Incorporating Time into Policy Transfer Studies: A Comparative Analysis of the Transnational Policy Process of Conditional Cash Transfers and Participatory Budgeting

Abstract

The policy transfer literature has addressed the reasons, processes, and impacts of traveling policies. As some globally diffused policies enter their third decade of circulation, it becomes pertinent to ask: How does diffusion change over time? To examine the relevance of time for policy transfer studies, this article compares the long-lasting diffusion of Conditional Cash Transfers and of Participatory Budgeting. The analysis presented allows for the understanding of how policy diffusion mutates to adapt to new constraints in a large time scale and policy transfer space. It also allows for a broader understanding of the transnational policy process.

Keywords:

• policy transfer
• comparative policy analysis
• transnational policy process
• Conditional Cash Transfers
• Participatory Budgeting

1. Introduction

As the policy transfer¹ literature has been especially comprised by case studies that address the reasons, processes, and impacts of traveling policies (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000; Hadjiisky et al. 2017; Stone et al. 2020), attention has been mostly focused on how diffusion begins and initially progresses. With some globally diffused policies now entering their third decade of existence and circulation, it becomes relevant to ask: How does policy diffusion change over time? Studies have looked into how policies change as a result of diffusion using the notion of translation (Hassenteufel and Zeiggerman 2021), but there is still little understanding about whether and how there is any change to the diffusion process itself over time.

In order to examine those issues, this article will analyze and compare two large-scale and long-lasting diffusion processes. It will look at the global diffusion of conditional cash transfers (CCTs), which was initiated in the late 1990s and reached over 40 countries by 2015 (Morais de Sa e Silva 2017). In comparison, the article will examine the diffusion of Participatory Budgeting (PB), which was first implemented in Porto Alegre in 1989 to promote radical democracy in the post-dictatorship context of Brazil. This policy got onto the international agenda in 1996 (Porto de Oliveira 2017) and now amounts to circa 11,000 cases (Dias et al. 2019).

Studies on CCTs have addressed a plethora of issues, including their impact on social indicators in various countries (Fiszbein and Schady 2009), their connection with social policy reform (Weyland 2007), their regional diffusion within Latin America and the Caribbean (Sugiyama 2011; Osorio Gonnet 2018), or the political implications of their adoption (Baez et al. 2012; Coêlho 2012). Meanwhile, PB scholars have tried to provide a typology of different models of citizen participation adopted by cities around the world (Sintomer et al. 2012), and to discuss the ambiguities presented by different designs advocated by agents (Ganuza and Baiocchi 2012). Peck and Theodore (2015) were pioneers in comparing CCTs and PB. They argue that the diffusion of both models is the representation of “fast policy”, “a policymaking condition characterized by the intensified and instantaneous connectivity of sites, channels, arenas and nodes of policy development, evolution, and reproduction” (p. 223). By adopting a longer timeframe and looking past policy adoption, this article will problematize and complexify the global diffusion of CCTs and PB.

CCTs and PB represent examples of both high and lasting transnational policy circulation, offering good comparison cases for analysis for different reasons. First, they were both developed in the Global South and spread worldwide. Second, various agents have been involved in transferring these policies, forming different generations of advocates. Third, they were both recognized as best practices. Fourth, models have not remained intact, but were adjusted along their traveling journeys. Fifth, they are different on what regards the level of implementation, PB being mainly a municipal policy, while CCTs have been mostly implemented at the national level. This also implies that the circuits (e.g. agents, networks, and sites) of policy diffusion can be different (Porto de Oliveira 2022). Sixth, their transnational trajectories have been different, with PB reaching the Global North much more than CCTs. Seventh, the scale of diffusion is distinct, PB with circa 11,000 cases and CCTs with 75 cases up to 2020. Therefore, these programs offer enough points of contact to be comparable, as well as enough distinctiveness to allow for interesting contrasts.

Two core questions guide this research: What do the past 30 years of CCT and PB diffusion tell us about the policy transfer process over time? Furthermore, what do they tell us about policy diffusion vis-à-vis the policy process? We argue that diffusion processes become increasingly more complex, breaking patterns of linearity over time. New agents advocate for different instruments, while others contest specific models; policies are translated and then might become very different from their originating idea. In spite of this, diffusion can show resilience, challenging the expected plateau illustrated in the literature by the “S” shaped curve.

A few disclaimers are in order. First, this is an “a posteriori comparison” (Montero and Baiocchi 2022) in which we draw from our previous work on CCTs and PB to analyze long-term policy diffusion. This is to say that this comparative analysis was carried out after data collection had been conducted on each case. Second, this article will not provide in-depth data on each case study, which is to be found in Morais de Sa e Silva (2017) and Porto de Oliveira (2017). Given the word limitations of the article format, this work will rather direct the reader’s attention to diffusion processes over time and to how the two cases compare in relation to those. This brings us to our third disclaimer, which concerns the intended contribution of the article. We are not seeking to make contributions to the specific literatures on PB or CCTs alone. There is a vast literature on PB, published in various specific journals of participatory democracy. The same applies to CCT studies, which have been extensively published in journals of social policy. What we are proposing in this article is to bring both empirical objects to policy transfer studies and to comparative policy analysis.

The foundational empirical data used for this article was collected separately by each of the contributing authors, who are specialized in the policy models discussed here (see Methodological Appendix). The analytical strategy relied on the process tracing of the diffusion of these two policies across time. The analysis presented allows for the understanding of how policy diffusion mutates to adapt to new global constraints in a large time scale and policy transfer space. This article relies on the analytical elements highlighted in the introduction of this Special Issue, that is: time, instruments and spaces (see Porto de Oliveira and Osorio Gonnet forthcoming). The article is divided into five sections besides this introduction. The second section presents the data sources and methodology used in the analysis. The third section addresses the various possibilities of including time in policy transfer research. The fourth and fifth sections analyze PB and CCTs along the dimensions that became salient once the effect of time was considered. The last section concludes the article by comparing the trajectories of these two models.

