Sara Niedzwiecki
Biographic Data
| ID | 392067 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sara Niedzwiecki |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sara |
| FAMILY NAME | Niedzwiecki |
| SIGNATURE | NIEDZWIECKI S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Santa Cruz |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0088-0784 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 212 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Immigrants’ Barriers to Accessing Social Policy in Argentina and Chile
Much attention has been paid to how immigrants are incorporated into welfare states in the Global North, but the Global South has been overlooked. This article studies barriers that immigrants face when accessing social policy in middle-income South American countries with high rates of immigration. With a focus on Chile and Argentina, I argue that immigrants’ barriers to accessing social policy depend on political elites’ views—as policies are e…
Workshopping Mixed Methods: Ten Years of the Southwest Workshop for Mixed Methods Research
This article reflects on the first 10 years of the Southwest Workshop for Mixed Methods Research (SWMMR), which was created to foster methodological pluralism and rigor in political science and related fields. Since its founding, SWMMR has helped to develop mixed methods research while prioritizing diversity, equity, inclusion, and mentorship. The article highlights the annual workshop’s role in building an intellectual community while supporting…
Mobilizing Teachers. Education Politics and the New Labor Movement in Latin America by Christopher Chambers-Ju
Social Policy Expansion and Retrenchment in Latin America: Causal Paths to Successful Reform
The literature on social policy expansion and retrenchment in Latin America is vast, but scholars differ in how they explain outcomes, arriving at different conclusions about the role of democracy, left parties, favorable economic conditions, and social movements. What can welfare state developments since the end of the commodity boom teach us about the theoretical power of these arguments? This paper engages this question, seeking to explain rec…
Social Policy and State Capacity from a Sub-National Perspective
Cross-national research on Latin American social policy has taken state capacity for granted. We argue that this omission has important consequences, especially in decentralized countries where there are large capacity differences across the territory. State capacity matters for the development of the welfare state at every stage of the policymaking process, including program design, implementation, and outcomes. Capable states are able to design…
Multi-level governance and subnational research: Similarities, differences, and knowledge accumulation in the study of territorial politics
The Subnational Research (SNR) and Multilevel Governance (MLG) research programs have tackled some of the crucial questions in comparative politics. Despite their shared principle that actors and institutions located at one territorial level are shaped by and shape other levels of government, each tradition has developed its own set of concepts and theories without fully acknowledging the other. We believe that this has been detrimental for knowl…
Language difference and regional authority
First published online: 14 October 2020
Un imán de bienestar en el Sur? Migración y política social en Costa Rica. Koen Voorend. San José: Eucr, 2019
Un Imán de Bienestar en el Sur? de Koen Voorend estudia dos preguntas fundamentales: ¿En qué medida el sistema de salud pública costarricense atrae a la inmigración nicaragüense?, ¿es esta migración la responsable por el deterioro de los servicios sociales? La respuesta a ambas preguntas, según Voorend, es negativa: personas nicaragüenses no migran a Costa Rica atraídas por el sistema de salud y la provisión de salud a migrantes no explica la cri…
Participatory Social Policies: Diverging Patterns in Brazil and Bolivia
Bolivia and Brazil have universalized their pension and healthcare systems, respectively. Civil society organizations participated actively in social policy expansion, yet they have done so in starkly different ways, reflecting general patterns in each country. Whereas in Brazil, popular participation in social policies takes place through "inside" formal channels, such as conferences and councils, in Bolivia, bottom-up influence occurs mostly vi…
Uneven Social Policies: The Politics of Subnational Variation in Latin America
Social policies can transform the lives of the poor and marginalized, yet inequitable implementation often limits their access. Uneven Social Policies shifts the focus of welfare state analysis away from policy design and toward policy implementation. By examining variation in political motivations, state capacity, and policy legacies, it explains why some policies are implemented more effectively than others, why some deliver votes to incumbent …
Changing Systems of Social Protection in the Context of the Changing Political Economies since the 1980s
This article provides an overview of the profound changes in the more advanced welfare states in Europe and Latin America over the past 35 years. Deindustrialization, informalization, and the rise of unstable employment, combined with aging populations rendered traditional employment-based models of social protection less effective and at the same time increased demands on the welfare state. The two main responses to these challenges were efforts…
Measuring and theorizing regional governance
This symposium Regional Authority and the Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance engages two recent books on regional governance. The first sets out a measure of regional authority for 81 countries in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific between 1950 and 2010. The second theorizes how regional governance is shaped by functional and communal pressures. These pressures are detected in many historical episodes of jurisdictional…
