Easy and Hard Redistribution: The Political Economy of Welfare States in Latin America

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 988-1006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alisha C. Holland ◽  
Ben Ross Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Unemployment Insurance ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
Social Insurance System ◽  
Policy Model ◽  
Major Break

Comparative research on Latin American welfare states recently has focused on the extension of non-contributory benefits to those outside the formal labor market. This extension of benefits constitutes a major break from past exclusionary welfare regimes. Yet there also are substantial areas of continuity, especially in the contributory social-insurance system that absorbs most of welfare budgets. We develop here a framework for studying changes in Latin American welfare states that reconciles these trends. We argue that Latin American governments enjoyed an “easy” stage of welfare expansions in the 2000s, characterized by distinct political coalitions. Bottom-targeted benefits could be layered on top of existing programs and provided to wide segments of the population. But many Latin American governments are nearing the exhaustion of this social-policy model. We explore policy and coalitional challenges that hinder moves to “hard” redistribution with case studies of unemployment insurance in Chile and housing in Colombia.

Gendered Activation at the Expense of Gender Equality? Activation and Gender Equality as Competing Logics in the Swedish Welfare State

Affilia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 088610992110459
Author(s):  
Ellen Parsland ◽  
Rickard Ulmestig
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Insurance System ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Swedish Society ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Labor Market Programs

This study aims to understand how goals of activation and gender equality interact in labor market programs directed towards activating unemployed participants. The study draws on interviews with 28 social workers and managers at four Swedish municipally governed labor market programs typically targeted towards poor, unemployed individuals with little to no attachment to the labor market or social insurance system. Our findings show that activation goals are understood to be clear cut and a dominant logic within the labor market programs. The gender equality goals are understood as fuzzy and subordinate to the activation logic. Our theoretical analysis, based on neo-institutional theory, shows that gendered activation as a hybrid logic is created within the four programs as a means of handling the competing logics of gender equality and activation. Gendered activation may be reasonable on an individual level, where women in long-term unemployment can sustain a higher income through work and become financially independent. In the context of the gender segregated labor market, gendered activation reproduces gendered inequalities when an increasing interest for activation policy among welfare states overshadows claims of gender equality. Furthermore, our study exemplifies the systemic reproduction of racist discourse within social- and labour market policies. Within the logic of gendered activation, migrant women become singled out as specifically problematic for Swedish society to handle when unemployment is given gendered and cultural explanations. Through the logic of gendered activation, gender equality goals become no-matter-what employment rather than employment leading to equal outcomes.

scholarly journals Diminished Expectations

2018 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-594 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alisha C. Holland
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Formal Sector ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Original Survey

In Latin America, the relationship between income and support for redistribution is weak and variable despite the region's extreme income inequality. This article shows that this condition is rooted in the truncated structure of many Latin American welfare states. Heavy spending on contributory social insurance for formal-sector workers, flat or regressive subsidies, and informal access barriers mean that social spending does far less for the poor in Latin America than it does in advanced industrial economies. Using public opinion data from across Latin America and original survey data from Colombia, the author demonstrates that income is less predictive of attitudes in the countries and social policy areas in which the poor gain less from social expenditures. Social policy exclusion leads the poor to doubt that they will benefit from redistribution, thereby dampening their support for it. The article reverses an assumption in political economy models that welfare exclusion unleashes demands for greater redistribution. Instead, truncation reinforces skepticism about social policy helping the poor. Welfare state reforms to promote social inclusion are essential to strengthen redistributive coalitions.

