Implementing Regional Policies in the Global South: The Agency and Strategies of Street-Level Bureaucrats in Argentina and Brazil

What is the role of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) in regional governance initiatives? The article addresses this question by analyzing the agency of SLBs in the implementation of two prominent policies of MERCOSUR’s regional migration regime in Argentina and Brazil. We show that SLBs exercised significant levels of discretion through a set of strategies that allowed them to pursue contrasting goals in relation to policy implementation, namely fostering implementation in the case of residence while hampering it in the case of border crossings. The article expands our understanding of SLBs agency in regional institutional settings marked by the absence of enforcement mechanisms. In so doing, we shed light on the role of local actors in the delivery of regional public goods in the Global South.