Imposing significant challenges for both street‐level implementation and policy (re)design, crises alter the environment for street‐level policy entrepreneurship (SLPE), wherein street‐level bureaucrats engage in policy formulation processes to secure future policy outcomes. Nevertheless, like street‐level implementation in general, SLPE is studied during ordinary times but rarely during crises. Focusing on community‐health workers in Brazil during the Covid‐19 crisis uncovered a defensive motivation for SLPE, which aimed to legitimize community healthcare as an integral part of pandemic treatment, reforming the government's hitherto neglectful approach to community health services. Moreover, the continuing crisis created an unusually prolonged window of opportunity for securing community healthcare provision. By utilizing collective efforts and drawing on powerful politicians' mobilization, SLPE during crisis shares similarities with, yet differs from, SLPE during ordinary times, while further closing the interstices between local, professional, and political perspectives in the formulation of policy decisions.

Examining homicide across Brazil’s 5,562 municipalities, we find that violence nearby has a positive effect on local violence (diffusion effect), violence exerts an unusual negative spatial effect in small clusters of communities in northeastern Brazil, and a prominent poverty-reduction program (Bolsa Família [BF]) has mixed effects. The spatial dimensions of violence complement existing non-spatial research on violence in Brazil, and the results regarding BF offer a spatial complement to research on conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, clarifying the sources of violence in Latin America’s largest country and shedding light on the content and geographic targeting of violence reduction policies.

No abstract

The Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame has built an international reputation by bringing the best of interdisciplinary scholarly inquiry to bear on democratization, human development, and other research themes relevant to contemporary societies around the world.Together, more than 100 faculty and visiting fellows as well as both graduate and undergraduate students make up the Kellogg community of scholars. Founded in 1982, the Institute promotes research, provides students with exceptional educational opportunities, and builds linkages across campus and around the world. The Kellogg Working Paper Series:! Shares work-in-progress in a timely way before final publication in scholarly books and journals ! Includes peer-reviewed papers by visiting and faculty fellows of the Institute ! Includes a Web database of texts and abstracts in English and Spanish or Portuguese ! Is indexed chronologically, by region and by research theme, and by author ! Most full manuscripts downloadable from kellogg.nd.edu