AN INITIATIVE OF THE WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AND THE BOBST CENTER FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE Series: Governance Traps Interview no.: T4 Interviewee: Ana Toni Interviewer: Richard Bennet Date of Interview: 8 September, 2010 Location: Ford Foundation Rio de Janeiro Brazil Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, USA www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties BENNET: Today is September 8 and I am here at the Ford Foundation in Rio de Janeiro with its representative Ana Toni. Thank you so much for meeting with me. I'd love to start by getting an idea of some of the programs that the Ford Foundation is involved in here and maybe get some of your perspective. I understand you've been working here since 2003, is that correct? TONI: I personally have been working here since 2003. The Ford Foundation has been in Brazil for almost 50 years now. So it is a long story with Ford, but my story in Ford is just seven years or eight years now. BENNET: Maybe you could talk a little bit about some of the work that you've been doing here and some of the programs. I'm specifically interested in the relationship between the state and the Ford Foundation and some of the state's programs and how the Ford Foundation has involved itself in some of these projects. TONI: OK. I think it is important just for me to go back a little bit and tell a little bit about the history of the Ford Foundation in Brazil. BENNET: That would be good. TONI: Ford enters Brazil in '62, and obviously when we got into Brazil it was a dictatorship. So at that time, as you can imagine, the role of Ford was not to work directly with the government-which was hard at that time. So the role of Ford was getting scholars to be able to carry on doing the work on governance issues and in the social science area. Many of them Ford helped to go outside Brazil-getting scholarships in the U.S. (United States) or France or Chile or somewhere. So we called that time, the time of struggling against a dictatorship. I think Ford has been fundamental to keeping some of those voices alive so that in the next period, which was more the democratization period, those voices could be brought back to Brazil and strengthened by not only the universities but civil society. Then the role of Ford at that moment was very much helping this embryo of civil society to be strengthened in Brazil, which was not the case in the beginning of the '70s and '80s, and help those voices to be part of the new constitutional building that we have. The new constitution in Brazil was '88, and Ford was very much helping some voices-some of the democratic voices and specific marginalized people to have a say: women's groups, the Afro-Brazilian groups, the groups working on decentralization of government policies, those working on budgetary issues, participatory budgeting. Helping those people to have a voice in the constitution. After that happened-when we had one of the best constitutions in Brazil-Ford I think was helpful in making sure that participatory democracy was not just a nice word that we had in the constitution, but that those forums of participation were useful. So Ford spent a tremendous amount of money helping the councils, the conselhos, municipal councils in particular, to work well. So its functioning; who participates on those forums-as you probably know, those municipal councils are for education or health or God-knows-what, but they have the state, civil society, and the private sector. So we helped somehow the civil society to have capacity to function well within that forum and helped to strengthen those forums. Now the participatory budgeting was very much part of that. That happened in, I would say, the beginning of the year 2000. It absolutely established in Brazil the participatory forums that we have. You know, in Brazil we have forums for everything. We have a congress for everything. We have big conferences, national conferences. We only support those participatory forums. But I think the last period, specifically from 2003 onwards, which is more the period that I have been involved in, our key motive that has been guiding us is implementation of laws and policies. Brazil is a country that has wonderful laws and policies, but it is very difficult to implement many of them, to get them out of the constitution to be implemented on the ground so that the poor and marginalized have a benefit of the democracy that they fought for. So that has been the motive that we have been fostering. And in that, first to make government accountable is obviously a big theme for all of us. Monitoring of government budgets-state, national, municipal-is a big, key issue for us. Looking at specific policies-and trying to follow, depending on the interest that we have at the moment, why that policy has been implemented and how it has been implemented-has been guiding our work. At the moment, we have four big programs. One is in relation to racial and ethnic discrimination. So we look at policies that are supposed to be supporting Afro-Brazilians, or could support Afro-Brazilians, and are not and why not and strengthen those voices. Second is human rights and the justice sector. So we will be monitoring the justice sector in terms of access as well as transparency. As you know, the justice sector is a key sector for the functioning of the country. Within that, we have public security. We can spend some more time on that later on. The third program is democratization of the media. Why democratization of the media? Because many laws and policies are not implemented, because they're just not on the public agenda. We have realized that if the media doesn't highlight them, doesn't monitor them, it is impossible for them to be in the public agenda. So we put some of our resources into that. The fourth area is land and natural resources, in particular in the Amazon-again, making sure that the constitutional rights of indigenous people, [Indecipherable], in relationship to land is implemented. So that is what we have been doing in the last few years. BENNET: OK, and specifically for Rio de Janeiro, for the city, there are lots of different government initiatives. The most recent one is the UPP (Unidade Pacificadora