LAYERING VERSUS DISPLACEMENT

Theories of Gradual Institutional Changes and Welfare Regime Transformation in Brazil and Mexico, 1980-2010

Resumo

The aim of this article is to analyze institutional similarities between social policies and broader welfare regimes across Brazil and Mexico. Specifically, the article examines trends and events of an approximately three-decade period (from around 1980 through 2010). Therefore, it assesses developments in Brazil through the bulk of Lula’s first two terms of office (2003-2010) and through the first two-thirds of the Felipe Calderón presidency (2006-2012). Departing from “gradual institutional change” (GIC) theories, I first argue that similarities across anti-poverty and other social policy arenas mask deeper long-range divergence across welfare regimes. Second, to identify such divergence, I recast the problem from one of “social policy reform” to a perspective of institutional change in broader welfare regimes from a longer-term perspective.  The results show a dominant mode of “institutional change by layering” in Brazil – addition and expansion of new rules layered onto old ones, as well as new rules introduced on top of and alongside old ones without the destruction or dismantling of existing public institutions - versus a dominant “institutional change by displacement” in Mexico – a logic of substitution whereby pre-existing rules of corporatist citizenship are displaced by new ones of market provision, individualism, and safety nets. Therefore, in Brazil the public role for social protection is heightened and the system of social protection expands in Brazil, while the state’s role is retrenched and diminished in Mexico, along with a greater reliance on market provision and forces across social policy arenas.