What explains equity-enhancing reforms under centre-right governments? Evidence from Brazil

Inequality levels declined across Latin America between the 1990s and 2010s, but research remains incipient on how equity-enhancing initiatives sometimes emerged in centre-right governments. This article checks which mechanisms enabled education reform and cash-transfer schemes during the PSDB-led administration in Brazil (1995–2002), considering electoral competition, left-wing legislative strength, social mobilisation, and coalition dynamics. By combining multiple data sources, it is possible to observe the president promoting his party’s electoral ‘brand’ and cultivating a large multiparty alliance as the equalising policies passed through Congress. Meanwhile, leftist legislators comprised a relatively weak group, and bottom-up pressures were almost non-existent. As validity checks, the study first engages with two alternative explanations: personal leadership and bureaucratic action. Second, it proposes applying competitive elections and cross-party cooperation as possible explanatory factors for the persistence of the two analysed redistributive programmes in the governments of the left-wing Workers’ Party (2003–2016) and the far-right Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022).