2. Methodological Strategy

This article traces the diffusion of two policies through time and space. It builds on previous work that demonstrated the global diffusion of CCTs and PB beginning in the 1990s (Morais de Sa e Silva 2017; Porto de Oliveira 2017) and follows up on their diffusion processes since 2013. As indicated above, CCTs and PB offer good cases since both models have not only achieved a longevity of various decades, but also because their transnational diffusion has equally spanned multiple decades and continents.

As models that have received significant international attention, CCTs and PB have been the object of various studies (Weyland 2007; Fiszbein and Schady 2009; Sugiyama 2011; Baez et al. 2012; Coêlho 2012; Ganuza and Baiocchi 2012; Sintomer et al. 2012; Peck and Theodore 2015; Osorio Gonnet 2018). This article draws from such literature and from Morais de Sa e Silva (2017) and Porto de Oliveira (2017). The methodological strategy draws on a process tracing approach, which “is the technique of looking for the observable implications of hypothesized causal processes within a single case” (Bennett 2008, p. 705). We adjusted and expanded this methodology in order to sharpen its capacity to analyze policy transfers, which have a few specificities compared to other public policy phenomena. First, policy transfers are related to a deterritorialized process of public policymaking. Second, policies are not static, but move across borders. Third, policies mutate as they travel, which means that the original model is adjusted to meet the different interests of those carrying them from one place to another. Fourth, policy transfers are embedded in processes involving a plethora of domestic and international governmental and non-governmental agents. Fifth, these agents operate in both national and transnational arenas. Besides that, in our particular cases, policy transfers are embedded in two long-lasting processes of internationalization. Sixth, the rates of transfer and their intensity vary across time, meaning that policies are adopted but also abandoned along the diffusion process, which can be observed as a process of ebb and flow.

We use a process tracing strategy to observe specific elements in the transnational trajectory of policies that allow researchers to respond to research questions that depend on accessing the policy transfers under analysis. This means identifying core elements, such as specific moments along the path of diffusion, agents operating transfers, the adjustments that policies undergo along their internationalization, and how policy transfers favor some agents to the detriment of others. In our specific cases, Transnational Policy Process Tracing (TPPT) allowed us to understand – from a macro-perspective – the generations of agents involved in the diffusion process, the instruments circulating, and the different settings to which they are transferred. Tracing the path of both policies also permitted us to identify the different rhythms of policy diffusion and moments of expansion and contraction along the internationalization process. We would like to highlight that the comparison is not about CCTs and PBs as policy models, but rather about the transnational processes these experiences followed over time (see Robinson 2022 for the idea of comparing transnational processes).

Our analysis is supported by the use of various databases (see Methodological Appendix) and existing literature. Morais de Sa e Silva has worked on updating, for this article, the database built on all existing CCT programs in the world and originally published in 2017 with data up to 2016 (Morais de Sa e Silva 2017). Data presented in this article follows up on CCT programs from 2016 to 2020. Meanwhile, Porto de Oliveira has conducted research on PB since 2006, following experiences in different cities across the globe, conducting interviews with key agents, participant observation in municipalities and transnational events, and collecting documents (Porto de Oliveira 2017). In spite of the differences in data collection and the fact that these two research projects were conducted separately, both have focused on the diffusion processes of their respective policies. This approach is similar to what has been called in the literature “a posteriori comparison” (Montero and Baiocchi 2022), insofar as our cases were selected after our main research projects were completed. As discussed in the next section, our research compares processes instead of spatially bounded units.

3. Analytical Framework

Policy transfer studies have grown significantly. However, time and the effect of time have not been comprehensively explored in depth by the literature. The inclusion of the time dimension opens new avenues for analysis. Time may give a sense of the rhythm of: adoption; implementation; evaluation; and diffusion. Policy transfer scholars in education have looked at diffusion processes that conform to what epidemiologists call “the lazy S-curve” (Steiner-Khamsi 2004). This means that early adopters slowly borrow a policy model, then diffusion quickly picks up the pace, followed by late adopters that moderate the curve, which eventually stabilizes at a plateau. In the two models analyzed in this paper, policies do not seem to have respected the S-curve, insofar as the post-plateau phase has arrived in the case of CCTs while for PB it has not even reached a plateau yet.

Our study introduces the notion of the transnational policy process. Drawing on the definition of policy process introduced by Weible (2018, p. 2), we refer to the Transnational Policy Process as the transnational “interactions that occur over time between public policies and the surrounding agents, events, contexts and outcomes”. Policies traveling across borders is one of the key components of the transnational policy process. From our perspective, we are interested in a fluid and long movement that we call the “lifetime of policy diffusion”, where it is possible to observe multiple itineraries and rhythms of adoptions, as well as the different moments in which distinct agents participate and change the content of the policy instrument. From this dynamic perspective one could consider how international policy models, ideas, and agents influence and impact each stage in the transnational policy process. That means transfer may not be a one-time event that only happens at the initial stages of the policy life cycle. It may be a rather continuous process in which domestic policymaking intertwines with international policy circulation. In looking at CCTs and PBs, this paper attempts to work from this more dynamic perspective.

The introduction of time in the analysis of the past 30 years of the circulation of PB and CCT programs allowed for the identification of common themes that emerged from various iterations of policy transfers. Those themes are the outcome of our comparative analysis, rather than our point of departure, following a grounded theory approach.

1. The long-lasting value of the best practice label: this process is related to the capacity of diffused policies to attract attention and adopters for a long period of time, both at their original sites and elsewhere.

2. Generations of policy diffusion: they refer to the different and sometimes coexisting generations of adopters of a diffused policy. Their experiences reflect the time of adoption.

