Research on the implementation of social policy is scant compared to research on other policy stages. Reasons like the lack of the necessary time and resources to conduct implementation research explains such gap. Yet, without research on implementation, it is impossible to reach comprehensive, deep and accurate understandings of the effects of public interventions on the welfare of the population. This article introduces the special issue on the dynamics of social policy implementation in Latin America and Southern Europe, prepared with the aim of addressing the gap and contributing to the current research on the topic. The two regions include countries with social policies and welfare regimes that share several historical, institutional and political contexts and legacies, and provide critical cases to test existing theories and models of public policy implementation. The special issue consists of nine articles that cover eight case studies from Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Peru and Spain, plus an article that provides an overview of current implementation trends in the two regions. The comparison of findings from the case studies reveals significant insights on social policy implementation, like a positive effect of the discretion that street-level bureaucrats exert in their daily activities to compensate for weak formal institutions and limited resources, and the opportunities created for the improvement of implementation outcomes by the incorporation of civil society actors in co-production activities.

Implementation represents the most crucial step in the policy process; it is at this stage where the hardest battles for policy success are fought. Implementation is also the most complex of the policy cycle stages, with the largest amount of resources and highest number of actors involved in it. In the realm of social policy, outputs and outcomes determined during the implementation stage have a direct impact on the welfare of the population. However, in both political and academic domains, the analysis of implementation activities commonly receives less attention than the other stages. This article seeks to address this gap by reviewing and comparing relevant issues of social policy implementation in Latin America and Southern Europe, regions that share similar historical and political legacies. Research on these two regions enables the identification of many critical obstacles that social policy implementation faces today in these and other contexts and of opportunities for its improvement.

Since its inception in 2009, Argentina’s Universal Child Allowance (AUH) has become the country’s most comprehensive social protection policy for children, emphasising standardisation and objectivity. However, its implementation occurs in contexts of poverty and inequality, leading to uneven outcomes across communities. This study examines how street-level bureaucrats adapt large-scale policies like the AUH to local contexts marked by deep social disparities. Although the AUH is designed for standardized and automated implementation, frontline workers play a critical role in adjusting the policy to specific territorial needs. These bureaucrats employ informal strategies and policy improvisation to mitigate institutional weaknesses and address gaps in the AUH’s rigid framework. By analysing the interplay between the policy’s institutional design, frontline workers, and adaptations, this study sheds light on how street-level bureaucracies at multiple levels enable these workers to navigate local challenges and partially compensate for broader institutional fragility.

Over the years, cultural and linguistic diversity in schools across Europe has significantly increased due to migration and refugee flows. In response, international organizations, such as the Council of Europe and the European Commission, advocate intercultural education as both an educational strategy and a social policy tool to foster inclusion, address inequality, and build cohesive societies. This study contributes to the intercultural education literature by addressing an underexplored area: the process of translating intercultural policies into school practices. Using Street-Level Bureaucracy theory and qualitative research in Trento, Italy, it highlights the mechanisms and challenges shaping teachers’ practices and the extent of the policy–practice gap. Furthermore, the research also contributes to the Street-Level Bureaucracy theory. It shows that teachers can act as innovators in the policy implementation process. By engaging civil society members, notably students and members of migrant communities, as co-implementers, teachers reshape policy ecosystems through participatory and bottom-up approaches.

The complex interconnection between socioeconomic disadvantage and drug use disorders has raised global interest in community-based approaches to substance abuse prevention and treatment. This article analyses the origins, implementation, and opportunities for diffusion in Latin America of an Argentine programme that promotes access to treatment through partnerships between the national drug policy agency and geographically dispersed care and support facilities managed by civil society organizations. It argues that severe socioeconomic crisis, rising drug use, and inadequate government response, at the turn of the century, created the conditions for social innovation in substance abuse treatment by civil society. Central aspects of the programme are ensuring accessibility through territorially based facilities and proactive outreach; attending multidimensional needs through the creation of local intersectoral support networks; and addressing addiction by building relationships. Remaining challenges include the need to improve coordination between national and subnational governments and develop a robust monitoring and evaluation system.

