The Vicious Cycle in the Bolsa Fam\xedlia Program\u2019s Implementation: Discretionality and the Challenge of Social Rights Consolidation in Brazil

Flávio Eiró

doi:10.1007/s11133-019-09429-9

Abstract

This article aims to consider conceptions of the Brazilian conditional cash transfer Bolsa Família Program as elaborated by both those responsible for its implementation and its beneficiaries in Northeast Brazil. Most innovative in this study is the adoption of the program’s municipal social workers, who are responsible for the implementation of the program, as the main observation point, by conceptualizing them as street-level bureaucrats. The research is based on ethnographic fieldwork that took place between 2013 and 2015, for a total of six months, combined with in-depth interviews with the program’s beneficiaries in a middle-sized municipality of the State of Ceará. Social workers enjoy a range of discretion that directly affects the distribution of benefits. Their efforts to better apply what they see as scarce resources are embedded in their representations of poverty—separating “deserving” from “undeserving” poor—generating insecurity among beneficiaries. By doing so, beneficiaries’ understanding of the program as a social right is compromised, which is reinforced by a fragile legal status enjoyed by the Bolsa Família and ambiguous bureaucratic procedures.

Highlights

The Brazilian Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT)1 Bolsa Família Program (Family Grant, BFP) is widely considered a successful case of anti-poverty action, with its existence rarely challenged in Brazilian politics (Hall 22)
This article has shown how each encounter between street-level bureaucrat and client represents an instance of policy delivery, which is shaped by agents’ conceptions of their work and of their clients, determining “in a concrete way the form and substance of citizens’ rights” (Hasenfeld et al 24, 398). These conceptions integrate a vision of society and the material limitations social workers face in daily activities when delivering those policies
The vicious circle analyzed here allows us to predict that the more aggressive the strategies used by social workers to disclose information, the greater the insecurity experienced by beneficiaries regarding the continuity of their benefits, and the greater the incentive they will have to modify or omit information determining their access to the Bolsa Família

Summary

Introduction

The Brazilian Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) Bolsa Família Program (Family Grant, BFP) is widely considered a successful case of anti-poverty action, with its existence rarely challenged in Brazilian politics (Hall 22). The first stresses its impersonality and bureaucratic performance in order to challenge clientelist accusations (Bohn 6; Fenwick 19; Sugiyama and Hunter 60) The second interprets it as one step in a larger process of strengthening the goal of social assistance, which is to provide a guaranteed minimum income based solely on citizens’ rights (Barrientos 4), as proposed by universal basic income advocates (Caillé 9; Suplicy 61). These lines fail to understand how empirical and localized limitations in the implementation of CCT programs impact how beneficiaries construct them as social rights interventions, regardless of whether or not they are a constitutional right or a government program—to which citizens expect equal access and fair treatment. It is in this context that this article aims to consider conceptions of the Bolsa Família Program as voiced by both those responsible for its implementation and by its beneficiaries

Objectives

Findings

Conclusion