Brazil Exporting Social Policies: From Local Innovation to a Global Model

Abstract

The importation of foreign models is part of Brazil’s institution building story, owing to its Portuguese colonisation and the influence of European countries and the United States. After the transition to democracy and the Constitution of 1988, the scenario began to change. The country developed social policy innovations that rose to a national scale when the Workers’ Party took office. These innovations started to spread globally, and international organisations began to recommend Brazilian social policies. Examples of Brazilian policies that have been transferred are the Family Allowance and the National School Feeding Programs. How has Brazil moved from importing foreign institutions to becoming a Southern country reference in terms of social policies? The main argument here is that Brazil, while building itself into a rising power, has developed new patterns of policy transfers that have so far been overlooked by the field literature. Through a process-tracing analysis of Brazil’s social policy diffusion, we have been able to identify different forces that facilitate these transfers, such as a quest for international legitimacy, the role of “policy ambassadors,” the joint efforts of various national institutions, Brazilians occupying positions in international organisations, and the creation of institutions designed for these policy transfers.

Brazil has diplomatic steroids. ¹

Foreign models are an important part of the Brazilian institution building story. In fact, the legacy of Portuguese colonisation, the presence of European countries until the early 1900s, and the later dominance of the United States have favoured the importation of Northern institutions. After the transition to democracy, the policy import scenario began to change when Brazil developed important social policies, both on a local and national level, that began to consolidate in the years following the New Constitution which was enacted in 1988. At the beginning of the new century, Brazil’s social policy innovations began to gain international attention. Moreover, the government used a strategy to export social policies, and international organisations such as the World Bank and the United Nations (UN) began to recommend Brazilian social policies to developing countries.

Examples of “Brazilian-style policies” that have been transferred to various countries in Latin America and Africa are Participatory Budgeting (PB), the Family Allowance Program (Bolsa Familia Program), and the National School Feeding Program (PNAE). This new scenario opens up empirical and theoretical questions associated with the study of policy diffusion. When did Brazil move from importing foreign institutions to becoming a reference for Southern countries in terms of social policies? How did this movement occur? Which individual, collective, and institutional actors were engaged in this process? What strategies have facilitated social policy transfers? How can empirical findings in the case of Brazil highlight overlooked issues regarding the policy transfer and diffusion literature? And how can we improve our understanding of the policy diffusion phenomenon by drawing on empirical evidence from this case?

The main argument of this article is that Brazil, while building itself into a rising power over the past two decades, has developed new patterns of policy transfers that have so far been overlooked by the literature. By analysing the engagement of the country in terms of the international diffusion of social policies, it is possible to identify various processes facilitating transfers. These involve a quest for international legitimacy, the role of “policy ambassadors,” the joint efforts of various national institutions, proactive engagement regarding transfers via development co-operation, Brazilians occupying positions in international organisations, and the creation of institutions designed for policy transfers. The purpose of this article is not to construct a new theory of policy diffusion, but rather to highlight various patterns and dynamics that can be observed in the Brazilian experience – and that have not been explored in depth by the literature – as an attempt to improve the understanding of such phenomena, especially by including new trends cultivated by the experiences of policy transfer carried out in Southern countries, with a specific focus on Brazil.

Brazilian policy exports offer an important contribution to the literature on policy transfer and diffusion, as they represent an emerging reality that has brought about the past decade of South–South policy transfers, and which has included direct participation and incentives from international organisations. An important portion of the authors who have founded the field of policy transfer and diffusion studies have been developing research that analyses empirical objects that have migrated from North to North or from North to South, but the concepts and techniques of the literature are not sufficient anymore to consider completely the current transformations of this phenomenon. This is due to the fact that transfer circumstances that operate in North–North or North–South or South–South relationships may not be the same in each process. In fact, even if there are some degrees of similarity between them, it is believed that power relationships, administrative modernisation, the nature and role of actors, and the strategies and interests underlying various diffusion initiatives have created important variations in these situations. It is understood that research considering South–South policy transfers can improve and elevate the level of our discussions.

An aggiornamento of the debate is needed, considering new directions and dynamics of contemporary policy transfers. This article presents the results of a larger research project on Brazilian policy diffusion. A methodological strategy called “transnational political ethnography” (Porto de Oliveira, 2017) has been used to gather data and analyse this phenomenon. This method is based on extensive fieldwork via participant observation techniques in local, national, and transnational arenas, where in-depth interviews with key governmental and non-governmental figures have been conducted. Other sources of documents such as official material, newspaper articles, and literature have been used to generate information about the various processes described in this article. Data have been gathered in regard to the diffusion of social participation, food security, family farming, housing, and conditional cash transfer (CCT) policies. This database has been used to track and reproduce the process of Brazilian policy diffusion, from the local to the national and global levels.

The narrative of the article begins with a discussion of the literature and then focuses on the empirical evidence that supports its argument. The first part brings back the discussion of policy diffusion, discussing the role of transfer agents and the new insights provided by the Brazilian experience. The second part presents the starting point of how Brazil began transitioning from policy imports to exports. The third part illustrates the various processes driving Brazilian social policy diffusion. These elements are integrated and summarised in the conclusion, which covers our analysis and briefly discusses the current scenario of Brazil’s political shift towards a conservative agenda.

How Can the Brazilian Experience Contribute to International Policy Diffusion Heuristics?