da Policia) program. How has the Ford Foundation positioned itself in relation to Governor (Sergio) Cabral's initiatives? TONI: Ford didn't have an emphasis on a specific territory or city. BENNET: Right. TONI: So we don't focus on Rio de Janeiro. Although we have an office here, we don't focus on Rio de Janeiro. We now have a focus, a geographic focus, but that's the Amazon. Obviously, we have many grants as well here. The majority of the grants in Rio de Janeiro have to do with the human-rights area and the issue of public security. So in that respect we obviously are monitoring what is happening with UPP very closely. So from the human-rights perspective, we always worked with people whose rights have been violated-specifically people living in the favelas, marginalized people, and Afro-Brazilians, who normally are the ones that have been killed. So we have several projects, both to help kids to get out of the traffic, like supporting [Indecipherable] or CUFA (Central ņnica das Favelas), as well as monitoring and helping communities, like the mothers of kids that have been killed. So we help those associations of mothers who speak up to start legal cases against the state, to monitor what it is actually the-. On the other hand, we have groups like [Indecipherable], which you probably came across, or [Indecipherable] that work with the police as well as with the human rights groups. So we always try to look at the police angle as well as academics and the human-rights groups. So we feel that our role is very much putting those three groups of people together to bring solutions to a bigger problem, which Rio de Janeiro in terms of its violence and criminality. I think somehow the fruits of what Ford has been doing for the last 20 years-. The UPP is a little symbol of that, because UPP brings obviously the big change, which is the government deciding that just coming into a favela and showing strength through its police force is not the solution. It needs to sit with the community as well as with academia to think about solutions. So Rio de Janeiro has been very hard for us, because before, we did not have access for our grantees even to do research about what was going on in the police. Now-very recently now-with UPP we have seen an openness from the government to give the data that academics need to reflect on what is going on. Obviously, having the groups on the ground gets more access to those places again, either to do social work or to do research. So I think UPP brings intelligence rather than just force. I think the intelligence is desired, and is absolutely needed. People hear not only good arguments and what the academics have to say on the data-but here's what the communities have to say. I think many of the grantees that we work with have always pledged that kind of community policing, as we now call it in the UPPs, but I think UPPs have gone beyond community policing. That's what I think the novelty of UPP is; it is going beyond just normal community policing. That's why we are very hopeful that this project from the government will succeed. We'll have to wait and see how sustainable it is, but I think it has the right ingredients to make sure that it works. BENNET: In what ways specifically has it gone beyond? What was community policing like before the UPPs and now? TONI: I think there are two major differences. One, Josˇ Beltrame and his group, I think, triggered and were the magic of UPP. Community policing in many cases would go in and would stay, as UPPs do. Obviously, the UPP is more than the normal community policing-it stays to a huge extent; I mean they have 300, 200 policemen inside a favela. But more than staying, it is as if the government has realized the limits of a policeman's duty. In many other community policing programs that I know of, the police become the center for social policies as well, for resolving all the problems of a community-education, health. I think very cleverly Beltrame realized that police must do the work of the police, and should act together with other parts of the government to deliver the other public policies that are necessary in those areas. So working with obviously the secretariat [Indecipherable], education or health and other groups to bring that. Somehow, not trying to make the police person just the key person to resolve all the public policy issues in that community, because the problems in those communities go much beyond just security. Obviously, security is the first step, but it doesn't stop there. So I think this extra ingredient was to have realized the necessity of bringing the entire government to those territories, rather than just the community policing, which was obvious and absolutely necessary. BENNET: This coordination aspect between different aspects of government is something that we see in a lot of different places where we work. A lot of people have told me that the stars have aligned it seems politically-the different levels of government and with the private sector as well. I'm interested in your perspective on why it is that it seems to be successful now in its early stages here, whereas in the past-why that coordination didn't happen in the past. TONI: It is hard to know. The stars aligned themselves; it's a lot of luck, there is political momentum. There is some leadership, specific leadership. But above all I think there is an assessment that it was not working before. We needed to do something different. There are the Olympics, there is football coming. Rio had to solve the problems of violence. The favela stays in the heart of the city, so for the government, it is not very good if the favelas carry on being so violent. That violence comes, insecurity comes, to the rest of the city. So I think it was a necessity. So political will didn't just come from the gods. It came because of a specific necessity of government needing to show they had the city in control. I will emphasize "some" parts of the city. Because that is one of the criticisms: That we don't know-hopefully, UPP will be so successful that its success can expand to other areas, but at the moment it is 10 territories. Key territories obviously, involving lots of people. But how that spreads out to the rest of the police and to the rest of the