3. Ebb and flow: policy adoptions and terminations occur all the time. The idea of ebb and flow allows us to better capture the unstable number of places implementing a policy model at a specific moment in time.²

4. The hollowing out of a policy model: after some time of diffusion, what defines a policy model is reduced to a few core features. Any agent can “fill in” the model with their own content.

4. Comparative Analysis: Participatory Budgeting (PB)

The city of Porto Alegre in Brazil is well-known for the presence of a vibrant civil society. In the 1980s, social movements were asserting more participation in public affairs. It was in this decade that Brazil transitioned to democracy. Among different political forces, the Workers Party (PT) was leading the progressive agenda. PT advocated for investment in social policies, as well as a compromise with participatory democracy (Porto de Oliveira 2017). This was the so-called “PT way of government” (Bittar 1992). When PT won the elections in Porto Alegre, the Mayor Olívio Dutra decided to create a mechanism to bring citizens closer to public policymaking and PB was implemented. With the idea of radicalizing democracy, PB was a policy instrument to include citizens in the process of budgetary allocation (Genro and Souza 1997).

During PT’s first years in Porto Alegre, all the work was dedicated to designing and perfecting PB. Through a complex methodology involving regional assemblies in neighborhoods, as well as central forums with municipal staff, that combined both direct and representative democracy, PB innovated the way of governing the city (Cabannes 2004). Besides deepening democracy, PB also brought two important results. On the one hand, it allowed public services to move from the city centers to the periphery of the city, where they were most needed. In fact, the policy was first conceived in Porto Alegre to serve as an instrument of social justice and democracy. On the other hand, it favored the reelection of PT for three consecutive terms in Porto Alegre, ruling the city for 16 years.

In 2004, PT lost the municipal elections. The newly elected mayor, José Fogaça, at the time affiliated to the center-right Popular Socialist Party (PPS – Partido Popular Socialista), based his political campaign on the idea of promoting changes in the city management, but promising the maintenance of PB, which was a popular policy in Porto Alegre. However, during his term the performance of PB worsened and the accountability dimension receded (Rennó and Souza 2012, p. 248). Subsequent mayors also discredited PB, which progressively became a marginal policy in Porto Alegre. This was the case for a large number of other cities in Brazil as well. In recent years PB has been retrenching in Brazil (Spada 2014).

4.1 The Long-Lasting Value of the Best-Practice Label

It was during the term of Tarso Genro (PT) that the international engagement to promote PB started. In 1996 PB was recognized by the United Nations as one of the 42 best practices in urban governance in the Habitat II Conference in Istanbul (Genro and Souza 1997, p. 74). During the 1990s Porto Alegre created an institutional apparatus to promote PB abroad, with a Secretary of Fundraising and later a Secretary of International Relations. Through these institutions the city contacted international organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank. In 1999, during the third term of PT, under the rule of Mayor Raul Pont, the municipality organized an international conference on participatory democracy, with mayors and delegates from Latin America and Europe, as well as with representatives from the UN, the World Bank, and the alliance of municipalities.

Two years later, during Genro’s second term, the first World Social Forum (WSF) was held in Porto Alegre, bringing different social movements, NGOs, and political authorities to the city, which became a showcase for PB (Porto de Oliveira 2017). This movement of branding a local policy abroad and creating different fronts of action, such as creating transnational networks, participating in and hosting global events, running for awards, and fundraising from international organizations was a strategy built by the PT, helping to insert PB into the global agenda.

For several years Porto Alegre was a place of pilgrimage for those interested in citizen democracy or PB. Policy tours of bureaucrats, politicians, civil society activists, and journalists have been occurring since the early 1990s, even when PB started to be dismantled by other parties (Siqueira and Marzulo 2020).³ In spite of the weakening of PB in Porto Alegre, the different administrations capitalized on the legacy of the experience to promote international leverage. For example, in 2019, during the right-wing administration of Mayor Marchesan, the city organized an international seminar to celebrate the 30 years of PB. In spite of the domestic abandonment of PB, its international recognition is remarkable.

4.2 Generations of Policy Diffusion

It is possible to identify three different generations of PB diffusion. As the policy spread to very different contexts around the world (Global North and South) in rural and urban areas, the speed of adoption, as well as the trends, the innovations, the adjustments to and abandonment of experiences varied greatly.

4.2.1 Early Adopters

The first development is related to the initial engagement of Porto Alegre to put PB on the international agenda. In the 1990s mayors from PT were constantly organizing events, activities in cooperation with other cities in Latin America and Europe (such as Rosario in Argentina, Montevideo in Uruguay, Saint-Denis in France, Barcelona in Spain, among others) and using roadshows to present the experience abroad. This was the first generation of “ambassadors of PB”. Porto Alegre’s proactive international engagement fostered the activities of important transnational networks of cities (Porto de Oliveira 2015), such as Mercocities, the Local Authorities Forum for Social Inclusion and Participatory Democracy, and the network Democratize Radically Democracy. Porto Alegre also had an important role in the creation of the United Cities and Local Governments’ Social Inclusion and Participatory Democracy Commission.

The early adopters of PB were especially cities in Latin America and Europe that were ideologically aligned with the PT in Porto Alegre at that time. They are associated with the “myth of Porto Alegre”, a place where radical democracy was achieved and where people really had the power to decide in politics. In Latin America, indigenous leaders and left-wing parties were very interested in the idea, for example in Cotacachi and Cuenca in Ecuador, or in Villa El Salvador in Peru (McNulty 2012; Porto de Oliveira 2017). Meanwhile in Europe, there were the French communist and socialist parties, as in Saint-Denis and Bobigny and the Spanish Albacete and Cordoba (Sintomer et al. 2008). These adopters were interested in the idea of radicalizing democracy, as well as in the effects of bringing citizens closer to public administration and elected officials. In spite of this admiration for the radical idea, in the cases where PB was emulated, it became an experience much more limited than in Porto Alegre. In France, for example, PB was translated into a selective public hearing in various cases.

