Institutions, discourse and welfare: Brazil as a distributional regime

This article aims at broadening the scope of global and regional social policy studies to include the 'Global South'. A strategic-relational approach, based on a combination of the ASID framework with a historical-institutionalist approach to social and distributional policies, serves as point of departure. In the final section, the theoretical reflections are exemplified by an empirical case study of Brazil's socioeconomic development and the recent evolution of conditional cash transfers (CCTs). It is argued that considering the normative project of radical reformist practice, 'best practice' prescriptions are to be critically reviewed, considering diverse discursive and institutional legacies.