This article posits that the multi-level governance literature can benefit from administrative burden theory if scholars are interested in understanding under which conditions policy implementation fails. To support this argument, we build on these two bodies of research to examine how implicit welfare rescaling – where the central government expands its role in a previously devolved policy – may increase administrative burdens for claimants, and to what extent local welfare systems can help to mitigate these burdens despite lacking coordination. To address these research aims, we assess the implementation of the “Ingreso Mínimo Vital,” a national minimum income scheme introduced in Spain within a fragmented regional system. Qualitative fieldwork with frontline professionals and policy experts shows that welfare rescaling heightened claimants’ administrative burdens due to inter-institutional misfit among governance levels. This imposed substantial learning, compliance, and psychological costs on claimants, making frontline professionals essential for guiding them through these challenges.

This article presents an analytical framework for studying implementation failure in minimum income programs targeted against poverty and applies it to a case study focused on the recent introduction in Spain of the first national minimum income programme, the Minimum Living Income (MLI). The framework combines two criteria (the type of agent potentially triggering failure, and the type of administrative challenge) to produce four types of implementation problems in targeted minimum income schemes: identification failure, administrative incapacity, nontake-up, and overpayments. We apply this framework in the case of MLI by conducting an exhaustive review of empirical research on its implementation problems. This evidence suggests that the special political circumstances in which the MLI was approved, some features of its design, and its insertion into a complex institutional landscape of regional minimum incomes, explain part of these problems. We conclude with some final remarks and recommendations.

Implementation arrangements are increasingly recognized as a decisive factor in the success of contemporary welfare policies, particularly those that combine income support with activation requirements. This paper examines the Italian case of minimum income schemes - the Reddito di Inclusione and the Reddito di Cittadinanza - to explore how local implementation arrangements shape one of their core objectives: reintegrating beneficiaries into the labour market. Drawing on an original dataset that integrates administrative data with a unique INAPP survey of local institutions, we operationalize “implementation arrangements” along three dimensions: institutional capacity, alignment between organizational missions and policy goals, and the quality of institutional cooperation within a multilevel governance framework. Using regression models at the municipal level, we find that implementation strength matters, but horizontal cooperation and effective communication between Public Employment Services (PES) and Local Social Planning Institutions (LSPIs) emerge as the strongest predictors of successful outcomes. While PES performance is central due to their policy mandate, LSPIs’ ability to foster integrated networks also contributes positively when well-coordinated. These findings highlight that policy success depends less on formal design than on the quality of local governance and institutional complementarities. The results provide new evidence for the literature on implementation, underscoring the importance of horizontal multilevel governance in active social policies.

Brazil has a longstanding and significant tradition in the development of social housing; however, this topic remains underexplored within the field of social policy. This study adopts qualitative methods, including an analysis of housing legislation, from the past two decades and, and data from 20 semi-structured interviews conducted between June and September 2021 with key stakeholders in housing policy, such as policymakers, and activists. The findings reveal a persistent gap between policy promises and actual implementation, alongside a continuing trend toward the financialization and commodification of social housing – particularly in programs such as Minha Casa, Minha Vida (My House, My Life) and Casa Verde e Amarela (Green and Yellow House). The study offers novel empirical insights into the role of social housing within broader ecosocial policy frameworks. One of the central findings is the interconnection between social housing, environmental concerns, and sustainability. The Brazilian case, in particular, stands out as a distinctive and pioneering contribution to the field.

While most Conditional Cash Transfer programs in Latin America expanded from rural to national coverage, Peru’s Juntos program maintained a strict rural focus for 15 years, systematically excluding poor urban households. This article examines the Peruvian paradox: why, despite regional trends and internal efforts to broaden coverage, Juntos remained territorially constrained. Using process tracing and semi-structured interviews with policymakers, senior bureaucrats, former congress members, and policy experts, the study identifies two institutional legacies rooted in the neoliberal reforms of the Fujimori era. First, the institutional consolidation of the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) as a powerful veto player with control over public spending; and second, the diffusion of an ideational framework centered on fiscal austerity, efficiency, and aversion to clientelism. These legacies gave rise to two policy locks, a persistent rural bias and a regime of horizontal and fiscal control, that have limited the program’s adaptability to shifting poverty dynamics and urban demands.