When incumbents successfully retrench big and popular social policies: policy design matters

Under what conditions do incumbents succeed in curtailing programs benefitting large constituencies of low-income voters? We undertake a within-country comparison of four highly popular cash transfer policies in Brazil in the 2010s. Our contribution is threefold. First, we refine the concept of policy drift by distinguishing executive-driven drift (resulting from incumbents’ decisions) from opposition-driven drift (resulting from the veto power of welfare opponents). The latter results from the dispersion of authority; the former is favored by its concentration. Second, we show that executive-driven drift is a successful strategy when programs give incumbents discretion over entitlement and benefits, meaning authority to make unilateral decisions. Third, we argue that executive-driven drift explains retrenchment outcomes better than partisan orientation, size of program’s clientele, and fiscal impacts. Incumbents were more successful in their retrenchment initiatives when concentration of authority in the executive branch allowed them to bypass legislative and judicial veto points.