Bringing the State(s) Back in: From Lula's Bolsa Familía to Dilma's Sem Miséria

Since Brazil’s former President Lula Ignacío da Silva launched his successful national conditional cash transfer program (CCT) known as Bolsa Familía (BF) in 2003, academics and development practitioners have been fixated on—who gets it, how are the beneficiaries identified, where does the money come from and how is it delivered, and what are the program’s impacts—usually, does it reduce poverty. Judged upon these variables, BF has been quite successful and has been widely diffused throughout Latin America. It has however, been criticized for being a rather narrow form of social protection. This paper argues that BF and like-CCTs should not be considered as ends in themselves, but rather as a means towards consolidating a broader poverty alleviation strategy that includes complementary social investment initiatives such as labour activation policies and vocational training. Within Sem Miséria, new supply-side initiatives are being grafted onto the otherwise stable framework of BF. By tracing the timing and sequencing of Brazil’s poverty alleviation initiatives over three presidents, this paper will demonstrate that Dilma’s Sem Miséria is an institutionally feasible next step in expanding Brazil’s social investment strategy beyond CCTs, a strategy that is dependent both here and elsewhere on cross-sectorial and intergovernmental collaboration.