policy flowed from initiating capacity concentrated originally in the state, and specifically in a techno‐bureaucratic elite connected to a strong executive. The policy, however, produced structures wherein initiative capacity was dispersed into a multiple of intermediate points at the nexus between the state and civil society. This in turn led to an immobilized dissipation of initiative cizpacity in this specific policy area which was symptomatic of, and reinforcing to, a generalized immobilism or power implosion that periodically has gripped these sociopolitical formations, producing shifts from formally democratic to authoritarian regimes and vice versa.