Policy diffusion is a fast-growing field, especially in the areas of public policy analysis and the study of international relations (Graham et al., 2013). The literature has produced various research traditions that can be synthesised as policy transfer, policy diffusion, and policy circulation, according to the approaches and epistemological assumptions used by a variety of authors in this field of research (Porto de Oliveira and Pimenta de Faria, 2017). Despite some subtle differences, all of these traditions are analysing the same phenomenon; that is, the movement of a political object in time and space. For simplification purposes, this article will use the term policy diffusion to refer to multiple policy adoptions as well as the transfer of singular policy adoptions.

A significant part of the literature has been produced by scholars from the global North. Authors have considered mostly cases involving North–North transfers or North–South transfers. ² Even if there is an emerging stream of recent publications considering South–South and South–North policy transfers, ³ these have been overlooked by major studies for quite a while. Mainstream publications have been focusing on various aspects of international policy diffusion as motivations for transfers, transfer agents (governments, international organisations, think tanks, political parties, elites, etc.), transferred objects (ideas, policy instruments, and state reforms), transfer directions (origin and destination), degrees of transfer and translation (copy, emulation, mixture, and inspiration), temporality of transfers (fast and slow), and the effects of policy transfers in terms of failure and success, among others. Such elements are summarised in a seminal work by Dolowitz and Marsh (2000) and now have been explored by a considerable number of studies. However, with the recent engagement of rising powers in global policymaking and the intensification of South–South co-operation, concepts and theories currently developed by this field are not sufficient to examine these movements in their totality. There is still an important gap that, if filled, would be of value to achieve a more thorough understanding of policy transfers.

In this article, the role of transfer agents deserves particular attention, insofar as the engagement of Brazil will be the topic of focus. The study of Europeanisation processes has been a fertile ground for policy transfer research (Hadjiisky and Visier, 2017; Saurugger and Surel, 2006), where authors have been dedicated to understanding dimensions such as the role of the European Union on the standardisation of public policies across member countries during its various cycles of expansion, the intersections between national governments and European institutions in terms of the production of policy knowledge, and the institutional sources of transfers and multi-level dynamics.

Authors concerned with the role of international financial institutions have also been observing the influence of lending conditions as a strategy to induce policy transfers in various cases in sub-Saharan Africa (Woods, 2006). Weyland (2006) also highlights coercion and persuasion approaches that have been used by international institutions to push states to implement their programmes. While referring to the coercion approach, the author highlights the World Bank’s engagement in social pension reform in Latin America by stating that “the World Bank promoted this reform with its whole arsenal of power” (Weyland, 2006: 69). Another perspective brings attention to softer pressures used by international institutions, such as Brooks (2004), for example, who argues that the World Bank played the role of a “teacher of norms” and shaped the debate on pension reform during the 1990s transforming “the way that policy makers conceptualized and spoke about” it (Brooks, 2004: 59). In a similar direction, Pal (2012) describes the “raison d’être” of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as “policy development, policy learning, and policy transfers through learning, research and emulation”, and details the role of this institution in leading and modelling the reform agenda of the globalisation of public management.

The role of knowledge and expertise has also been considered by scholars interested in the agency of epistemological communities, think tanks, private consulting firms, and elites. Think tanks are important knowledge transfer agents, operating in various areas of global social policymaking, monitoring, implementing, and engaging in social policy practices, as well as serving as a locus of expertise about policies from various countries and regions, as Stone (2001) puts it. Saint-Martin (2004) produces – in his study of the advent of New Public Management – a historical account of the role of private consulting firms, such as McKinsey, in the diffusion of public policy and administration ideas, standards, and techniques. Analysing the diffusion of CCTs in Latin America, Osorio Gonnet (2018) identifies a group of experts who provide policy advice to governments and international organisations for the design and implementation of these policies in the entire region. From another perspective, Dezalay and Garth (2002) discuss the role of the circulation of elites between their home countries in Latin America to the University of Chicago and the “import” of neo-liberal paradigms in the 1990s in four countries in the region.

The empirical findings presented in this article reveal that the interest in Brazil is due to the state’s progressive mobilisation of various agents operating on various levels with various agendas in both domestic and transnational arenas, building an international strategy, which has used several forms of conventional and modern diplomacy, ⁴ with policy export being the important element. ⁵ The fact that Brazil has been “exporting social policies” ⁶ does not mean that this is a project which has been planned from the outset. It has rather been an incremental process. The aim of Brazil has not been exclusively to “export” policies, and there are a variety of sector agendas and private interests involved. In fact, the government has been interested in opening up new markets for the Brazilian private sector in Africa, assuming leadership in Latin America, having a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, gaining power in World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations, hosting the World Cup and the Olympic Games, as well as legitimising social policies internally vis-à-vis political opposition, and, of course, winning elections. Following this path, the government has been able to produce a confluence among these interests and bring multiple efforts to bear on the internationalisation of its home-made policies. An important part of the actions carried out abroad by Brazil has been its social policy transfers. If before, Southern countries were more susceptible to adopting policies – often induced by international organisations, when they were reluctant – this was not the case anymore for Brazil during the period examined by this article. As an emerging country with consolidated expertise on social policies, Brazilian power and bargaining possibilities have increased. Three different aspects will be considered in this article, first the role of policy ambassadors, second the engagement of Brazil in development co-operation, and third its interaction with international organisations.

