Dissemination of the Family Health Strategy: explanatory factors of the adhesion of municipalities in São Paulo, Brazil, in the coercive context of induction by the federal government

Abstract

The scope of this paper is to analyze the adhesion of municipalities in São Paulo to the Family Health Strategy (FHS). The adhesion data in SP showed that it did not occur unanimously, immediately or uniformly. The theory of policy diffusion was used, with the objective of studying the process of adoption and implementation of public policies by subnational entities, in contexts where coercion occurs in the federal sphere. From the discussions related to the diffusion mechanism called coercion, the following question was answered: what explains the diffusion of the FHS in the municipalities of SP, in the coercive context of vertical influence? The survival analysis technique was applied to identify explanatory factors for the diffusion of the FHS, considering political and party variables of institutional design, neighborhood influence, internal needs, and structural factors. The results reveal that horizontal interactions between both ideological and regional subnational governments, as well as the local social, economic and political issues are relevant to understand the research questions. This finding enables us to reflect on the limits of vertical influence in the promotion of initiatives for subnational governments.