communities, we don't know yet. I'm not saying it is not valid just because we don't know. I'm just saying it is a first step in a bigger direction. But that first step came, I think, because it needed to happen. Second, because it was obvious that the other ways that they thought should be able to solve criminality within the city were not working. There was an alignment of federal, state and municipal-level governments-some key people that had integration of policy as a goal per se and wanting to experiment with this as a solution. Again, I think it is an early stage to know if it will work and how sustainable that is. But it is obvious that for any government body now-education, health-having their projects in these territories work is for them a priority, because they have a lot of visibility. So if the secretary of education or health is going to make a school or a health center work, you can make sure that they will make the health center that is in the UPP to work. Because if it doesn't work, it will have a lot of visibility, and if it works it will also have visibility. So it brought a lot of the visibility that's needed that really helps on the integration bit. BENNET: So, as the Ford Foundation, you mentioned that this is a very targeted program-currently, 10 or so favelas have been sort of pacified so far. What kinds of criteria shape your decisions, looking at the fact that there are some 1,100 favelas in the greater Rio area and there are only a few here in the center in Zona Sul that are being targeted. What criteria shape your decisions, like where to move forward first and how to give support? TONI: First of all, we don't support any work related to specific UPPs. This is not what Ford has been doing, and we will not. Actually, there is one proposal that just came to us related to that, but what we are much more interested in is to learn from this experience, to ensure that we support researchers to learn from this experience, so that we can see if this policy could be adapted to other regions or not. So, for example, we support the Brazilian Forum on Public Security. So we are instigating our partner there to think about comparative research of community policing in different states of Brazil. So UPP in Rio versus [Indecipherable] in [Indecipherable] versus [Indecipherable] in S‹o Paulo. They're all different types of community policing. If we were to do comparative research, is the one in Rio more successful, less successful? What can we learn from each other on that? This is the type of work that Ford would fund, rather than a project in Providen¨a versus a project in Cidade de Deus. So in that respect we don't have to worry about which favelas to work in. Another thing that we have just been thinking about-and [Indecipherable], our partner, is doing very interesting research in-is the policemen that are involved in UPPs: What do they think about UPPs? How is it for them and their career as policemen? Being UPP police-is that good or bad? Why is that good and why is that bad? So they're doing this research by themselves, but they have approached us with the possibility of interviewing policemen outside UPPs, the broader police. What do they think about community policing and UPP in particular? Because, obviously, our goal is that the entire police force will be less violent, will talk to the community-not only the UPP ones. So our work is not devoted to UPPs, but to using UPPs for learning and obviously reflection on how to improve public policy in security areas. BENNET: I'm interested in this last point that you mentioned, particularly the reform of the police and the security sector as a whole. I know that while the UPP program has recruited new recruits as members, there is a very large part of the military police that is outside. So how-since 2003, since you've been working here-how have things changed in that period of time and what are the issues that are still challenging as far as big picture issues? TONI: I think a lot has changed-really, really a lot. The public security program in Ford started probably about 15 years ago with Elizabeth Leeds, who was a program officer here. At that time when we started on this issue, public security was an issue that the academics and the progressive academics and progressive policy makers didn't want to touch, because with the rescue from the military dictatorship, public security was like the military-the military police as we call them in Brazil; the police is military police. So there was always a rejection from the more progressive policy makers; this issue was not an issue to deal with. I think this has gone. Now the issue of public security is an issue for progressive civil-society groups, an issue for progressive academics, for progressive policy makers, governors, mayors. It is an issue that we are all concerned about, because I think finally people realize that there is no good democracy without a good police force. So I think what has changed tremendously is, first, the understanding that it is absolutely not only compatible but necessary if we are building democracies that progressive governments look at public security as an area to influence and to progress. Secondly, we have much more qualified people. As this was an issue just for the military-no, you wouldn't find anthropologists, social scientists, sociologists, economists looking into public security as an issue for them to do. They were out, totally outside the university. Now you have very strong centers like [Indecipherable] here in Rio de Janeiro, or in [Indecipherable], where public security is an issue, is a discipline even for economists, anthropologists. So the qualification of the debate has changed tremendously. And I think, finally, what has changed in terms of the field is that civil society has also realized that it cannot just be against everything-which used to be the case, again just as a reaction to the military dictatorship. But civil society is bringing solutions to the table, both at the community table like [Indecipherable] doing very positive work or CUFA doing very positive work, while also being able to keep their independence and being critical when necessary. So I think all three actors-government officials, academia, civil society-and the