International policymaking that has emerged from the Brazilian experience has taken on an “interesting” characteristic, namely the prominence of so-called “policy ambassadors” (Porto de Oliveira, 2019). Brazil has achieved international power and recognition, especially in the social arena. Individuals promoting Brazilian social policies abroad have been part of a small group – with extensive experience in one policy area – which has been circulating among international and domestic governmental and non-governmental institutions for a long time. They have typical attributes, such as authority in relation to specific policies, the promotion of a policy independently of the institution in which they operate, and continual action throughout this process. These “ambassadors” promote policies internationally at events, technical consulting firms, international organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and governments, and they can be academics, politicians, experts, and staff from domestic or international governmental organisations or NGOs. ⁷ Finally, they can combine three different types of legitimacy that rely on political, technical, and theoretical authorities, and their actions have been determinant in sponsoring policies in the agenda of local, national, and international institutions. Brazil has been engaged in various activities of development co-operation. While the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has been an important agent in this engagement, development co-operation projects also involve other institutions. The Brazilian Agency of Cooperation (ABC) is the institution that has co-ordinated these projects, and sectoral ministries and other governmental agencies have been the institutions executing them. Various international organisations under the aegis of the UN have been engaged in development co-operation projects. The “DNA” of Brazilian development co-operation is transferring ideas, social technologies, expertise, policy models, and instruments to other countries, in particular those in the South. In terms of international organisations, Brazil has not only advocated the inclusion of Brazilians in the direction of some of them (Food and Agricultural Organization [FAO] and WTO), but also has been a key player in creating new organisations designed to transfer social policies (Center of Excellence Against Hunger (CEF) and the Rio+ Center).

In this article, a combination of forces and patterns somehow has been left underexplored, or is new or even unconventional from the point of view of current scholarship on policy diffusion that has been identified. In the following section, this article will detail the process of Brazil’s rise as a global social policy exporter.

Brazil: A Global Social Policy Exporter

During the first decade of this century, Brazil consolidated its role as a rising power, and its social policies improved inequalities and reduced poverty. The Economist began to acknowledge this, as can be perceived by this quote written during Lula’s administration. The Economist has written about Brazil’s rise to international influence on several occasions, including this quote written during Lula’s administration: “When it comes to smart social policy and boosting consumption at home, the developing world has much more to learn from Brazil than from China. In short, Brazil suddenly seems to have made an entrance onto the world stage” (The Economist, 2009). Policies implemented in this decade showed how a combination of public intervention and strategic programmes for social assistance could start reverting poverty and hunger issues. This section will discuss how specific policies moved from the local to the national and global level.

Institutional and Political Tipping Points

As argued in a previous work, an important moment for the emergence of social policy innovations in Brazil was the enactment of the Constitution in 1988, which can be considered an institutional tipping-point as well as the country’s transition to democracy (Porto de Oliveira, 2019). t democratic scenario opened the door to emerging political groups armed with progressive ideas to not only to run elections but also to participate in the public policy debate. In addition, the Constitution brought with it reforms in various areas, including the decentralization process, social participation in public policies and the principle of universality in social policy. Political authorities in local governments also benefitted from the increase of autonomy offered by the new Constitution, which facilitated local experimentation and innovations in public policies. A portion of the social policies that Lula implemented during his administration was a combination and adaptation of practices already put into effect on a local level, as well as adaptations of programs developed by previous governments on the national level, together with the implementation of ideas proposed by academia, especially the Universities of São Paulo and Campinas (Porto de Oliveira, 2019).

With this combination of elements, Workers’ Party (PT) mayors were elected – and faced complex problems in terms of social poverty, a lack of administrative modernisation, and limited public budgets – and started to use the municipal space as a testing ground for policymaking. Cities were laboratories, where PT experimented with ideas and projects, associated with civil society’s proposals and NGO solutions, as well as those of social movements, and these practices have been implemented. The result has been an increase in the production of public policy innovations to solve social issues in their regions. It is worth to mentioning that policy innovations at the local level were not an exclusive feature of the PT administration at that time. The results of a programme called Public Management and Citizenship held by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation offer a snapshot of policy innovation at the time. The programme was designed to award and disseminate innovative practices on municipal and state levels of government, as well as of indigenous organisations, and received 1,783 initiatives of policy innovations from municipalities between 1996 and 1999 (Farah, 2000: 60).

It was within this context of subnational policy innovation that pioneer experiments with CCTs were experimented with at the local level in 1995 in Campinas, during the Social Democratic Party (PSDB) administration, a more conservative party, and in Brasília, during the PT administration. In a different manner, the Zero Hunger Project, which became a national policy only in 2003, was developed earlier, in 2001. The project was produced by José Graziano da Silva and other collaborators from the Citizenship Institute, an NGO close to the PT. It was based, among other things, on practical experience in several municipalities, such as Belo Horizonte’s innovations in terms of food security, nutrition, and management, featuring programmes with popular restaurants and the local food supply policy (Aranha, 2010).

Another practice that emerged was PB in Porto Alegre (1989), which was later adopted in Belo Horizonte and Recife, among other municipalities in Brazil, and it became a local and international reference on citizen participation and urban management. ⁸ PB was implemented after the first election of PT in Porto Alegre in 1989, and its internationalisation began in 1996. The first movement towards internationalisation was the creation of a Secretariat of Fundraising, to capture resources from institutions such as the Inter-American Bank of Development. ⁹ A second step was the construction of transnational networks, such as Mercocities. In 1996, the Porto Alegre PB project was selected as one of the forty best practices of urban management in the world by the UN. This was the first public international recognition of PB at a global level. The internationalisation strategy turned out to be more intense and global after the first sequence of World Social Forums in 2001, where activists, NGOs, politicians, journalists, and intellectuals, coming on a “pilgrimage” to Brazil, began to notice PB and this programme achieved a more international reputation. At this point, PB appeared on the world map. Individuals, such as former PT mayors from Porto Alegre (e.g. Tarso Genro and Raul Pont), and municipal staff working directly with PB were the main drivers of PB diffusion in the early stages of internationalisation. These “ambassadors of participation” (Porto de Oliveira, 2017) had to use creativity to work with low budgets for policy export. They were constantly doing roadshows abroad to present Porto Alegre’s PB experience, hosting events on participatory democracy, building transnational networks, signing decentralised co-operation agreements with other cities to transfer PB techniques, gathering funds from international organisations, and receiving public policy delegations interested in the experience. Later, international organisations, such as the World Bank and the European Union, also took part in the process of PB international diffusion. The World Bank became interested and has funded several projects to transfer PB to developing countries.