These generations have gone through moments of crisis. Besides the case of Porto Alegre, in Spain in 2011 political changes following an electoral cycle led to an abandonment of PB experiences implemented by the early adopters (Dias et al. 2019).

4.2.2 Millennial and Post-Millennial Adopters

The second generation, which we can also refer to as the Millennial adopters, came later, once PB was already on the international agenda. We can locate here the experiences that arose in Africa, Asia, and the United States, as well as the new cases emerging in Europe. These adopters are more disconnected from the experience of Porto Alegre compared to the previous generation, and the original political content starts to disappear. In the first decades of 2000, PB was growing fast in Africa, seeing hundreds of new experiences. Part of these were ensured by international organization’s projects, such as the World Bank engagement in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, and Madagascar, for example (Goldfrank 2012; Porto de Oliveira 2017). Others are related to development cooperation, with the involvement of German and Swiss agencies. Local NGOs, such as Environnement, Développement et Action dans le Tiers Monde (Enda TM) in Senegal or the Municipal Development Programme-Eastern and Southern Africa (MDP-ESA) in Zimbabwe, were driving PB, respectively in Francophone and Anglophone countries (Porto de Oliveira 2017). Different models of PB started to proliferate to meet the social, political, and economic realities of each local context. A new wave of PB also arrived in eastern European countries, such as Poland, in 2011 (Dias et al. 2019), which later enacted a national law on PB. In 2008 PB arrived in the United States, especially in cities such as Chicago and New York. These were PB experiences in districts, implemented by elected officials, who submitted discretionary funds available for the people to decide how to implement public policies in their neighborhoods (Hagelskamp et al. 2021). South Korea also became the second country in Asia to enact national legislation for PB in 2011 (Dias et al. 2019, p. 45).

A third generation, post-Millennial, can be located around the mid-2010s with new experiences. Paris, for example, implemented PB during the mandate of Anne Hidalgo from the Socialist Party in 2014. Russia adopted PB in various regions, fostered by a partnership between the national government and the World Bank. In 2017, Portugal, where the practice had been present for a long time, innovated by scaling up PB using a national process led by the Portuguese government, with the Youth and the School PB (Dias et al. 2019, p. 172). This generation is even farther from the origins of Porto Alegre, which was no longer a model, but rather a symbol of the birthplace of a policy innovation. At this stage, PB adopters were looking to different experiences to develop their own models, especially those which became emblematic cases after Porto Alegre. Besides that, as diffusion continued over time across the world, a community of experts grew offering advice to governments and organizations. Finally, international organizations, aid agencies, NGOs, and philanthropic organizations also funded or assisted the development of new models. The result of these different generations of diffusion produced innovations within the policy instrument, on the methodologies, the scale of the process (subnational and national), and on the content of the experience. The adoption of PB is still growing and mutating.

4.3 Ebb and Flow

It is challenging to estimate the rate of PB diffusion across the globe. This is due to various factors. First, most cases are implemented at the local level and information is dispersed, often not available or hard to obtain for certain contexts. Second, experiences have different durations; sometimes they can last for a long period (as in Porto Alegre), or they can be ephemeral and last for one or two terms, being interrupted after a change of government. Finally, some PBs do not take off after the implementation, due to reasons such as, inter alia, lack of political support, insufficient funding, low civil society engagement, and policy incapacity. Experiences can also disappear in clusters, as in the case of Brazil or the aforementioned case of Spain. Finally, there are different overlapping streams of diffusion that occur following distinct intensities of adoption. The main document providing a survey of experiences is the Atlas of PB. This is, however, a snapshot of the estimated PBs at a certain moment in time. It brings together data from 70 experts from all over the globe. It does not present in depth the history (the ebb and flow) of experiences.

The latest version of the Atlas reports 11,825 experiences worldwide (Dias et al. 2019, p. 17). Our research reveals that besides the political will of local authorities to implement PB, as well as local civil society pressure to put this instrument on the governmental agenda, there have been two main forces (among others) ensuring the continuity of PB diffusion over time (for a detailed account of the global diffusion of PB see Ganuza and Baiocchi 2012; Porto de Oliveira 2017). First, there is the role of a community of policy ambassadors (Porto de Oliveira 2019), which are agents specialized in PB, who have been promoting different models across the globe for three generations. They have expertise in the political culture, administrative organization, and public policies related to their area of work and offer assistance to capacity-building and model development of PB in a single (e.g. United States, Russia, or Indonesia) or a group of countries (e.g. Francophone Africa). The second force is related to international cooperation, promoted by different governmental, non-governmental, and private organizations, as well as of national and subnational cooperation agencies, such as the World Bank, the United Nations, the European Union, Flora and Hewlett Foundation, the GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), and the Andalusian Fund of Municipalities for International Solidarity (FAMSI), among others, that have been providing not only funding but also technical support for the development of PB experiences. These agents, individuals, and organizations have been operating through the lifetime of PB diffusion, as a constant force ensuring the transmission and translation of the different ongoing models we have of PB today.

4.4 The Hollowing Out of a Policy Model

If PB was first thought of as an instrument to empower citizens, through social participation and control over the municipal budgetary process, after years of traveling this meaning was diluted, often disappearing. The original idea of radical democracy through PB found support among an international elite committed to the principles and ideas related to the WSF. However, with the expansion of PB and the engagement of the most varied agents, defending the distinct ideas and designs, progressively transformed it into a hollow policy. Such plasticity meant PB was a convenient tool for different governments to include citizens, to differing intensities, in the public policymaking process, using selective listening and community engagement, among others (see Table 2).

Models advocated by transfer agents varied greatly in terms of three core elements: (1) the participatory methods; (2) the intensity of the policy; and (3) the political project behind PB. First, participatory methods varied across cases. The length of the participatory cycle could take one year or more, depending on the experience. The type of participation also varied between direct citizen engagement and representative democracy. Voting procedures, which were firstly conducted by people raising hands in assemblies, and then used ballot papers, became increasingly complex with the inclusion of information and communication technologies.