The RAI travels to Latin America: Measuring regional authority under regime change
This paper presents a new dataset on regional authority in 27 Latin American and Caribbean countries for 1950–2010 based on the Regional Authority Index (RAI), which makes it possible to compare regional authority over time and across regions. We explain conceptualization, operationalization, and coding decisions with the aim of making judgments explicit, and therefore open to amendment or refutation. We present substantive observations about the…
Argentina 2017: La Dinámica Intertemporal De La Reestructuración Económica
El principal hecho político en Argentina durante 2017 fue el triunfo del gobierno de Cambiemos en las elecciones de medio término. Ese resultado fue favorecido por la estrategia del gobierno de administrar la dinámica intertemporal del ajuste econÃ3mico. Antes de las elecciones, el gobierno difiriÃ3 medidas y llevÃ3 adelante una política econÃ3mica que, más allá de empoderar a los ganadores (principalmente al sector agropecuario), compensÃ3 a los…
Decentralization and democratic participation: The effect of subnational self-rule on voting in Latin America and the Caribbean
Social Policies and Center-Right Governments in Argentina and Chile-Erratum
Mixed-Methods Research in the Study of Welfare States
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Social Policies and Center-Right Governments in Argentina and Chile
Latin America's "left turn" expanded cash transfers and public services, contributing to lower poverty and inequality. Recently, right-leaning candidates and parties have begun to win back seats in the legislature, and in some cases have captured the executive branch. This shift has sparked debate about the future of Latin America's welfare states. This article analyzes social policy reforms enacted by two recent right-leaning governments: that o…
Measuring Regional Authority: A Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance, Volume I
This book sets out principles of measurement in political and social science and proposes a measure of regional authority. The most distinctive feature of the measure is that it takes the individual region as a unit of analysis. The regional authority index estimates self-rule and shared rule exercised by regional governments on an annual basis from 1950–2010 in eighty-one countries. These include all EU member states, member states of the Organi…
Soziale Sicherungssysteme in Lateinamerika und Ostasien: Hin zu einer universellen Grundsicherung?
Dieser Beitrag analysiert den Ausbau der Sozialpolitik, welcher aktuell in den am weitesten entwickelten Ländern Lateinamerikas und Ostasiens zu beobachten ist. In den letzten drei Jahrzehnten begünstigten verschiedene wirtschaftliche Entwicklungen den Ausbau sozialpolitischer Instrumente und Leistungen. Das Politikerbe aus vorherigen Zeiten beeinflusst die aktuelle sozialpolitische Entwicklung und wird im Folgenden untersucht. Demokratische Phas…
A turning point in Argentine politics: Demands for change and territorial cleavages in the 2015 presidential election
The 2015 national, subnational, executive and legislative elections marked a turning point for Argentina's democratic history. For the first time, a non-Peronist centre-right coalition won the presidency. These elections also inaugurated the first non-Peronist governor of the Province of Buenos Aires in almost 30 years. This article tries to make sense of these elections, which represent a significant shift in the country's political direction. W…
Social Movements and Social Policy: The Bolivian Renta Dignidad
Trust in government institutions: The effects of performance and participation in the Dominican Republic and Haiti
This article analyzes theories of institutional trust in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, two developing countries that have shared some historical legacies but currently manifest divergent economic and political trajectories. The evidence confirms that conventional theories emphasizing participation and government performance help us understand institutional trust in both countries. In addition, the analysis emphasizes the analytical leverage g…
Social Policies, Attribution of Responsibility, and Political Alignments: A Subnational Analysis of Argentina and Brazil
This article assesses how the political context shapes policy implementation in decentralized countries. It finds that effective implementation of non-contributory social policies depends on political alignments across different territorial levels. Subnational units governed by the opposition hinder the implementation of national policies, but only if the policy carries clear attribution of responsibility. On one hand, conditional cash transfers …
Emerging Welfare States in Latin America and East Asia
Social Policies, Attribution of Responsibility, and Political Alignments: A Subnational Analysis of Argentina and Brazil
This article assesses how the political context shapes policy implementation in decentralized countries. It finds that effective implementation of non-contributory social policies depends on political alignments across different territorial levels. Subnational units governed by the opposition hinder the implementation of national policies, but only if the policy carries clear attribution of responsibility. On one hand, conditional cash transfers …
Language difference and regional authority
First published online: 14 October 2020
Trust in government institutions: The effects of performance and participation in the Dominican Republic and Haiti
