Subnational Brazilian Everyday and Pandemic Politics
Alison Post, Professor
Political Science
Applications for Spring 2024 are closed for this project.
Despite historical experience and health state capacity, Brazil has struggled to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas past administrations have proactively mobilized resources to combat pandemics, Bolsanaro’s administration has taken a more passive role, claiming that the negative effects of quarantine measures outweigh positive benefits. The lack of a federal response allowed state governors to decide how to handle the pandemic in their respective territories. In some cases, state governors, across different political parties, banded together to procure vaccinations for their citizens. At the municipal level, mayors have varied in their implementation of public health guidance and support for their citizens.
What explains subnational variation in the enactment of public politics aimed at addressing the pandemic? Brazil’s decentralized health system created new opportunities for citizens, bureaucrats, and politicians to engage each other. The federal government provided local health systems autonomy over their resources and management. Brazil’s decentralized system has created short- and long-term effects, not only in everyday health politics, but also in the institutional climate of medical and non-medical interventions during pandemics.
Current studies on Brazil have almost exclusively focused on state responses (see Castro et al. (2021), de Moura Villela et al. (2021), Barberia et al. (2021), Barberia et al. (2020)). Even studies who have looked at municipal responses to COVID 19 (see de Souza Santos et al. (2021)) exclusively rely on survey data and do not provide political explanations for why certain municipalities enacted all, some, or none of the possible policies against the coronavirus.
Role: Students will be responsible for the following tasks:
1)Downloading, reading, and coding government decrees from Brazilian municipalities in the states São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Bahia using municipal government websites.
2)Collection of newspaper articles, social media, and government recordings of COVID-19 proceedings in 6 case studies.
3)Transcription and translation of audio interviews using artificial intelligence.
4)Preliminary analysis of council member, civil society, and mayoral interviews using artificial intelligence (e.g. ChatGPT). Students will then be responsible for verifying conclusions made by reading the transcription and translation of these interviews.
Qualifications: Required
-Attention to detail and being thorough, especially when acquiring sources and coding data.
-Basic understanding on how to conduct online searches and ability to manipulate social media features. For example, using filters on Facebook to narrow searches to a particular year. Students should be able to navigate websites like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
-Self-motivated. Students should not be waiting until the last minute to complete tasks.
-Creative. Students should feel empowered to propose new or alternative ways to conduct searches or find new sources of data.
-Have a clear understanding of their limitations and range. Students should not have previously committed to other academic and non-academic activities which can adversely affect their performance on this project.
Desirable but not essential
-Ability to read Spanish or Portuguese, particularly for Tasks 3 and 4.
-Interest in health politics and/or Latin America.
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Adan Steve Martinez, Ph.D. candidate
Hours: 3-5 hrs
Off-Campus Research Site: Because Adan is currently in Brazil for Fall 2023, we will discuss and a time where we could collectively work on the project over Zoom. The goal is to hold each other accountable and avoid working at the last minute.
Social Sciences Biological & Health Sciences