PB was a sort of precursor of Brazil’s exporting of public policies which operated at the local level, but it was not the only example. Another urban policy that acquired international recognition and inspired different cities in the world (Mejía-Dugand et al., 2013) is the public transport system developed in Curitiba (Paraná state) in the 1970s, which is now called Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). The “policy ambassador” behind the policy is Jaime Lerner, a former Mayor of Curitiba and its architect. The city has also been a stage of international policy tourism – as Porto Alegre was for PB – to the extent that civil servants, urban planners, and politicians have travelled there in order to get a better understanding of public transport efficiency. In the next section, we will look at the scaling-up process, from local innovations to national policies, during the PT administration.

Social Policies Scaling Up from a Local to a National Level

When PT took office on a national level, a range of innovative policy ideas and instruments were adapted to a larger federal scale. More importantly, the individuals who worked on these programs began to circulate between these arenas, bringing with them technical knowledge which was used to design or redesign public policies (Porto de Oliveira, 2019). ¹⁰ In addition, if before mayors had to depend on municipal budgets and administrative structure to implement their policies, at the national level there was a powerful structure, with ministries and national revenue to promote policies at the national level. During the first decade of the century, Brazil was implementing a wide range of social policies at the national level, producing unprecedented programmes across a vast territory, with geographical, demographical, and economic gaps of heterogeneity.

The country had accumulated knowledge that went way beyond having experts in international organisations. At this point, the MFA and its institutional branch, the Agency for International Cooperation (ABC), operated on the internationalisation of national social policies. As mentioned before, an important part of Brazilian international co-operation became the transfer of social policy instruments, ideas, and technologies. Moreover, specific ministries and governmental institutions developed a division of international relations, such as the Ministry of Social Development (MDS) and the Fight Against Hunger (CGFome), the Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA), and the public bank Caixa Econômica Federal. These are just a few examples of the domestic ministries that dealt with the internationalisation of Brazilian policies. The next section will present how Brazil included policy diffusion as part of a broader strategy of building international prestige.

Building International Recognition, Reputation, and Legitimisation

In the first decade of the century, Brazil was a shining example of a country that had achieved a reduction in hunger and inequality via social policies. In 2014, Brazil was removed from the FAO’s hunger map. The World Bank, various agencies of the UN, and influential channels of the international press, including The Economist, were either recommending the adoption of Brazilian social policies or extolling them.

For the Brazilian government, the idea of international social policy promotion was part of a broader strategy. In fact, the country was not insisting on social policy diffusion as an isolated action; it was a broader innovative of foreign policy strategy, geared towards strengthening its soft power, which was called “active and haughty.” Brazil was a player on several fronts in the international arena, some of them in especially important areas. As an example, we could mention it’s seeking for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Policy diffusion was part of a set of foreign policy initiatives. The country allotted more space to global policy co-ordination, via international institutions, and also promoted its own interests on the global stage.

Interest in exports from the farming sector led Brazil to build an international coalition with developing countries to push their interests globally and to face protectionist measures from the United States and Europe (Ramanzini and Viana, 2012). These initiatives developed during the WTO Doha Round, especially in the Cancún Conference in 2003, which were among the first steps that Brazil took towards becoming a rising power in international relations in the contemporary era.

On a different front, Brazil had been leading a peacekeeping mission in Haiti since 2004. The country had previously been engaged in East Timor and Angola, and more than fifty other missions. However, the leadership in Haiti was a testing ground for Brazil to promote the country as a regional power, and was seen as an opportunity for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. Moreover, the country implemented a marketing strategy for its social policies. Lula focused his speeches abroad on the positive effects of the social policies enacted during his government, and asserted that those policies were responsible for reducing Brazil’s inequality. In addition, part of the Lula’s administration’s recognition and his successful re-election were attributed to these same policies. As The Economist said, “Lula’s crowning achievements have been big rises in the minimum wage and pensions, and the Bolsa Família Program” (The Economist, 2010). Briefly, Brazil was engaged in issues of global relevance, building international legitimacy based on assuming international responsibilities, and introducing innovative ways of participating in global arenas. Transferring social policies was part of this international recognition and diplomacy as a leader for developing countries and interests, and Brazil started to play a more relevant role in the international scene.

Patterns of Brazilian Policy Diffusion

“The major contribution that Brazil can offer to the African continent is the export of our experiences of public policies, […] of fighting against social exclusion.” ¹¹

In this article, only those forces facilitating the process of diffusion will be considered. It is argued that a combination of these elements has operated together to facilitate Brazilian policy transfers in various areas. The junction of these forces has been decisive in making Brazil a global policy exporter during the first two decades of this century. In this section, three processes will be presented: the circulation of individuals, development co-operation, and engagement with international organisations.

The Role of Policy Ambassadors and Branding Strategies

If at this point Brazil depended on domestic institutions such as ministries and the ABC to support policy transfers, then the action of “policy ambassadors” (Porto de Oliveira, 2019) engaged in the promotion of sector policies was crucial, as were the actions of the Porto Alegre mayors for PB. There are different types of policy ambassadors and they are also numerous, but for the purposes of this article, we are interested in only three. ¹² The first is Lula, who was the “ambassador” for all Brazilian social policies, then José Graziano, ¹³ who engaged in the fight for the anti-hunger agenda by circulating among international institutions, and finally Ana Fonseca, who worked on the basic income agenda and the Family Allowance Program.