Second, the intensity of PB also varied across cases. This can be related to the number of participants, for example from a few people attending an assembly in Brooklyn (New York) to thousands of people participating in Recife (Brazil). The portion of the budget allocated for deliberation by citizens also varies across cases. Finally, in some cases, PB had a central place on the municipal political agenda, while in others it was marginal (e.g. in the United States, it was a decision of the Alderman and not a program of the Mayor; in Peru it became a national law).

Third, the political project also changes according to the agents promoting and implementing PB. In Brazil, during the 1990s and early 2000s, PB was already being implemented by both left-wing and right-wing parties. The World Bank carried a more technical view of PB, advocating for the transparency, social control, and good governance side of the policy. As an international best practice, PB also drew the attention of non-democratic countries, being implemented in China and Russia, for example. As PB traveled in time, the original radical democracy political project disappeared and was replaced by other political meanings and policy designs along the way. Table 1 synthesizes a few of the different possibilities of translations of PB. This is far from being exhaustive regarding the universe of 11,000 experiences, but it is illustrative of some of its main features.

Table 1. Comparing the transnational diffusion of CCTs and PB

Most similar	Most different	CCTs	PB
Origin		Global South	Global South
Agents		Multiple generations of diffusion agents	Multiple generations of diffusion agents
Time of circulation		Long-lasting, since 1994.	Long-lasting, since 1989
Best practice status		Yes	Yes
Transformation of original model		Yes	Yes
	Level of implementation	Mostly national	Mostly municipal
	Geography of diffusion	Mostly to Global South	Global South and Global North
	Scale of diffusion	75 programs	11,000 cases
	Policy transfer circuits	National and local governments, individuals, international organizations, researchers, bilateral aid agencies.	City networks, individuals (e.g. academics, practitioners, mayors), participatory democracy NGOs, international organizations (e.g. World Bank, UN-Habitat), among others.

5. Comparative Analysis: Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs)

The label CCT is applied to programs that entail direct income transfers to families who fulfill predetermined requirements, such as to immunize their children, visit health clinics for periodical check-ups, and make sure children are enrolled in and are regularly attending school. Beneficiary families are part of a targeted population that is defined according to their socioeconomic status. A poverty line or income threshold is established and families below that threshold are entitled to apply to the program.

The very first CCTs emerged in the 1990s. Brazil and Mexico usually dispute the pioneering position, with both Mexico’s Progresa and Brazil’s Bolsa Escola (a predecessor of world renowned Bolsa Familia) having been created in 1995. However, the real pioneer program was created in Bangladesh, in 1994.⁴

In the 1990s, when these first CCTs were created, many Latin American countries were struggling to recover from the lost decade of the 1980s, as well as from high indebtedness and increased poverty rates. Internationally, development discourses and practices had also shifted from a single focus on economic growth to a basic needs approach. At the World Bank, poverty reduction increasingly became an important part of the Bank’s mandate and lending (see Leite et al. 2022). In the late 1990s and early 2000s, structural adjustment programs were replaced by the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, also known as PRSPs. At the United Nations, poverty reduction became the number one objective among the Millennium Development Goals, approved in 2001. These are a few examples of the international convergence that occurred at the time and that put poverty reduction at the top of the international development agenda. If, on the one hand, there was (and there still is) disagreement among development economists in terms of how to achieve economic development, at the political level states and international organizations converged on setting the reduction of poverty as a top international priority.

It was in this international context and climate that CCTs became the buzzword in development policy. In the timespan of 20 years, specifically from 1994 to 2015, 75 different CCT programs were adopted in 40 countries (Morais de Sa e Silva 2017). To put those figures into perspective, that means that one-fifth of all countries and one-third of all low-income and middle-income countries had adopted a CCT program.

5.1 The Long-Lasting Value of the Best-Practice Label

This analysis draws from a database created by one of the authors in 2009 and regularly updated since then. Up to 2015, CCTs had been found in 40 countries (Morais de Sa e Silva 2017), most of them in the Global South. Since then, tracking of CCTs around the world has indicated that they have steadily remained at high levels of diffusion, still reaching 37 countries by 2020. Hence, CCTs have existed for over 25 years, regardless of whether one considers that the first program emerged in Mexico in 1995 (Progresa), in Brazil in 1995 (Bolsa Escola), or in Bangladesh in 1994 (Female Secondary School Assistance).⁵

In low-income countries, recent literature has suggested that unconditional programs would be preferable to CCTs due to the administrative costs involved in monitoring conditionalities (Benhassine et al. 2015). Nonetheless, in 2015 there were CCTs in 11 African countries, compared to unconditional transfers in 9 countries. Five years later, in 2020, CCTs were still present in 10 African countries, whereas unconditional cash transfers only remained in 6 (see Table 3). Interestingly, the model seems to have survived the test of time in comparison to some of the existing alternatives.

Table 2. Participatory budgeting – translations

Participatory methods	Intensity of the policy instrument	Political content
Voting procedures (raising hands, ballot paper, digital)	Deliberation (people decide policies to be implemented)	Radical democracy
Duration of the cycle (one year, two years)	Consultation (elected officials and staff hear the opinions of citizens)	Social justice
Participatory method (digital, in person)	Number of participants attending PB meetings, gender, social class, etc.	(Good) governance
Direct participation, representation	Budget (how much money is on the table for citizens to discuss)	Transparency and Social control
Citizens’ role (delegates, councilors)	Important policy on the municipal agenda, national law, district initiative	Accountability

Table 3. Conditional and unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) in African countries: 2015/2020