police, which is also much more qualified, all changed. That has changed the way we looked into public security and I think it shows a little bit on the last few years, in the decrease of criminality by the police and by criminals themselves. It is slightly diminishing in some states versus in others. In Minas Gerais, there are some positive outcomes. In S‹o Paulo there are positive outcomes. And we start seeing that in Rio in the UPPs; there is much less killings in those favelas. So, it is still an extremely serious problem in Brazil, criminality. But I think now people realize it is not the problem for somebody else, it is ours, and we have to deal with it. BENNET: Can you maybe speak a little bit of some examples of some of the projects that you're supporting that might be relevant? TONI: There are many, but one that I think gives a good example of what we do is the Brazil Forum on Public Security. That was a program that started from scratch; there was no forum. That forum has as its objective to bring the police, academics and civil-society leaders to the same table to discuss and to prioritize issues of concern in the public security area. This is a five-year-old program. As I said, it started from nothing. In the last two or three years, they have had a national meeting that brings together more than a thousand people. That shows that with a little seed money from Ford to bring that idea, you are able now to mobilize a much bigger budget than we can afford, but to bring to the table people that before would never sit together. That is one example that I think really speaks to some of the issues that Ford really cares about, which is bringing people together to talk. The other thing that we really care about is qualifying the debate, rather than having just ideological discussions about this or that. So research in the field of public security has been a big area for us. More than the research itself, the players who are doing research and how you do research in this area. So Ford has been, I think, very important in making some of the players that we have now in Brazil as the key experts in public security. To get their centers of knowledge inside, most of them, the university-to be brought to CRISP (Center for Crime and Public Safety Studies) for example, something that Ford has supported for years. Rather than knowing CRISP, the center for research and criminality in the University of Minas Gerais, rather than knowing exactly which research they are doing, what we wanted is to have quantitative as well as qualitative research being done in this area. So now we have one of the best players in that. So qualifying the debate, creating players that speak with some empirical work, and bringing people to the table. I think that has been the emphasis of Ford's work. As we work, both in the human-rights area and along the police area, it gives us some possibilities of bringing very antagonist groups together-which I think has been a privilege in working in this area. If you work just with the police and with the government, you may have a biased relationship. If you work just with the human-rights groups you also have that. So being able to see and bring together both those players has been the type of work that Ford has done. Now we need to decide, as Ford, what is next for us in the area of public security. We are just at the moment reflecting on which new areas. Now we have the qualified people; the government is on board. So what is the contribution that Ford can play in the future? We are actually just at this moment reflecting on that. BENNET: What are some of the reflections, just broadly? TONI: As I said, if we follow the issue of implementation of law-as I said, we haven't decided-one of the areas that we're looking at is pre-trial imprisonment. As you know, in Brazil some people can stay without a trial for many, many years in prison. So this is a big issue; obviously, we are concerned. Maybe we will pick up some of those bottlenecks in the system. The other big issue is the relationship between the police and the justice sector, because one of the big claims is that the police get the people put in jail and the justice sector allows them to go free. So impunity is a big problem, for both sides. So that relationship between the police force and the justice sector is something that we feel is absolutely vital. The whole issue of prisons in Brazil is catastrophic. It may be that we'll look just at prisons. But as I said, it is an early stage for us to reflect on that. BENNET: One of the other issues that I'm interested in is involving local leaders and local associations in some of these communities. In your experience, what are some of the characteristics of the interaction between the government and civil society with some of these local leaders? I know it is particularly difficult, given some of the conditions of some of these communities that can be worked with. Just from your personal perspective. TONI: Not only from my personal perspective. Have you interviewed [Indecipherable] or CUFA? BENNET: No, not yet. TONI: It would be really worthwhile to interview them. These are two groups that work directly in the community. Many of their members have been killed by the police-brothers, sisters. One of the projects, I just want to mention that we supported was getting [Indecipherable], which is a precautionary group, to give lessons to the police on how to approach young Afro-Brazilian boys-through culture, through art. So we got [Indecipherable]. Unfortunately, they are a group from Rio but at the beginning they were not able to work with the Rio police. So they started this project with the Minas Gerais police from Minas Gerais. That was a wonderful project about the police and [Indecipherable] doing music together. So breaking the barriers and prejudices from both sides through culture first. They were playing, getting the young boys from the favela to look at those police people not just as a force that kills their community but as individuals, people behind the uniforms. And getting the police also to look at those boys not just as marginals, as they normally do, but looking at them and the value they had through culture. That was a wonderful project. It had huge repercussions in