In the conferences that Lula attended abroad, he used his charisma to advertise how Brazil had improved socially after implementing programmes such as the Family Allowance Program. One of our interviewees stated that Lula was considered “the only African leader who was not from Africa.” During his term in government, Lula was engaged in regional diplomacy with Latin American and African countries. His travels to other states were frequent; in eight years of office, he travelled thirty-three times abroad, and after he left office, our interviewee said Lula visited Africa twelve more times. ¹⁴ Once his term came to an end, he continued to be active with the Lula Institute. As an example, our interviewee said, “Lula was in Angola last year [2014] doing a big seminar on the Family Allowance Project for more than 800 people.” ¹⁵

Graziano, a former professor at the University of Campinas, who was the co-ordinator of the Zero Hunger Program during the Lula administration, became the regional co-ordinator of FAO in Latin America, and from 2011 on he assumed the overall direction of the institution in Rome. His role was important in placing Brazilian food security and farming purchases on the international agenda and helping spread the word throughout Africa and Latin America. One of our interviewees at FAO said, “I think that [Graziano’s experience helped him realize] that you need a series of public policies [in order] to succeed in ending hunger.” This same interviewee also informed us that “one of the areas where this work is being developed, and that [is attracting] enormous interest from countries [that wish] to emulate this successful [program], is in the area of the Food Purchase Program [which] is associated with school lunches.” ¹⁶

The third example is Fonseca, who was a researcher from the University of Campinas, ¹⁷ and is an expert on social policies, with a PhD thesis about Cash Transfers, and many years of experience working in this area. During Marta Suplicy’s PT administration (2000–2004), she was part of the staff in the municipal administration of São Paulo and worked on the Minimum Wage programme, and then at the MDS she worked on the Family Allowance Program. After leaving the ministry, she began consulting for international organisations and governments on the institutional design and implementation of CCT programmes in various countries, such as Uruguay, Costa Rica, Peru, and others. ¹⁸ One of our interviewees informed us that Fonseca brought a project for housing co-operation with the Dominican Republic to Caixa; in her words this was “a project accompanied by Ana Fonseca, who is one, as they say here in Brazil, of the mothers of the Family Allowance Program; she was the person who brought this [Dominican Republic] project to Caixa”. ¹⁹ The systematic circulation of these individuals inside and outside of governmental institutions promoting Brazilian social policies has been fundamental to fostering the diffusion of these instruments abroad.

Institutions Beyond the MFA

After the PT came into power nationally in Brazil, international relations became more decentralised and various ministries and agencies, such as the MFA, started to engage more in policy diffusion according to their specialisation. However, while the MFA is an institution with a strong tradition and isolated in its actions, the concentration of foreign strategies in the hands of the MFA was not the vision that the Lula administration had in mind. As mentioned before, Lula was an emblematic case of presidential diplomacy. Moreover, with the globalisation of public policies, various state bureaucracies participated in international affairs during Lula’s administration. ²⁰ In fact, ministries, state agencies, and public banks were engaged in international affairs, mostly in relation to the transfer of policy instruments, ideas, knowledge, and technology to other states and international institutions, Southern countries, the UN, and the World Bank.

The MFA engaged directly in the international promotion of social policies – including facilitating policy transfers – via the General Coordination of Humanitarian Cooperation and the Fight Against Hunger (CGFome). Created in 2004, this body was in charge of promoting dialogue on food and nutrition security, as well as rural sustainable development on an international level, with the FAO, World Food Programme (WFP), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and other agencies of the UN system. The Fight Against Hunger carried out an important dialogue with civil society through the National Council for Food and Nutrition Security. It played an important role in the internationalisation of Food Acquisition Program (PAA). ²¹ As one of our interviewees defined it, the Fight Against Hunger was the “international mirror of the Zero Hunger [Program]”. ²² This institution was abolished in 2016 after Dilma Rousseff left office.

The MDA and the MDS are examples of policy transfers with the CCTs and family farming policies. MDA, created in 2000 under the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration, was the institution responsible for agrarian policies, such as the programmes related to public food purchases from family farming. As one of our interviewees states, the MDA international relations office started with a staff of one, working part-time, around 2003. ²³ At that time, the aim was to include the interests of family farmers in the international agenda, particularly in international trade at the WTO. Later on, the ministry began to broaden its international agenda, especially by working on development co-operation projects, including the transfer of the Brazilian experience. At its peak, according to our interviewee, the MDA had around fifteen people working on international relations. ²⁴ The MDA was abolished in 2016 and transformed into the Special Secretary of Family Farming and Agrarian Development, and has come to be controlled by the Chief of Staff of the Executive Branch.