	CCTs 2015	CCTs 2020	UCTs 2015	UCTs 2020
Botswana			Orphan Care Program
Congo	LISUNGI Safety Nets Project
Egypt	Takaful
Ghana	Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty
Guinea	Cash Transfer for Health, Nutrition and Education
Kenya			Cash Transfers for Orphans and Vulnerable Children
Lesotho			Cash Transfer Program for Orphans and Vulnerable Children
Madagascar	Le Transfert Monétaire Conditionnel
Malawi			Malawi Social Cash Transfer Scheme
Morocco	Direct Assistance to Widows in a Precarious Situation with Dependent Children
Namibia			Child Maintenance Grant
Nigeria	In Care of the Poor
Senegal	Conditional Cash Transfer for Orphans and Vulnerable Children
Senegal	Programme National de Bourses de Sécurité Familiale
South Africa	CCT to Support Vulnerable Children in the Context of HIV/AIDS and Poverty		Child Support Grant (CSG)
Tanzania	Community-based Conditional Cash Transfer		The Productive Social Safety Net
Tunisia	Programme National d’Aide aux Familles Nécessiteuses
Uganda			Social Assistance Grants for Empowerment (SAGE)
Zimbabwe			Harmonised Social Cash Transfer (HSCT) Program

Table prepared by authors.

5.2 Generations of Policy Diffusion

5.2.1 Early Adopters

In the CCT diffusion process, most early adopters were Latin American countries. Such regional diffusion was related to the role of international organizations operating in the region, especially the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, which made loans available to countries willing to adopt a CCT. Once adopted, Latin American CCTs were sustained by progressive governments that took office in the early 2000s in the region, the so-called “pink tide”. Those governments were elected on a platform of economic inclusion and CCTs were the tool to achieve poverty reduction in the short run.

In Mexico, one of the cradles of the CCT model, the program has been altered every time a new federal administration takes office. In some cases the change was mostly symbolic and political, such as when Progresa became Oportunidades in 2002. In more recent times, the name change – from Prospera to Becas Benito Juarez – came with a profound change that has been considered by some to represent the dismantling of Mexico’s long-lived CCT program (Kidd 2019). However, the Becas Benito Juarez program preserves the core elements of a CCT: it is a cash-based, targeted, and conditional income transfer.

In Brazil, even before Jair Bolsonaro was elected, his predecessor Michel Temer had begun tinkering with possibilities of adjusting Bolsa Familia’s design. There were audits of the program’s 14 million beneficiary families to identify cases of fraud⁶ (which failed to find significant numbers); considerations of including internship requirements for adolescents; and a decision not to significantly increase the number of beneficiary families. Those challenges grew stronger with Bolsonaro’s election, as his supporters accused the program of having reduced beneficiaries’ willingness to work (Kawauchi 2019).

However, the CCT model survived in Brazil amidst Bolsonaro’s early rhetoric and the rage of his supporters against the program and its beneficiaries. The economic effects of the pandemic and the distribution of stimulus payments beyond the Bolsa Familia beneficiary pool helped to establish the importance of cash transfers as an anti-cyclical measure to contain poverty and to boost demand. In late 2021, Bolsonaro not only maintained the CCT model, but also expanded the number of beneficiary families and payment amounts, rebranding the program as Auxilio Brasil (Brazil Assistance). President Lula, on his third month in office, reverted to the Bolsa Familia name and to the program’s original conditionalities.

It is surprising that, despite the various attempts to change CCTs in early adopters such as Brazil and Mexico, the core model remains in place in those countries that are considered to have been the cradle of CCTs. Even in Mexico, where the current government of Lopez Obrador dismantled the country’s long-standing Prospera program, it was actually replaced with the Becas Benito Juarez, which still carries the targeted, conditional, and cash-based model. Overall, Latin America and the Caribbean remain a flourishing ground for these programs. Of the 20 countries in the region with a CCT, not a single early adopter has abandoned its CCT policy.⁷

5.2.2 Millennial and Post-Millennial Adopters

After considerable diffusion in Latin America (Osorio Gonnet 2018), other countries followed in Asia and in Africa. Starting around 2005, a new wave of experimental programs was tested in various countries, the majority of them with funding from foreign aid. According to a publication by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, until 2017 there had been randomized evaluations of CCTs in 12 countries (J-Pal 2017). Besides the presence of international organizations and development aid agencies, what was distinctive in this generation of “millennial adopters” was the experimental nature of these programs, their smaller scope vis-à-vis national programs elsewhere, and the participation of scholars from the Global North in their design and evaluation.

With CCTs being initially promoted and facilitated by international development banks, most of the early knowledge production on these programs had also come from studies commissioned or conducted by these organizations. In this generation of millennial adopters, there was involvement by scholars based in elite schools in the Global North, especially in the United States, whose role was to study the impact of the experimental CCTs they had designed. Examples include Bogota’s Subsidios Condicionados a la Asistencia Escolar, which involved researchers from Columbia University and the University of Chicago, and funding from the Inter-American Development Bank (Barrera-Osorio et al. 2011); New York City’s Opportunity NYC, which was designed and evaluated by a think tank and operated on private funding (Riccio et al. 2013); and an experimental program “labeled cash transfer”⁸ in Morocco, funded by the World Bank and evaluated by Nobel Prize winner Esther Duflo (Benhassine et al. 2015).

Millennial adopters were anchored on the idea of evidence-based policymaking and the premise that randomized controlled trials offered the only possibility of detection of whether a policy model was worth the public investment. Research findings were published in academic peer-reviewed journals, but it is not clear whether governments have adopted the experiments as public policy.

Hype around CCTs seems to have returned recently, as the Covid pandemic indicated the need for income transfers that could help individuals cope with the economic effects of lockdowns and job loss. The International Policy Center for Inclusive Growth tracked all “social protection responses to Covid-19 in the Global South” (IPC-IG 2021). Of the total 1,082 responses that were analyzed, 476 were cash-based. Of those, 140 were emergency cash transfers and 62 were unconditional cash transfers. As the pandemic led to the closure of schools and to challenges for the fulfillment and verification of conditionalities, the line between conditional and unconditional cash transfers became blurred, with 7 per cent of all social protection responses involving the waiving of conditionalities (IPC-IG 2021).

