State-Level Implementation of the Secondary Education Reform in Brazil: Between Conflict, Ambiguity, and Heterogeneity

This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of variations in subnational policies and the factors that explain them. Some studies attribute these differences to the uneven distribution of state infrastructure and capacity at the subnational level, while others emphasize the role of policy legacies, actors, ideology, ideas, and networks to explain subnational policy variations. This study, analyses variations in policy changes in secondary education across Brazilian states and the factors that influenced them through a qualitative and comparative approach based on data collected through document analysis, survey, and in-depth interviews. The findings indicate that the high level of ambiguity and conflict in national guidelines led to significant variations in state policies. Subnational policies resulted from an intersection between horizontal cooperation, policy legacies, political leadership, and bureaucratic activism, though the influence of these factors varied across states.