MDS was the institution responsible for designing and implementing part of Family Allowance Program, a social policy with the purpose of eradicating poverty and inequality in Brazil. This programme acts as a revenue supplement for families in situations of extreme poverty. Beneficiaries of the Family Stipend receive a monthly stipend transferred from the federal government. To benefit from this income, families must meet a set of conditions in the areas of health and education, such as ensuring their children are vaccinated and properly fed, as well as proving that their children are regularly going to school, among other requirements. In addition, a system was developed for managing information regarding social assistance programmes through a unified registration list. According to the World Bank, there are now fifty-two countries that follow the Brazilian Family Stipend Program model. Between 2011 and 2015, MDS received 406 delegations from ninety-seven countries that had interest in learning more about the programme. ²⁵ According to one of our interviewees, receiving delegations was very time-consuming and intense. MDS staff had to leave their work aside to host delegations, bring foreign civil servants to field missions to see Brazilian social programmes working in practice, and attend meetings with ministers. The amount of work exceeded the capacity of the MDS’s international relations staff, and as a solution they started to organise an annual international workshop in an attempt to receive all of the delegations at the same time. ²⁶ This workshop welcomed more than 200 participants from sixty-six countries in 2016. The Family Allowance Program was not the only policy promoted by the MDS. In fact, the ministry had a “portfolio” of Brazilian social policy instruments, ranging from youth policies to social security in general, that could be transferred to other countries (Pomeroy et al., 2019). ²⁷ According to data collected from the MDS, the most requested policies by foreign delegations were food security with 110 requests, and the Family Allowance Program with 99 requests, between 2015 and 2018. ²⁸

Not only ministries, but also public agencies were engaged in policy diffusion. One example is the Brazilian Agricultural and Livestock Research Corporation (Embrapa), a research agency that produced techniques for planting in regions with low fertility capacity, such as the Brazilian semi-arid ecoregion known as the “Cerrado” which is a specific type of savanna, and developed genetic manipulation to build resistant seeds, capable of repelling pests. Besides this, the institution accumulated experience in building institutional capacity for farming research laboratories and practices for rural social development. It also opened an office in Ghana, which according to one of our interviewees, “was opened by President Lula as […] a spearhead for cooperation in the agricultural area”. ²⁹ This office was responsible for facilitating and carrying out development co-operation projects in the agriculture sector. A portion of these was related to food security and transferring vegetable cultivation techniques to the region. ³⁰

Another type of actor was Caixa, which historically has been deeply engaged in public policies, and is one of the most popular financial institutions in Brazil. It controls important accounts such as the Workers Severance Fund (FGTS) and unemployment coverage, and it is also responsible for the national lottery. It has been the biggest national funding agent for private houses and urbanisation policies since the 1980s. In 2009, Caixa was made responsible for the implementation of My House, My Life (MCMV), the biggest housing programme in the history of Brazil. This is a milestone for housing policies in Brazil, and it was developed in view of the history of Brazilian urban settlements, housing movement demands, and urban planning theses. MCMV is a programme for lending money to low-income families for the acquisition of their own houses. Some innovations were included in this process, such as a dialogue with civil society in regard to the process of policy implementation, as well as homebuilding, the self-management of housing, and social participation. Caixa also has an International Relations Department. Caixa has been engaged in policy transfers via international co-operation ever since 2003. ³¹ Also at that time, Caixa was asked to lead a Brazilian mission for co-operation in Namibia. Later, two major projects were developed in a bilateral effort, the Support for Urban Development in Mozambique (2007) and the Support for Housing Development in Cabo Verde (2010). Both were designed to assist African countries in the development of their housing policies, through technical knowledge transfers from Caixa, in partnership with ABC, the Brazilian Ministry of Cities and, in the case of Mozambique, help from public universities such as the University of São Paulo, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, the University of Campinas, and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Caixa, 2012).

A revealing aspect of Brazilian international co-operation is that a significant part of it is based on policy transfers. In fact, the country had accumulated expertise in various social sectors and had, in a certain aspect, a monopoly in terms of this knowledge. More than that, the staff acquired a large amount of technical knowledge in terms of dealing with policy implementation and this was due to its daily experience in working with precarious situations. These circumstances of an absence of administrative modernisation, regional heterogeneity, and high levels of bureaucracy are also present in various regions of the world, especially in Southern countries.

Brazil began including policy transfers in various areas of foreign relations. In particular, transfers towards countries that were considered priorities in the foreign affairs agenda, like those of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, were given preference. Policy transfers were also a component of bigger projects in other areas. In the case of Haiti, where the peacekeeping operation was ongoing, there were farming projects led by the Embrapa which involved transferring planting technology. In 2014, a conference called “Brazil and North Africa: Opportunities for Agribusiness and Food Security” took place at the Industry Federation of the State of São Paulo, which is a major institution for promoting industrial interests. The main purpose of the conference was to produce incentives for Brazilian entrepreneurs to export their machinery, pesticides, and seeds to African countries. ³²

Brazilian social policies have generally followed the overall interests of its foreign policy. An important element in these knowledge transfers in relation to social policies is that they were operated via various state institutions by public servants. This means that there was no additional cost for foreign countries to engage an expert from Brazil, and thus it was “cheap.” To continue with the example of Caixa, in regard to housing technique transfers to Mozambique, one of our interviewees said the process was as follows: “Caixa does not get in with funding. What Caixa does is transfer knowledge within this expertise through public policy management agent operators.” ³³ Staff from Brazil would leave their daily activities to attend an international mission and assist Mozambican civil servants. This was the case for several ministries and other institutions, as can be seen from the MDS receiving the delegations mentioned before. In an informal conversation with a staff member from the ABC, it was revealed that it was too expensive for Brazil to afford an international consultant, and that it had to deal with national governmental staff members and researchers based in public universities. In short, the costs of policy transfers were not high considering the overall market of international co-operation. Transfer operations were implemented through public servants and were accomplished via technical support, through in loco visits (both to the receiver of policy instruments and the donor), and the promotion of workshops. Once missions were accomplished, it was not necessary to schedule follow-ups for the implementation process.