5.3 Ebb and Flow

Tracking the number of CCT programs ever in existance and tracking those under implementation at a given moment has been a challenging task carried out by only a few researchers and research institutes. Given the dynamic diffusion of this policy model and the features of the various generations of diffusion, differences emerge in some of the accounts of total numbers. Morais de Sa e Silva (2017) identified 75 programs in 40 countries whereas Gentilini et al. (2014) identified 52 programs in 52 countries. The difference stems from two major factors: (i) when the tally is done and what timeframe is considered; and (ii) what operational definition of CCTs is used. If one were to combine the data in Gentilini et al. (2014) and Morais de Sa e Silva (2017), there would be a total of 61 countries that would have implemented a CCT program at least once at any given time.

Even though this might be considered an easy task, with CCTs being broadly defined as targeted, cash-based, and conditional programs, in practice there are borderline cases that might impact the number of programs and countries that are counted. For instance, are scholarship programs considered CCTs? Or is the CCT designation exclusive to programs that are means tested, being targeted on the basis of household income rather than on other individual characteristics? Does the temporary waiving of conditionalities mean the termination of the CCT model in a specific location? Clearly, in this case, transnational policy process tracing requires transnational data collection, as well as knowledge of the diffused policy model and the many translations it may acquire in different contexts at different times.

5.4 The Hollowing Out of a Policy Model

The CCT policy model has acquired various translations in the places where it has been implemented, from New York’s language about cash rewards to Brazil’s language about social rights (Morais de Sa e Silva 2017); from Bangladesh’s focus on girls education⁹ to Senegal’s protection of orphaned and vulnerable children.¹⁰ Different translations have also meant diversity in program design, with some programs disbursing double-digit payments every month to families’ accounts, while others make one-time triple-digit payments for specified activities.

So what is really being transferred across national boundaries if so many translations coexist? There are only three pillars that have remained intact, outside of which the program or policy no longer conforms to the core CCT model. First, these are not universal programs but rather targeted programs directed to a percentage of the population that is usually in the poorest income tiers. That is what distinguishes CCTs from universal basic income (UBI) policies. Second, benefits are not in-kind assistance or services but are rather cash-based, with the transferred income being available for any kind of use that the beneficiary may deem appropriate. This is what sets CCTs apart from school feeding programs, food distribution, food stamps, and traditional social services provided by social workers. Third, there is a condition attached to the transfer. Within a framework of human development, which gained significant strength in the 1990s, conditions are expected to help break the intergenerational cycle of poverty by building the human capital of younger generations. The alternative, in this case, would correspond to unconditional transfers and non-contributory pensions.

6. Concluding Thoughts and Future Avenues for Research

As we look at the histories of internationally diffused policies like PB and CCTs, it becomes apparent that time bears some weight. As time goes by, diffusion stories become increasingly complex, new agents emerge in new spaces, while “old” agents in “old” places promote new meanings. As one observes the trajectories taken by PB and CCTs over time, four issues can be highlighted: (i) The long-lasting value of the best-practice label; (ii) Generations of policy diffusion; (iii) Ebb and flow; and (iv) The hollowing out of a policy model. These themes emerged from a comparative analysis of the transnational policy processes of both policy models. Their similarities and differences in the diffusion process, alongside those four themes, are summarized in Table 4.

Table 4. Emerging themes from case comparison

	Participatory Budgeting	Conditional Cash Transfers
(i) The long-lasting value of the best-practice label	PB resisted the first changes of administration in Porto Alegre. However, it was progressively dismantled and nowadays it is in its process of extinction in Brazil.	CCTs have resisted several changes of administration in various countries.
(ii) Generations of policy diffusion	First generation of adopters of PB were socialists and communist cities in Latin America and Europe, aligned with the ideas of radicalizing democracy implemented by Porto Alegre. The Millennial adopters came later and refer especially to adoptions in Africa and Eastern Europe, the experience of Porto Alegre is ceasing to be a reference. The post-Millennials are the recent experiences that arose in the United States, but also in Europe and Asia. These are experiences on their own with no connection to the original model.	Early adopters have had their CCTs challenged by domestic political forces, but have maintained core program features. More recent CCT adoptions (Millennium adopters) have taken the form of randomized control trials funded by the Global North, whereas post-Millennium adopters have appeared in the wake of the Covid pandemic.
(iii) Ebb and flow	The number of PB cases has been growing continuously. Different experiences have been terminated and new ones have been created.	The state of CCT diffusion is dynamic, with a few programs being terminated and new ones being created.
(iv) The hollowing out of a policy model	In the beginning PB was associated with a radical democracy political project. Wherever it traveled the practice acquired different meanings, such as social control and community development. Nowadays, PB is implemented even in non-democratic countries.	Determining what qualifies as a CCT has become a more challenging exercise as the diffusion process has resulted in great variation. Variation has led to the model being defined only by its nature of a targeted, cash-based, and conditional program.

Diffused policies have been contested in their countries of origin and yet have shown incredible resilience. Their international prominence helps hold them in place at the domestic level. Over time, policymakers retain the policy brand name and symbolism of a transferred policy model, although policy content may have been considerably altered. Even in this scenario, policymakers and government officials remain part of the wider international community supporting, researching, or financing the policy model in circulation. In this process, the diffusion of CCTs and PB has involved transformations in their social role. What the future holds for those policy models is not yet clear and continuous research will be needed, although it seems that the Covid-19 pandemic has made those policy solutions ever more necessary.

Alongside new processes of policy adoption, early adopters go through their own processes of policy change, mostly of an incremental nature. This creates an increasing number of places that have adopted a diffused policy, although that number does not represent a single standard. Concerns around standardization or policy isomorphism are, therefore, unwarranted. The idea of “fast policy” (Peck and Theodore 2015) hence becomes contested by the observation of a longue durée of policy transfer. As much as globalization might produce a sense of quick standardization, the stories behind transfer processes are, at any point in time, much more complicated. This longue durée of policy transfer indicates that, over time, policy transfer becomes intertwined with the very processes of push and pull that characterize the policy process. Policy transfer permeates the policy process, rather than punctuates it.