This article analyzes theories of institutional trust in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, two developing countries that have shared some historical legacies but currently manifest divergent economic and political trajectories. The evidence confirms that conventional theories emphasizing participation and government performance help us understand institutional trust in both countries. In addition, the analysis emphasizes the analytical leverage g…
The Effect of Unions and Organized Civil Society on Social Policy: Pension and Health Reforms in Argentina and Brazil, 1988-2008
This article shows how modified European power resources theories can be applied to Latin America to explain differences in the depth of policy reforms. It innovates on previous work on Latin American social policy by particularly examining the effect of unions and other civil society groups on the process of structural reforms (or lack thereof) in the health and pension sectors in Argentina and Brazil. Through a most similar system design, this …
Social Policies and Center-Right Governments in Argentina and Chile
Latin America's "left turn" expanded cash transfers and public services, contributing to lower poverty and inequality. Recently, right-leaning candidates and parties have begun to win back seats in the legislature, and in some cases have captured the executive branch. This shift has sparked debate about the future of Latin America's welfare states. This article analyzes social policy reforms enacted by two recent right-leaning governments: that o…
Social Movements and Social Policy: The Bolivian Renta Dignidad
Participatory Social Policies: Diverging Patterns in Brazil and Bolivia
Bolivia and Brazil have universalized their pension and healthcare systems, respectively. Civil society organizations participated actively in social policy expansion, yet they have done so in starkly different ways, reflecting general patterns in each country. Whereas in Brazil, popular participation in social policies takes place through "inside" formal channels, such as conferences and councils, in Bolivia, bottom-up influence occurs mostly vi…
Social Policy Commitment in South America. The Effect of Organized Labor on Social Spending from 1980 to 2010
This paper studies the effect of organized labor on social policy commitment in Latin America. Contrary to the idea that unions are not expected to be major promoters of social state development due to being weakened by dictatorship and structural adjustment, I argue for the incorporation of this variable in statistical analysis of social spending. Through pooled time-series regressions of 10 South American countries from 1980 to 2010, this paper…
The RAI travels to Latin America: Measuring regional authority under regime change
This paper presents a new dataset on regional authority in 27 Latin American and Caribbean countries for 1950–2010 based on the Regional Authority Index (RAI), which makes it possible to compare regional authority over time and across regions. We explain conceptualization, operationalization, and coding decisions with the aim of making judgments explicit, and therefore open to amendment or refutation. We present substantive observations about the…
Social Policy Expansion and Retrenchment in Latin America: Causal Paths to Successful Reform
The literature on social policy expansion and retrenchment in Latin America is vast, but scholars differ in how they explain outcomes, arriving at different conclusions about the role of democracy, left parties, favorable economic conditions, and social movements. What can welfare state developments since the end of the commodity boom teach us about the theoretical power of these arguments? This paper engages this question, seeking to explain rec…
Decentralization and democratic participation: The effect of subnational self-rule on voting in Latin America and the Caribbean
A turning point in Argentine politics: Demands for change and territorial cleavages in the 2015 presidential election
The 2015 national, subnational, executive and legislative elections marked a turning point for Argentina's democratic history. For the first time, a non-Peronist centre-right coalition won the presidency. These elections also inaugurated the first non-Peronist governor of the Province of Buenos Aires in almost 30 years. This article tries to make sense of these elections, which represent a significant shift in the country's political direction. W…
Multi-level governance and subnational research: Similarities, differences, and knowledge accumulation in the study of territorial politics
The Subnational Research (SNR) and Multilevel Governance (MLG) research programs have tackled some of the crucial questions in comparative politics. Despite their shared principle that actors and institutions located at one territorial level are shaped by and shape other levels of government, each tradition has developed its own set of concepts and theories without fully acknowledging the other. We believe that this has been detrimental for knowl…
Measuring and theorizing regional governance
This symposium Regional Authority and the Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance engages two recent books on regional governance. The first sets out a measure of regional authority for 81 countries in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific between 1950 and 2010. The second theorizes how regional governance is shaped by functional and communal pressures. These pressures are detected in many historical episodes of jurisdictional…
Immigrants’ Barriers to Accessing Social Policy in Argentina and Chile
