APower alternation, federalism, and cultural policy:

the Argentine and Brazilian cases

Abstract

This essay reflects on how Argentine and Brazilian cultural policy fit into the federalist models of their respective countries, emphasizing policy institutionalization and power alternation, more specifically resuming the neoliberal agenda after the election of Maurício Macri and Jair Bolsonaro, which sought to deconstruct a perspective of intergovernmental coordination that had been underway since 2003 in the administrations of the Kirchners, in Argentina, and the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores [PT]), in Brazil. To do so, a bibliographic review was carried out, highlighting the socio-historical and political variables, as well as a review of the genesis of institutionalizing public policy. Thus, by identifying political and institutional frameworks, which in the case of cultural policy are directly linked to the Ministries of Culture in Argentina and Brazil or their political-administrative equivalents, progress was made in understanding the positions of central governments in the processes of articulation or disarticulation of cultural policy. Argentine and Brazilian cultural policy still suffer from poor institutionality. This is not a specificity of cultural policy, however, such policies suffer from an acute institutional weakness that puts them in prominence in relation to other social policies. However, unlike Argentina, in terms of cultural policy, Brazil sought to advance in the constitution of systems, appreciating relationships based on republicanism, while Argentina has invested in a direct relationship between administrations with a similar political identity. Even so, the period that followed these administrations has delayed or stagnated the few institutional advances in cultural policy.