Hi all, for the last session of the Brown Bag this year, it is our pleasure to host Tales Mançano, who is currently visiting from the University of Sao Paolo. The title of his talk is "Political Economy of Post-Secondary Education in Brazil: A Comparative Skill Regime Approach" As usual, we meet at 12:00 in D351 on Friday, Dec 12. This also the date for our annual Christmas Party later that day, so don't forget to bring some cookies :) Looking forward to seeing all of you for a festive pre-Christmas session! Please find the abstract below: “Why does the Brazilian educational system differ so markedly from those of other OECD countries? The share of students in private institutions is astonishingly high, tracking is formally nonexistent, yet post-secondary education attainment is one of the lowest and markedly unequal. This paper aims to explain Brazil's educational lag and institutional characteristics that influence central dynamics of educational inequality through comparative welfare state theory and historical institutionalism. Tracing successive reforms from the colonial era to recent decades, the paper accounts for the current configuration of Brazil's educational system along three interrelated dimensions: (1) expansion of educational attainment, (2) commodification of educational provision, and (3) stratification, understood as how state regulations influence the unequal stratification of the population into tracks and levels. The analysis engages the educational-regimes framework developed by @Busemeyer2014. It combines cross-national datasets on attainment and Brazil-specific datasets [@Lee-Lee2016; @Kang-etal2021; @Paglayan2021]. The paper argues that Brazil's educational system exhibits deep historical hybridization that can be interpreted through modes of gradual institutional change [@Mahoney-Thelen2009], as reforms inspired by distinct regimes repeatedly reoriented reforms, generating paradigm shifts and added layers to the system. Brazil's pronounced educational lag can be traced to the colonial period, which was significant even when compared to Spanish colonies in Latin America, with policies to actively block access to education, pushing the country onto a more elitist trajectory than most countries in the Americas and Europe. A first rupture occurred in 1930, which shifted the country to a reform path resembling the continental European model under a conservative–corporatist logic adapted to Brazil's distinct political economy. This model introduced tracking, differentiating academic and vocational education. From the 1960s onward, reforms under U.S. influence advanced commodification and formal tracking was abolished, shifting the inequality dynamics toward market-led dualization. However, legacy institutions continued to operate and transmit earlier models' imprint. The reforms functioned more as layers in a hybrid system, not a robust and coherent change of paths. Redemocratization and the 1988 Constitution marked a critical juncture that placed educational expansion and inequality reduction at the center of the agenda, reflecting a social-democratic inspiration to welfare institutions. Yet each reform wave confronted durable legacies and constraints from prior institutional layers. The result is a hybrid configuration in which equalizing reforms must contend with inherited institutional configuration, such as the public–private dualism. Over the long run, the four worlds of Brazilian educational reform (framed as hierarchical, conservative-corporatist, liberal, and social-democratic in spirit) produced a layered hybrid marked by the mix of institutions designed for contradictory goals. This process of gradual institutional change helps explain the current configuration: a highly unequal, highly commodified system characterized by the absence of formal tracking, but a low and unequal access to post-secondary education. These features continue to shape the contemporary Brazilian educational system, even as recent policies have accelerated towards an equalizing agenda.” All the best, Flora, Tyler, and David
-- David Knoll PhD Student Graduate School of the Social and Behavioural Sciences Department of Politics and Public Administration University of Konstanz https://www.polver.uni-konstanz.de/zuber/team/david-knoll/