Much attention has been paid to how immigrants are incorporated into welfare states in the Global North, but the Global South has been overlooked. This article studies barriers that immigrants face when accessing social policy in middle-income South American countries with high rates of immigration. With a focus on Chile and Argentina, I argue that immigrants’ barriers to accessing social policy depend on political elites’ views—as policies are e…
Argentina 2017: La Dinámica Intertemporal De La Reestructuración Económica
El principal hecho político en Argentina durante 2017 fue el triunfo del gobierno de Cambiemos en las elecciones de medio término. Ese resultado fue favorecido por la estrategia del gobierno de administrar la dinámica intertemporal del ajuste econÃ3mico. Antes de las elecciones, el gobierno difiriÃ3 medidas y llevÃ3 adelante una política econÃ3mica que, más allá de empoderar a los ganadores (principalmente al sector agropecuario), compensÃ3 a los…
Social Policies and Center-Right Governments in Argentina and Chile-Erratum
The Effect of Unions and Organized Civil Society on Social Policy: Pension and Health Reforms in Argentina and Brazil, 1988-2008
This article shows how modified European power resources theories can be applied to Latin America to explain differences in the depth of policy reforms. It innovates on previous work on Latin American social policy by particularly examining the effect of unions and other civil society groups on the process of structural reforms (or lack thereof) in the health and pension sectors in Argentina and Brazil. Through a most similar system design, this …
Emerging Welfare States in Latin America and East Asia
Social Policy Commitment in South America. The Effect of Organized Labor on Social Spending from 1980 to 2010
This paper studies the effect of organized labor on social policy commitment in Latin America. Contrary to the idea that unions are not expected to be major promoters of social state development due to being weakened by dictatorship and structural adjustment, I argue for the incorporation of this variable in statistical analysis of social spending. Through pooled time-series regressions of 10 South American countries from 1980 to 2010, this paper…
Measuring Regional Authority: A Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance, Volume I
This book sets out principles of measurement in political and social science and proposes a measure of regional authority. The most distinctive feature of the measure is that it takes the individual region as a unit of analysis. The regional authority index estimates self-rule and shared rule exercised by regional governments on an annual basis from 1950–2010 in eighty-one countries. These include all EU member states, member states of the Organi…
Soziale Sicherungssysteme in Lateinamerika und Ostasien: Hin zu einer universellen Grundsicherung?
Dieser Beitrag analysiert den Ausbau der Sozialpolitik, welcher aktuell in den am weitesten entwickelten Ländern Lateinamerikas und Ostasiens zu beobachten ist. In den letzten drei Jahrzehnten begünstigten verschiedene wirtschaftliche Entwicklungen den Ausbau sozialpolitischer Instrumente und Leistungen. Das Politikerbe aus vorherigen Zeiten beeinflusst die aktuelle sozialpolitische Entwicklung und wird im Folgenden untersucht. Demokratische Phas…
A turning point in Argentine politics: Demands for change and territorial cleavages in the 2015 presidential election
The 2015 national, subnational, executive and legislative elections marked a turning point for Argentina's democratic history. For the first time, a non-Peronist centre-right coalition won the presidency. These elections also inaugurated the first non-Peronist governor of the Province of Buenos Aires in almost 30 years. This article tries to make sense of these elections, which represent a significant shift in the country's political direction. W…
Social Movements and Social Policy: The Bolivian Renta Dignidad
Trust in government institutions: The effects of performance and participation in the Dominican Republic and Haiti
This article analyzes theories of institutional trust in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, two developing countries that have shared some historical legacies but currently manifest divergent economic and political trajectories. The evidence confirms that conventional theories emphasizing participation and government performance help us understand institutional trust in both countries. In addition, the analysis emphasizes the analytical leverage g…
Social Policies, Attribution of Responsibility, and Political Alignments: A Subnational Analysis of Argentina and Brazil
This article assesses how the political context shapes policy implementation in decentralized countries. It finds that effective implementation of non-contributory social policies depends on political alignments across different territorial levels. Subnational units governed by the opposition hinder the implementation of national policies, but only if the policy carries clear attribution of responsibility. On one hand, conditional cash transfers …
Mixed-Methods Research in the Study of Welfare States
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Social Policies and Center-Right Governments in Argentina and Chile
Latin America's "left turn" expanded cash transfers and public services, contributing to lower poverty and inequality. Recently, right-leaning candidates and parties have begun to win back seats in the legislature, and in some cases have captured the executive branch. This shift has sparked debate about the future of Latin America's welfare states. This article analyzes social policy reforms enacted by two recent right-leaning governments: that o…
Uneven Social Policies: The Politics of Subnational Variation in Latin America
Social policies can transform the lives of the poor and marginalized, yet inequitable implementation often limits their access. Uneven Social Policies shifts the focus of welfare state analysis away from policy design and toward policy implementation. By examining variation in political motivations, state capacity, and policy legacies, it explains why some policies are implemented more effectively than others, why some deliver votes to incumbent …
Changing Systems of Social Protection in the Context of the Changing Political Economies since the 1980s
This article provides an overview of the profound changes in the more advanced welfare states in Europe and Latin America over the past 35 years. Deindustrialization, informalization, and the rise of unstable employment, combined with aging populations rendered traditional employment-based models of social protection less effective and at the same time increased demands on the welfare state. The two main responses to these challenges were efforts…
Measuring and theorizing regional governance
This symposium Regional Authority and the Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance engages two recent books on regional governance. The first sets out a measure of regional authority for 81 countries in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific between 1950 and 2010. The second theorizes how regional governance is shaped by functional and communal pressures. These pressures are detected in many historical episodes of jurisdictional…
The RAI travels to Latin America: Measuring regional authority under regime change
This paper presents a new dataset on regional authority in 27 Latin American and Caribbean countries for 1950–2010 based on the Regional Authority Index (RAI), which makes it possible to compare regional authority over time and across regions. We explain conceptualization, operationalization, and coding decisions with the aim of making judgments explicit, and therefore open to amendment or refutation. We present substantive observations about the…
Argentina 2017: La Dinámica Intertemporal De La Reestructuración Económica
El principal hecho político en Argentina durante 2017 fue el triunfo del gobierno de Cambiemos en las elecciones de medio término. Ese resultado fue favorecido por la estrategia del gobierno de administrar la dinámica intertemporal del ajuste econÃ3mico. Antes de las elecciones, el gobierno difiriÃ3 medidas y llevÃ3 adelante una política econÃ3mica que, más allá de empoderar a los ganadores (principalmente al sector agropecuario), compensÃ3 a los…
Decentralization and democratic participation: The effect of subnational self-rule on voting in Latin America and the Caribbean
Social Policies and Center-Right Governments in Argentina and Chile-Erratum
Un imán de bienestar en el Sur? Migración y política social en Costa Rica. Koen Voorend. San José: Eucr, 2019
Un Imán de Bienestar en el Sur? de Koen Voorend estudia dos preguntas fundamentales: ¿En qué medida el sistema de salud pública costarricense atrae a la inmigración nicaragüense?, ¿es esta migración la responsable por el deterioro de los servicios sociales? La respuesta a ambas preguntas, según Voorend, es negativa: personas nicaragüenses no migran a Costa Rica atraídas por el sistema de salud y la provisión de salud a migrantes no explica la cri…
Participatory Social Policies: Diverging Patterns in Brazil and Bolivia
Bolivia and Brazil have universalized their pension and healthcare systems, respectively. Civil society organizations participated actively in social policy expansion, yet they have done so in starkly different ways, reflecting general patterns in each country. Whereas in Brazil, popular participation in social policies takes place through "inside" formal channels, such as conferences and councils, in Bolivia, bottom-up influence occurs mostly vi…
Language difference and regional authority
First published online: 14 October 2020
Multi-level governance and subnational research: Similarities, differences, and knowledge accumulation in the study of territorial politics
The Subnational Research (SNR) and Multilevel Governance (MLG) research programs have tackled some of the crucial questions in comparative politics. Despite their shared principle that actors and institutions located at one territorial level are shaped by and shape other levels of government, each tradition has developed its own set of concepts and theories without fully acknowledging the other. We believe that this has been detrimental for knowl…
Social Policy and State Capacity from a Sub-National Perspective
Cross-national research on Latin American social policy has taken state capacity for granted. We argue that this omission has important consequences, especially in decentralized countries where there are large capacity differences across the territory. State capacity matters for the development of the welfare state at every stage of the policymaking process, including program design, implementation, and outcomes. Capable states are able to design…
Workshopping Mixed Methods: Ten Years of the Southwest Workshop for Mixed Methods Research
This article reflects on the first 10 years of the Southwest Workshop for Mixed Methods Research (SWMMR), which was created to foster methodological pluralism and rigor in political science and related fields. Since its founding, SWMMR has helped to develop mixed methods research while prioritizing diversity, equity, inclusion, and mentorship. The article highlights the annual workshop’s role in building an intellectual community while supporting…
Mobilizing Teachers. Education Politics and the New Labor Movement in Latin America by Christopher Chambers-Ju
Political science (25 works) · Economics (18 works) · Politics (18 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (16 works) · Law (14 works) · Latin Americans (13 works) · Political economy (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Geography (8 works)