Fila de Xepa da Vacina: como governos populistas influenciam no trabalho da burocracia de nível de rua?

This article uses the case study of the COVID-19 vaccine leftover queue to explain how contexts of democratic backsliding influence the work of street-level bureaucracy in Brazil. To this end, the study unfolds around public policy entrepreneurship, in this case, as a form of reaction by street-level bureaucracy in the face of a populist government. Through the exploration of documentary content, it was possible to map the construction of the vaccine leftover queue. Interviews provided better framing for the institutional content. Both empirical means, under the bibliographic review carried out on public policy entrepreneurship, street-level bureaucracy, and populism, developed relevant results. The results are evidence of how contexts of democratic backsliding hinder the work of frontline civil servants, while they develop their own strategies to mitigate the difficulty of the environment.