The unexpected success of second generation reforms: Federalism, constitutional reforms and social policy

The paper argues that unlike the predictions of the literature on second-generation reforms, there occurred an important change in the pattern of social policy during the Cardoso years, with the attendant improvement in social indicators. The budgetary process has been increasingly and extensively hardwired; inter-governmental relations have undergone extensive restructuring; and the line ministries in the social area have been insulated from coalition-building politics. It argued that the change was determined by the broader transformation of Brazilian federalism caused by an extensive process of constitutional reform, and that the executive had both the incentives and the capabilities to promote it.