Join the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research and the Stone Center for Latin American Studies in welcoming Dr. Sara Niedzwieckia as part of the spring speaker series Critical Issues in Democratic Governance, on Friday, February 22, in 110A Jones Hall. Dr. Niedzwiecki will give a talk entitled Uneven Social Policies: The Politics of Subnational Variation in Latin America. Social policies can transform the lives of the poor and marginalized, yet implementation often limits their access. By examining variation in political motivations, state capacity, and policy legacies, it explains why some social policies are implemented more effectively than others, why some deliver votes to incumbent governments while others do not, and why regionally elected executives block the implementation of some but not all national policies. This analysis combines case studies with statistical analysis of conditional cash transfers and health policies in Argentina and Brazil.

The event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP to cipr@tulane.edu.

Dr. Niedzwiecki is an assistant professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (2014). Her research focuses on comparative welfare states, multilevel governance, and Latin America. She is interested in the process through which social policies are formed and implemented in Latin America and beyond. Additionally, she studies the territorial structure of government, with an emphasis on the measurement of the authority of regional governments across countries.

Dr. Niedzwiecki’s forthcoming book examines the conditions under which social policies are successfully implemented in decentralized countries. More specifically, she examines how politics and capacity at state and local levels shape the implementation of healthcare and Conditional Cash Transfers. It draws from extensive fieldwork conducted in Brazil and Argentina.