The fact that there were various institutions engaged in policy transfers does not mean that there were no conflicts between them. There were disputes based on policy ideas and instruments, among other issues. However, this will not be discussed in this article. It’s also worth noting that Brazilian South–South co-operation engagement was not linear during all PT administrations and followed various patterns over this period of time. According to Marcondes and Mawdsley (2017), the expansion occurred during Lula’s administration, including increasing the ABC budget, while a retreat occurred during Rousseff’s term. The authors also state that this change of scenario had two major underlying drivers, the first being that Rousseff had a different personality and government style – which gave priority to domestic issues and she was not keen on presidential diplomacy. The second had to do with the economic situation in Brazil, with the end of the commodities boom and the coming of a financial crisis (Marcondes and Mawdsley, 2017). When Temer came into power, after Rousseff’s impeachment, the narrative in regard to foreign policy changed and reinforced efforts but redirected them towards “traditional partners” (e.g. the United States and Europe). In addition, important institutions for social policy transfers were abolished, such as the aforementioned Fight Against Hunger and the MDA. In the next section, the interaction with international institutions and its implications for policy transfer will be described.

Occupying International Arenas and Building Institutions Designed for Policy Transfers

As part of the strategy for Brazil’s entrance on the international stage, the country started to occupy spaces in international organisations, as well as create new institutions. This began with the election of José Graziano da Silva as the Director of the FAO, who will conclude his second term in 2019, and the election of Roberto Azevêdo at the WTO. Various Brazilians became involved in these organisations. In the case of the FAO, with the increase of projects dealing with food security and nutrition, as well as family farming, driven by Brazilian developmental co-operation and the organisation’s own agenda, experts from Brazil joined the institution either working as permanent staff or temporary civil servants, working for example on co-ordinating projects and participating as short-term consultants. ³⁴ In addition, Brazil created two institutions in partnership with the UN, the World Center for Sustainable Development (Rio+) and the CEF, to promote social policies internationally that were originally developed in this country. Finally, the World Bank also endorsed the Family Allowance Program and was an important driver of its diffusion.

The strategy of occupying the international arena was an important move to ensure the global continuity of Brazilian policies that were designed and named by the PT administration, and also reinforced Brazil’s legitimacy in terms of domestic public opinion and fortifying it against the political opposition. In fact, by gaining these internationally recognised positions, supplemented by new ad hoc international institutions, the PT administration was able to guarantee that its efforts regarding policy internationalisation would not be in vain due to political change at the head of the Brazilian government. Moreover, these institutions were important to bypassing Brazilian bureaucracy and creating more agile policy diffusion, bringing it closer in line with the UN system. Put simply, these strategic steps aspired to reduce governmental dependency in the event that PT lost control of the government, with another party with a different political agenda taking its place.

Among the major parts of the PT agenda at the national level was the Zero Hunger Program. Implemented by the Brazilian government in 2003, this was the top priority during Lula’s first administration. It was structured based on a combination of various fronts, including the revitalisation and nurturing of existing social policies with new programmes that dealt with food security, family farming, and the Collective Work Convention for food supply. The programme’s first act was to offer food access to the low-income population via the Family Allowance Program, the PNAE, and the Worker Food Program. Meanwhile, the second action sought to strengthen family farming via the purchase of food from family farms. José Graziano da Silva designed this strategy during Lula’s political campaign, and in a certain way the Zero Hunger Project “travelled with him” and was included in the FAO agenda, which participated in various co-operation projects via triangulation with Brazil to transfer policies such as the National School Lunch Program and the PAA to Latin American and African countries.

Another institution created to diffuse Brazilian food security programmes worldwide was the CEF. The centre, based in Brasília, is a branch of the UN’s WFP. It was implemented in 2011. Among the main activities of the centre is offering technical assistance to other countries and consulting to implement food policies, having school lunches as the focus of their activity. It is also a research centre and advocacy institution for food security. The centre not only has programmes focused on transferring food security policy instruments, but also hosts delegations from other countries interested in Brazilian policies. ³⁵ According to the CEF Evaluation Report (2017: 5), it “organized 51 study visits for 40 countries, promoted 38 in-country technical assistance visits, and supported the organization of 12 national participatory consultations.” It received funding from the Brazilian Ministry of Education, the UK Department for International Development, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Similar to the CEF is Rio+. It was created after the 2012 Rio+20 World Summit, which was held in Rio de Janeiro. As a legacy of the event, the UN Development Programme and the Brazilian government decided to implement “a structure capable of promoting sustainable development,” having as its core the mission of the “dissemination of successful policies for sustainable development.” ³⁶ The centre’s former director was deputy minister at the MDS and the Fight Against Hunger in Brazil, working directly with the core Brazilian social policies of the PT administration. ³⁷ Among the actions of the centre is the diffusion of Brazilian policies. In fact, as one of our interviewees said, “Brazil is a barnyard of ‘best practices’,” and that “countries are very interested [in these experiences], especially because Brazil has been able to rapidly implement policies with a broad reach, [which are] also policies that have quality,” that is that they have a broad reach and are effective.

