Bureaucratic autonomy and policy change: mid-level bureaucrats and implementation coalitions promoting and sustaining pro-poor policy in Brazil

In this thesis I examine the role of mid-level bureaucrats in promoting and sustaining pro-poor policies. Based on a case study of a ten-year policy implementation process in Brazil's contested field of land rights and environmental management, I identify and analyse mid-level bureaucrats’ skills and strategies used in their interaction with state and non-state policy actors to support policy adaptation and continuity. The policy is the Environmental Rural Registry (Cadastro Ambiental Rural, CAR), which unexpectedly acquired and sustained new pro-poor elements during its implementation. My investigation covers its implementation over ten years, between 2012 and 2021, a period that was marked by a series of political shifts. Using a conceptual framework that links bureaucratic autonomy, policy coalitions and policy change, the thesis interrogates how mid-level bureaucrats autonomously promote and sustain pro-poor policy. In this thesis I demonstrate that mid-level bureaucrats can do more than simply resist policy dismantling. They can go further, promoting policy changes and subsequently leading a coalition to sustain those changes. The thesis argues that mid-level bureaucrats’ ability to do so depends on their capacity to act autonomously. Diverse implementation coalitions provide the political legitimacy that mid-level bureaucrats need to be able to act without regard to government's preferences. The power of these coalitions to provide such political legitimacy can be enhanced by mid-level bureaucrats' political skills and capacity to follow a horizontal and flexible management strategy. When these factors apply during implementation, the resulting coalition plays a significant role in adapting and sustaining pro-poor policy. The transparency and legality of such strategies, and as a consequence their efficacy in the long term, are questionable. Nevertheless, it is a significant phenomenon that has hitherto been under-examined by the literature.