Sara J Niedzwiecki
· Associate ProfessorUniversity of California, Santa Cruz · Political Science
Active 2010–2025
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About
Sara Niedzwiecki is an associate professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She serves as the Lead Editor of Palgrave's Latin American Political Economy Series and is a co-Founder of the SWMMR. Her research focuses on the politics of the design and implementation of social policy and the territorial structure of government in Latin America. Niedzwiecki's 2018 book explores the conditions under which social policies are successfully implemented in decentralized countries, with a particular emphasis on how politics and capacity at state and local levels influence the implementation of healthcare and Conditional Cash Transfers. This work was recognized with the Donna Lee Van Cott and IPPA Best Book Awards. During the 2020-2021 academic year, she was in residence at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, where she worked on a new book project examining immigration and social policy in Latin America.
Research topics
- Political Science
- Sociology
- Law
- Artificial Intelligence
- Social Science
- Political economy
- Computer Science
- Management
- Economics
- Social psychology
Selected publications
Language difference and regional authority
Regional & Federal Studies · 2020 · 131 citations
First published online: 14 October 2020
The Political Economy of Segmented Expansion
2022 · 49 citations
The early 2000s were a period of social policy expansion in Latin America. New programs were created in healthcare, pensions, and social assistance, and previously excluded groups were incorporated into existing policies. What was the character of this social policy expansion? Why did the region experience this transformation? Drawing on a large body of research, this Element shows that the social policy gains in the early 2000s remained segmented, exhibiting differences in access and benefit le…
Participatory Social Policies: Diverging Patterns in Brazil and Bolivia
Latin American Politics and Society · 2019-03-14 · 46 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingABSTRACT 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 via “outside” channels, by coordinating col…
Regional & Federal Studies · 2021 · 28 citations
Senior authorCorrespondingThe 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 knowledge accumulation. We argue that more knowledge ac…
Uneven Social Policies : The Politics of Subnational Variation in Latin America
2018-08-31 · 24 citations
book1st authorCorrespondingSocial 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 governments while others do not, and why regionall…
Frequent coauthors
- 50 shared
David Nunnally
- 50 shared
Imke Harbers
University of Amsterdam
- 49 shared
Chris Edelson
Indiana University
- 49 shared
Steven J. Smith
Center for Cancer Research
- 49 shared
Paul Gronke
Reed College
- 49 shared
Stefano Costalli
University of Florence
- 49 shared
Elizabeth Paluck
- 49 shared
Michelle D. Deardorff
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Education
Ph.D., Political Science
University of North Carolina System
Awards & honors
- Fellow at University of Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for I…
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