The World Bank worked closely with the Brazilian government during the policy design of the Family Allowance Program, which it was funding (Leite et al., 2016). The institution also endorsed the Brazilian model of CCTs, recommending it to various countries, publishing materials about the Family Allowance Program, encouraging field visits to Brazil, and funding projects to implement such policies elsewhere, as was the case with the Philippines, among others. In this regard, according to Howlett et al. (2018: 276), “in July 2009, President Arroyo [Philippines] and an entourage of members of congress and DSWD [Department of Social Welfare and Development] officials visited Brazil to meet with President Lula da Silva to learn about the Family Allowance Program.” Brazilian civil servants were invited to present the country’s experience in various global workshops organised by the World Bank, the “International Conferences on Conditional Cash Transfers,” held in 2002 (Puebla, Mexico), 2004 (São Paulo, Brazil), and 2006 (Istanbul, Turkey). According to Morais de Sá e Silva (2017), this was an important transnational arena for sharing knowledge about CCTs, where both experienced countries and newcomers met and discussed different features of such policies. In general, the World Bank was a proactive promoter of CCTs and according to Howlett et al. (2018), the reports presented the main experiences which were those of Mexico and Brazil. This shows how the World Bank was also an importer of Brazilian policy instruments, as well as a promoter of them. ³⁸

The occupation of various international institutions by Brazilians and the creation of organisations designed for transfers, with the endorsement of agencies from the UN-based system of Brazilian public policies, were key elements to the globalisation of the country’s policy ideas, models, and instruments. The next section summarises all of the elements presented tying them together to highlight the interest in analysing Brazil’s experiences through the lens of policy diffusion. Moreover, it offers a concise update of the current situation, after recent changes that have brought about a new political direction in this country.

Conclusion: A Revival of Policy Imports?

The overall purpose of this article is to innovate in the study of policy diffusion by presenting an overview of the Brazilian experience. The analysis of Brazil as a global policy exporter revealed how the country has prepared its policies in experimental circumstances at the local level, and after scaling them up nationally, began to transfer these policies internationally on a grand scale. Nonetheless, the internationalisation process started with pioneering municipal practices, such as the PB and BRT systems. It became a national strategy when the PT administration took power in 2003. Brazil moving from policy “import to export” should be considered a metaphor. This does not mean that Brazilian individuals and organisations stopped drawing lessons from abroad. This only illustrates this new scenario, where Brazil started to be more proactive in transferring its social policies to other countries and used various means towards this end, mobilising elites, and governmental and non-governmental institutions, both domestic and international. The Brazilian experience illuminates a few facets of policy diffusion overlooked by the literature.

First of all, there is the importance of observing the micro-dynamics of the diffusion process. In this study, this has meant understanding international organisations as complex institutions and taking into consideration the role of individuals. More specifically, the case presented here insists on the necessity of observing the interplay between institutions (local, national, and international) and individuals as actors, as this combination was crucial to setting Brazil up as a global social policy exporter.

Another way of observing these micro-dynamics is via analysing processes that can constrain or facilitate the transfer process. In this article, a set of patterns operating within the Brazilian process have been presented. The diffusion of social policies was part of a bigger strategy, which aspired to gain legitimacy among the global community to become a player on the “big international stage.” This act depended on various elements, such as the transnational action of a group of “policy ambassadors,” who have been constantly engaged in the promotion of policy instruments from specific sectors. These actors had various roles, such as Lula, “the policy ambassador of Brazilian social policy,” as well as other specific “policy ambassadors.” The international engagement of various domestic institutions, ranging from ministries to specialised agencies, was also important. This promoted a mass diffusion of Brazilian policies in all social areas. A decade of policy experiments and innovations also led to an accumulation of knowledge and the rise of experts on social policymaking within the context of a country from the South. This was a crucial component for the co-production of models with international organisations (including the UN agencies and the World Bank), and represented an important opportunity to open up space and increase the potential of diffusion through these institutions, through policy legitimisation, recommendations, and funding. The combination of policy transfers via international co-operation for development also made Brazil an interesting place, owing to the costs of work, taking into account the fact that part of the work was done by public servants. Finally, the occupation of international organisations, such as the FAO and the WTO, represented an unprecedented achievement for Brazil, which played a role in the divulgation of its policies and ideas.

This orchestration of policy diffusion is an interesting result for this field. Brazil achieved international recognition with its social policies and engaged in a massive global transfer strategy. However, the political crisis in 2016 has turned the social policy transfer agenda developed in the previous decades upside down. After the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and the arrival of Michel Temer, an abrupt and radical change towards a conservative agenda quickly took place, which has deepened much more after a dramatic shift to the right in the presidential election two years later.

With Bolsonaro’s arrival in power in 2019, Brazilian foreign affairs have been following a new direction, which includes not only drawing closer to the United States, but also other governments with whom the president has an ideological affinity. The president’s first trips abroad were respectively the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as well as meeting with Donald Trump in the United States, Sebastián Piñera in Chile, and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. Part of the agenda for these trips was to negotiate support for Brazil’s admission to the OECD. Brazil seems to be going back to a policy import tendency in the current government. During his speech in Davos, the president stated that Brazilian “international relations will become more dynamic under Minister Ernesto Araújo, implementing policies where ideological bias will no longer exist. Through this we seek to integrate Brazil with the rest of the world, through the incorporation of international best practices that have been adopted and promoted by the OECD.” ³⁹ The government is also drawing on lessons from Chile, especially in terms of pension reform, one of the most important elements in the government’s agenda. The idealiser of the reform is the current Minister of Economics, who was trained in Chicago, where he obtained a Master’s degree and a PhD, and also worked as a professor at the University of Chile during the Pinochet Regime. ⁴⁰

Not only has the Brazilian context changed, but the overall context in Latin America has changed, with the so-called pink wave having ended. An important turnaround is also happening at the FAO, where Graziano will no longer be the Director General, from August 2019 on. This reveals that policy transfers, developmental co-operation, and foreign affairs projects are vulnerable, because they rely on personalities, political projects, and benefits with a similar perspective. The questions that need clarification for future research are: Will Brazil be able to maintain its international legitimacy as a social policy model under this new scenario, and how will the recent political change affect Brazilian (social) policy transfers?