Researching the ebb and flow of diffused policies is not an easy task. We acknowledge our limited ability, in this paper, to offer a comprehensive representation of the exact number of adopted PB and CCTs programs over the past 30 years. Nonetheless, we would argue that it is important to take notice of the dynamic nature of diffusion processes, with diffused policies being terminated in some countries while they are adopted, often in different formats and meanings, somewhere else. It is highly important that diffusion researchers be able to establish projects that continuously follow up on the policies of their expertise, so that analysis is not limited to a snapshot that is circumscribed by a specific point in time. For the Brazilian case in particular, the recent election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva might be an opportunity for the country to reestablish a leading role in the development and diffusion of participatory and social policies. If this happens, it would be important to track which transformations and innovations the ancient models will go through and the transnational strategies that will emerge in the current global society.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michelle Morais de Sá e Silva

Michelle Morais de Sa e Silva is Associate Professor of International and Area Studies and Co-Director of the Center for Brazil Studies at the University of Oklahoma. She is also Vice-President of the International Public Policy Association (IPPA). Dr Morais received her PhD from Columbia University and her MA in Development Studies from the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, The Netherlands. She has a BA in International Relations from the University of Brasilia. Dr. Morais is the author of the book Poverty Reduction, Education, and the Global Diffusion of Conditional Cash Transfers (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

Osmany Porto de Oliveira

Osmany Porto de Oliveira is Tenured Assistant Professor in the International Relations Department at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP). He holds a PhD in Political Science, from the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris III (2015) and a PhD from the University of São Paulo (2013). His research centers on policy diffusion and development cooperation. He received the Early Career Award of the International Public Policy Association – IPPA (Montreal, Canada, 2019). His main books are: Brazil and China in Knowledge and Policy Transfer (Palgrave, 2022), with G. Romano; Handbook of Policy Transfer, Diffusion and Circulation (Edward Elgar, 2021); Latin America and Policy Diffusion (Routledge, 2020), with C. Osorio, S. Montero and C. Leite; International Policy Diffusion and Participatory Budgeting (Palgrave, 2017). He is also Associate Editor of Policy Sciences and member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Policy and Politics.

Notes

1. Existing literature has used a variety of terminologies to refer to traveling policies. The terms transfer, diffusion, and circulation will be used interchangeably here.

2. The authors don’t have all the data regarding the international experiences through the years. Information about the creation and interruption of PB experiences is particularly challenging to obtain, insofar as this policy is mostly implemented in municipalities. In spite of this, our data points to the fact that experiences follow this movement of ebb and flow, when observed over a long time.

3. The website of Porto Alegre states that a visit of a delegation from Tehran, occurred in 2012: http://www2.portoalegre.rs.gov.br/smgl/default.php?p_noticia=153373&ORCAMENTO+PARTICIPATIVO+E+APRESENTADO+A+DELEGACAO+DE+TEERA (consulted June 23, 2022).

4. See https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P009555?lang=en

5. The origins of the Bangladeshi program actually date back to 1982.

6. See https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2016/05/1771006-temer-divulgara-subfuncionamento-de-programas-sociais-na-gestao-dilma.shtml.

7. Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay.

8. Labeled cash transfers are a modified version of CCTs. School enrollment and attendance are not formal requirements and are not monitored.

9. https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P009555?lang=en.

10. https://socialprotection.org/discover/programmes/conditional-cash-transfer-orphans-and-vulnerable-children.

Methodological Appendix

Table

Database description used for PB: Research on PB was conducted from 2007 to 2019. Different sorts of material were gathered, such as official documents, interviews, field-notes, images, videos, bibliography. This material was used to discuss the lifetime of PB diffusion. A summary of the research activities conducted can be found below and a detailed account of this process can be found in Porto de Oliveira (2017). Interviews (128) conducted between 2007 and 2019, with political authorities, academics, stakeholders, civil society, international organization staff, transnational network employees. These interviews were used to collect information about how PB was internationalized from Porto Alegre, which agents were involved in this process and what facilitated and obstructed the processes of its adoption. Participant observation in transnational conferences: World Social Forum (Belém, Brazil, 2009), 10th World Congress of Metropolis (Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2011), 2nd Annual PB in the US and Canada conference (Chicago, USA, 2013), 6th Africities Summit (Dakar, Senegal, 2012), United Nations Habitat – II (Quito, Ecuador, 2016), 19th International Observatory of Participatory Democracy Conference (Iztapalapa, Mexico, 2019). Cities visited: Guarulhos, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Recife (Brazil); Maputo (Mozambique), Johannesburg (South Africa), Dakar (Senegal), New York, Chicago (USA), Iztapalapa (Mexico), Paris, Saint-Denis (France); Lima, Villa El Salvador (Peru); Quito, Cotacachi (Ecuador) Organizations visited: World Bank (Washington, Nairobi), United Nations Habitat (Quito, Nairobi), UCLG (Barcelona). Database used for CCTs: Data on all existing CCTs has been collected since 2009. The database includes the following variables: Program name, region, country, government institution, funding source, scope, education conditions, beginning year, and ending year. The database has been constantly updated by Morais de Sá e Silva and her research team. Most recent updates also included a special focus on CCTs in Africa and the hypothesized emergence of UBI (Universal Basic Income) as an alternative to the CCT model. The database contains data on 75 CCT programs across 45 countries. In-depth research was carried out on three CCT cases, with field research in the respective city/country: Bolsa Familia in Brasilia, Opportunity NYC in New York, and Subsisdios Condicionados a la Asistencia Escolar in Bogota, Colombia.