Brazil. They made a band of police and those young people from the favela and they played on television and so on and so forth. Obviously, the outcome of that has been how much prejudice was there from both sides. That methodology-of using culture as an intermediate between the police and specifically young groups in favelas-has been used throughout Brazil. CUFA here uses it, and it has been tremendously helpful, either with graffiti or theater or doing films together or dance or percussion. Those leaders in the favela who had the courage to take those projects forward-it was not easy for them. They were seen at the beginning as traitors to sit with the police, let alone doing a project with the police. It took a long time, and to break the prejudice within the police force as well. So I think there are many nowadays, examples of projects and we fund a few of them here in Par‡ that try to break this barrier of no dialogue. Those community leaders have been visionaries in making sure that this could happen. I really praise them for their courage because it was hard, very, very hard. BENNET: What year did the [Indecipherable] program? TONI: Let me see, 2004 to 2007. Now they're doing it in Rio, not with money from Ford but with money from the government itself. So it is a methodology that they use and reproduced time and time again. BENNET: Great. So I know you have limited time, so I won't take too much of it. Some of the programs that are going on right now with the government have this initial phase- "pacification" is what they're calling it. Then there is this occupation phase. Now there seems to be more effort, particularly in a couple of these favelas, to provide services. That comes next. Just given your expertise in these areas, I was wondering about some of your perspective on what is different now, or is there anything different now versus some of the efforts in the past? I know that with some of the policing efforts in the past, as you had mentioned, the police were sort of the actor. How is this greater coordination between ministries, what was the result of some of that better coordination? TONI: I think this is a big innovation, and we will have to wait and see how successful those projects are. As I said, it is an early stage. I think they have done tremendous good work in terms of the planning side and involving different actors, both within the government as well as in private sector and civil society. There is good will from all sides. I think that the challenge for the moment is to sustain those policies. I think that will be the biggest challenge: how you sustain coordination. The way it is being sustained at the moment is that obviously everybody is so excited about peace in Rio; it is a novelty. So how do you sustain that? At the moment, you have a very direct command. The governor and the mayor have said, "OK, who is going to coordinate? It is the Secretary of [Indecipherable] Social." If you take that actor, how should that actor maintain that leadership? Which leadership is that after those favelas have gone to, say, a normal stage-they're in as good or as bad shape as the rest of the city, or the rest of the state? Which type of coordination is needed in that territory? We don't know as yet. Many people have probably already told you, those territories are not the poorest territories; they are the most violent territories, but they are not the poorest. So if we put them on the same playing field as everybody else, how do we ensure that criminality will not come back? And how do we ensure that public policies will flow into those areas in the same way that they flow in any other area? Which is not the case. The sustainability and consolidation of this project, I think, is the key question mark. I think they are thinking about this, but that again depends on political will, and all those stars-at some time, all those stars are not going to be aligned. The Olympics will be gone and football will be gone. Maybe at that time, we won't need that coordination anymore; maybe we will. We don't know. But I think it was an important step to risk, without too much planning. I think if you were to plan this, it wouldn't have happened, because nobody would ever dream that all those parts of the puzzle would be in place at this moment. Nobody knew, nobody could predict it. They were, and people made good use of them. But at the moment now, we are in a different phase. Now we can plan things. So I think that planning, and also leaving space for no planning, I think will carry on being important because it was the no plan that also helped. One thing that I just want to mention: The people involved, leading this process-both on the police force, whom I know less, but also in the social area-have been concerned about this for many years. They were outside government, but they had those concerns for many, many years. Now they had the opportunity to put in practice, with the machine of the government, some of their theories. To have those people thinking about those things before was key. It may be where Ford has contributed most, which is to support these people prior. Because now being in the government, they have enough resources to do whatever they want much more than we have. So I think in terms of ensuring that public policies work, you have to have had people thinking about those things. It is not just Rio, it is not just political will. You have to have had time and the resources, the human resources, there-and aligned. We had them and they're all here now and they're putting in practice the things they learned, that they wanted to implement. They have a great chance to do that now. But sustainability? Time will tell us. BENNET: A challenge for a lot of countries is: If you have that body of knowledge with these human resources, how you actually get them into a position of power, where they're able to start working these programs. Could you talk maybe a little bit about how that actually happened here? It seems this is a moment right now where you have a lot of really incredibly well-trained professionals in various different sectors, all working together. But how exactly was the government able to pull these resources together? TONI: Again, I'm biased on these issues, but independently of the