This article looks into the explanatory dimensions of social services governance in São Paulo and Belo Horizonte. It considers the vertical axis of the interconnections between levels of government and the horizontal axis of interactions between state and non-state actors. We argue that it is necessary to advance in integrated explanations on how these multilevel interactions restructure local governance patterns over time in order to fill a gap in the literature on multilevel governance. Cases are compared based on the triangulation of methods: literature review, document analysis, and in-depth interviews. We argue that four dimensions are essential to understand the effect of the intersection between axes: 01. municipal political organization; 02. mobilization of policy communities; 03. civil society actors’ profile and work; 04. types of state capacities. Our case analysis reveals, in São Paulo, a pattern that is less constrained by federal rulemaking and more focused on conflicts between civil society organizations (CSOs) and bureaucratic actors, and highly dependent on local political dynamics and ways of building regulatory capacities. In Belo Horizonte, in turn, we observed a greater influence of federal rulemaking and greater weight of policy communities, which are constantly mobilized to build capacities for policy provision, and not only for the regulation of services.
Multilevel governance; social services; social policies; SUAS; metropolises