How do bureaucrats implement public policy when faced with political intermediation? This article examines this issue in the distribution of land rights to informal settlements in the municipality of São Paulo, Brazil. Land regularization is a policy established over three decades, where politicians’ requests for land titles to their constituencies play a relevant role. Based on interviews and documents, this study finds that bureaucrats adopt a twofold approach to regulate distribution: they document informal settlements, enacting eligibility criteria; then, they manage and prioritize beneficiaries, accommodating qualifying political demands. In this process, they enforce eligibility rules consistently across cases, constraining political intermediation to a rational scheme. Therefore, bureaucrats reconcile nonprogrammatic politics and policy rules by separating eligibility assessment from beneficiary selection. This paper bridges urban distributive politics and street-level bureaucracy literature by revealing that policy implementers may use technical expertise to curb political influence and negotiate conflicting interests and constraints.

中文翻译：

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城市土地权的官僚政治：圣保罗土地正规化政策中的（非）程序性分配

面对政治斡旋，官僚如何执行公共政策？本文探讨了巴西圣保罗市非正规住区土地权分配的问题。土地正规化是一项三十年来制定的政策，政治家对其选区土地所有权的要求发挥了重要作用。根据访谈和文件，本研究发现官僚采用双重方法来规范分配：他们记录非正式定居点，制定资格标准；然后，他们管理受益人并确定其优先顺序，满足符合条件的政治要求。在此过程中，他们在不同案件中一致执行资格规则，将政治调解限制在合理的计划内。因此，官僚们通过将资格评估与受益人选择分开来协调非纲领性政治和政策规则。本文通过揭示政策实施者可以利用技术专长来遏制政治影响并就冲突的利益和约束进行谈判，从而将城市分配政治和街头官僚主义文献联系起来。