Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Bureaucratic Development and Decay: Explaining Policy Capacity In Brazil

在各个政策领域（如医疗保健或基础设施）以及国家以下各级政治单位之间，政策执行和结果参差不齐都是司空见惯的。如何解释在同一国家内执行政策的能力差异？该项目为理解国家能力做出了两个关键贡献。根据经验，该项目系统地绘制了巴西各地的能力变化图。这项工作将首先在联邦一级进行，对卫生部、教育部、社会发展部和能源部进行比较，然后在部委内部对巴伊亚州、米纳斯吉拉斯州和<s:1>圣保罗州的项目进行跟踪分析。通过使用多种方法衡量国家能力的四个主要组成部分，即资源、官僚机构质量、制度设计和领土覆盖范围，该项目提供了一幅更丰富、更细致的国家能力图景。从理论上讲，本研究将强调地方政治行为者，特别是州长、市长和州级官僚如何影响地方执行联邦政策能力的差异。这个项目的智力价值源于混合方法的仔细使用，包括集中调查、深度访谈、档案研究，作为新开发的地理信息系统（GIS）工具，系统地绘制了全国各州基础设施的存在。通过广泛的实地考察产生的经验知识将提供对国家能力的次国家差异的细致理解，从而推动学术讨论超越国家层面的讨论，并提供更全面的衡量标准。在关注巴西的同时，该项目也更广泛地讨论了在大型联邦系统中建设国家能力的问题，因此，它有可能推广到其他国家，如俄罗斯、印度，以及在较小程度上适用于美国。这个项目的价值比它直接的学术贡献更广泛。首先，通过公布其结果并向全世界科学界提供原始数据，该项目有可能增强我们对国家机构能力的科学理解，并可作为未来比较研究的组成部分。该项目还将发展美国和巴西大学之间的伙伴关系（特别是布朗大学和坎皮纳斯州立大学（UNICAMP）的公共政策研究中心（NEPP）），并与国外的独立研究机构共享数据，如CEBRAP （Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento）。然而，最终，该项目的主要目标是以提供更好的公共服务的形式为社会提供潜在的利益。通过分离机构能力发展背后的关键过程和机制，本研究将对公共官僚机构、基础设施和联邦项目的优化设计产生明确的影响。因此，这项研究的目标是使研究结果不仅在研究圈内可用，而且也可供公共机构和非学术出版物使用。

Uneven policy implementation and outcomes are commonplace both across policy areas, such as healthcare or basic infrastructure, as well as the same policy across subnational political units. What explains variation in the capacity to implement policies within the same country? This project makes two key contributions to understanding state capacity. Empirically, the project systematically maps variation in capacity throughout Brazil. This will be done first at the federal level by a comparison across four ministries, Health, Education, Social Development and Energy, followed by a within-ministry analysis tracking programs across the states of Bahia, Minas Gerais and São Paulo. By using a multi-method approach to measure four major components of state capacity, defined as resources, quality of the bureaucracy, institutional design, and territorial reach, the project provides a richer and more nuanced picture of state capacity. Theoretically, this research will highlight how subnational political actors, specifically governors, mayors, and state-level bureaucrats, affect sub-national variation in the capacity to implement federal policy. The intellectual merit of this project stems from the careful use of mixed methods, including focused surveys, in-depth interviews, archival research, as newly-developed Geographic Information System (GIS) tools to systematically map the presence of state infrastructure across the country. The empirical knowledge generated through extensive fieldwork will provide a nuanced understanding of the subnational variation in state capacity, thereby advancing the academic discussion beyond national-level discussions and providing a more thorough measure as well. While focusing on Brazil, this project also speaks more broadly to issues of building state capacity in large federal systems, and as such, is potentially generalizable to other countries, like Russia, India, and to a smaller extent, the United States. The value of the project is broader than its immediate academic contribution. First, by publishing its results and making the original data available to the scientific community around the world, the project has the potential to enhance our scientific understanding of state institutional capacity, and can be used as a component of future comparative studies. This project will also develop a partnership between US and Brazilian universities (specifically, Brown University and the Center for Public Policy Research (NEPP) at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), and share data with independent research institutions abroad, such as CEBRAP (Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento). Ultimately, however, the main goal of this project is to provide potential benefits to society in the form of better public service provision. By isolating the key processes and mechanisms behind the development of institutional capacity, this study will have clear implications for superior design of public bureaucracy, infrastructure, and federal programs. As such, it is the goal of the research to make the results available not only in research circles, but also to public agencies and nonacademic publications as well.