social area, I think the government in Rio realized in the area of security that it could not make some parts of the government a political gamble. So putting people with backgrounds in the area, technicians-that was the case of the Secretary of State and Security. He was not just a politician, he is not just a politician, he is somebody with long experience in the area. He probably made lots of mistakes in his career, probably made many things right. But he reflected about what's possible or not possible. So I think at least in the area of security, it was a big gamble from the government, because of political parties. We cannot just give this important part of our government to another party, just sharing power, as has always been the case, especially in Rio de Janeiro, where you gave higher positions not for what people knew but for how much political power they had. So that has changed. I think the same happened in the area of social policies, in which it is not the person who is a politician or somebody that comes from a political party. It's just, you know, that Ricardo Henriques is somebody who comes from the social field. So the choice of putting obviously politically savvy people-not political professional people, but people that are professionals in their area of expertise-was a choice that the government realized it had to make. Because everything else that they had tried for the last God-knows billion years has just not worked. So hopefully it will be a sign for other governments. I think that at the federal government, that has happened as well-that we cannot just give key positions for people with no experience in the areas where they are supposed to show command. So you have a huge number of very good, talented people-and this is a contradiction, because if you look at the entire federal, state or local government you will see some areas with great people, with expertise in those areas, and you will see lousy people who have no idea of areas that they're commanding. I don't think that is well spread. I think that at least in some areas there are pockets of expertise, which is a very good sign, hopefully, that that will broaden itself. But I wouldn't say that this is the rule as yet. I think these are the exceptions rather than the rule, and the exception comes with need. BENNET: Great. Just finally, what do you look for when you're looking at some of these programs that go on, given the history of some of these programs? What do you look for when you look for success? There seems to be an electoral cycle here every two years that really causes the short-term to be favored over the long-term, and the political goals to be favored over sustainability. What do you look for when you're looking for what can actually be a successful, sustainable program? TONI: I think that you just said the key. I don't look at programs; I look at players. I think behind any program you have to have the right players. Again, with the same things that we just talked about-expertise, social justice, commitment-our emphasis here at Ford is to ensure that the players will survive the different political waves that come. Sometimes those important players will be in government, and sometimes there will be the opposition. But to keep the consistency of qualifying the debate, having social justice as a priority, that voice, that continuous voice is what we aim at. Because as I said, I mean, there are political waves that we cannot control; I wish I could, but we definitely cannot control. But we can influence the voice, one specific voice, of qualifying people in social justice. So sometimes these people will be called to play a bigger role. We applaud them, and we will support them. If sometimes they are the opposition, we will keep applauding them and supporting them. So I think our role is definitely keeping that thread that is independent from the different political wills. Really, we hope to influence the entire way Brazil does politics. But the only way we can, as authorities, at a minimum is just to show consistency. I think Brazil is so bad at consistency. We're so bad about keeping programs that are successful, keeping methodologies. So either inside or outside government, you just have to keep consistency-and learn, obviously. Consistent doesn't mean being static; it means being reflective on what you do. So that's how we operate and judge success of the programs that we support. BENNET: Great. Is there anything else that you think might be helpful-any reflections that I haven't covered that might be relevant? TONI: One aspect-I'm not sure how it compares with other programs, but I will be keen to learn, so that's why I'll just pose the question here. In Brazil and this program in particular-the UPPs, but in general-the governments have a huge role to play. Society is led by the government. So, as I said, if the government is good, it's good; if it is bad, it's bad. It changes the entire mood of the country. I'm very much in favor of strong government. But I also feel that to understand the role that other players have to play, in that process in the case of UPPs-. And that's why I'm very happy that the private sector is also coming in, and civil society is also coming in, and the media should be coming in. I don't think it depends just on the government. The government has the leadership and has to show direction. But sometimes I feel that if the government fails, everything else fails, and that's something I'm always concerned about in Brazil, where leadership can come and skill can come and perpetuate government from time to time-not just substitute for them but work side-by-side with them. So that is more of a question. At which point do you feel that Brazil has a strong state, which is great, but what's the limit of that strong state in those areas, specifically social justice? And how do we make this as a culture for the entire country, rather than just relying on one player or two to give the tone? BENNET: Right. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Innovations for Successful Societies Series: Governance Traps Oral History Program Interview number: T-4 ______________________________________________________________________ 12 Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties