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The policy dismantling framework was developed to account for processes involving the reduction or termination of existing policies, especially in the so-called advanced democracies. However, is the model proposed by policy dismantling scholars applicable to contexts of democratic backsliding such as Bolsonaro's Brazil? Do those contexts offer new elements to their analytical model? This article addresses those questions by analyzing the case of Brazil under President Jair Bolsonaro. Departing from research on policy dismantling recently conducted in Brazil and based on data collected with federal civil servants from 2019 to 2021, it will be argued that the mechanics of policy dismantling in Brazil involve not only the reduction and elimination of past policies but also the manipulation of policy capacities. At the individual policy capacity level, that process has involved mistrust and contempt for career civil servants, fear, and bureaucratic reshuffling, whereby bureaucrats were either removed from their original positions or resorted to exit in fear of persecution. The intimidation and disarrangement of the federal bureaucracy in Brazil appears to be an integral part of capacity manipulation, shedding light into what policy dismantling looks like in contexts of democratic backsliding.

How do policy entrepreneurs affect policy change in environments of institutional instability? The literature has predominantly explored policy entrepreneur strategizing in contexts with established institutional settings. In this paper, we argue that under conditions of institutional fluidity and a weak and politicized public administration, venue creation is the more frequently encountered and the more likely successful strategy. We define venue creation as the entrepreneurial strategy of setting-up institutional arrangements of finite duration, predominantly in the form of committees, delegated exclusively with designing reforms. We test our hypothesis in the Greek health policy sector. We explore two policy instances: the unsuccessful attempt at a public health reform in 1992 and the successful introduction of radical policy change for public health in 2003. We employ a process tracing approach spanning thirty years, processing primary data (elite interviews and documents) applying the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF). We find that under conditions of institutional fluidity and administrative weakness, policy entrepreneurs failed in their pursuit of change using venue shopping in 1992 but succeeded through venue creation in 2003, confirming our hypothesis. We conclude with insights for contingent policy entrepreneurship success, the MSF and patterns of policymaking in Greece.

The COVID-19 pandemic required simultaneous, effective policy responses from numerous policy sectors. How have policy capacities enabled these responses? This paper analyzes social policy responses in Latin America and the Caribbean. We compare how policy capacities enabled 27 LAC governments to respond to the social effects of the pandemic with 122 cash transfer programs. The paper is based on a quantitative analysis of the number, type, and coverage of the programs implemented in each country, and on qualitative information about the process by which governments identified beneficiaries and delivered the transfers. We argue that policy capacities are not only context-specific but also task-specific. They are not generic assets valuable for addressing all kinds of policy issues at all moments of the policy process. By analyzing how policy capacities were used, built, and deployed during the pandemic, we show how different combinations of policy capacities enabled governments to reach their populations and provide assistance in response to this emergency.Our analysis extends current discussions about how policy capacities can be operationalized in specific contexts, shows the importance of looking at different configurations of capacities to understand policy actions, and offers a comparative account of social policy responses in the region.