Spain

2021 ◽  
pp. 333-352
Author(s):  
Elisa Chuliá
Keyword(s):  
Health System ◽  
Healthcare System ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Party System ◽  
National Health System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Insurance System ◽  
Autonomous Communities ◽  
Structural Problems ◽  
Private Management

This chapter offers an in-depth look at health politics and the tax-financed, universal health system in Spain. It traces the development of the Spanish healthcare system, focusing in particular on its double transition in the 1980s and 1990s from a centralized social insurance system, mostly funded through workers’ and employers’ contributions, to a decentralized universal model financed by general taxation. The new national health system aimed at covering all residents and transferred healthcare competences to the regions, i.e. the seventeen Autonomous Communities, a process completed in 2001. Key issues include rationalization, harmonization, and territorial equity-building of the decentralized healthcare system; efficiency improvement through the introduction of private management elements; and cost containment to bolster the system’s financial sustainability in the context of growing demand and scarce resources. As the chapter argues, these challenges along with the remarkable changes in the political party system have increased the political salience of healthcare in public debate in the 2010s, but the prospects for developing consensual healthcare policies have worsened, such that structural problems are likely to persist.

scholarly journals REGÍMENES DE BIENESTAR EN AMÉRICA LATINA Y EL CARIBE: NOTAS PARA PENSAR LO CONTEMPORÁNEO

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (8) ◽  
pp. 26-46
Author(s):  
Melisa Campana-Alabarce
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
America Latina ◽  
Siglo Xx ◽  
Latin American And Caribbean ◽  
Core Features

El presente artículo ofrece una caracterización de los regímenes de bienestar latinoamericanos y caribeños en clave historiográfica. Realiza, en primer lugar, un repaso por las condiciones de emergencia de los Estados de Bienestar de Europa occidental y sus características centrales, haciendo especial hincapié en su función como modalidad de gestión regulada de las desigualdades en tanto estrategia de compromiso social del capitalismo industrial. Dialogando con ello, se detiene luego en las específicas configuraciones que han asumido los regímenes de bienestar en América Latina y el Caribe durante el transcurso del siglo XX. Brinda, por último, un mapeo de sus características contemporáneas y de los principales desafíos que enfrentan los Estados de la región en su calidad de garantes de derechos de cara al futuro. This article provides a characterization of Latin American and Caribbean Welfare regimes in historiographical perspective. Firstly, it makes a review of the emergence conditions of Welfare States in Western Europe and its core features, with particular emphasis on its role as a method to regulate inequalities in industrial capitalism. Dialoguing with it, then stops in the specific configurations that welfare regimes have taken in Latin America during the course of the twentieth century. Finally, it provides a map of its contemporary features and the major challenges that the States of the region face in his capacity as right guarantors for the future. 

Bread or Solidarity?: Argentine Social Policies, 1983–1990

1992 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georges Midré
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political System ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
General Structure ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Social

This article describes the introduction of two social policy programmes aiming to provide adequate nourishment to poor families in Argentina between 1983 and 1990. They were called PAN (Programa Alimentario Nacional), and the Bono Nacional Solidario de Emergencia.A study of the introduction of social policy measures during these years can help us to understand parts of the value-structure upon which Argentine society is built. Such a study also highlights some of the main social functions that welfare programmes perform in structuring the relationship between the political system and society. Finally, the management of the programmes and the political debate surrounding them illustrate some key features of the Argentine political system and its ability to formulate a coherent social policy project.The debates concerning the organisation of social welfare schemes, in 1983 as well as in 1989, must be seen in relation to the general structure of the social welfare system in the country. Both by European and Latin American standards, Argentina's first ‘labour laws’ were passed at an early stage.2 However, Argentina never became a ‘Welfare State’ in the sense that all of the population was included. One of the reasons for this is connected with the impotence of the State. Several analysts have underlined the particular weakness of many Latin American States, a consequence of a pronounced corporative logic that dominates the implementation of public policies.3 In fact, the social impact of welfare policies reflects the overall power structure in society in a more clear-cut way than we see in most European Welfare States.4

scholarly journals Welfare Regimes and Education Regimes: Equality of Opportunity and Expenditure in the EU (and US)

2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 469-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNE WEST ◽  
RITA NIKOLAI
Keyword(s):  
Educational Outcomes ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Educational Opportunity ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
Education Expenditure ◽  
The Us ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Institutional Features

AbstractEducation is crucially important for later outcomes but has received limited attention in comparative research on welfare states. In light of this, we present an exploratory analysis of education systems across fourteen EU countries and the US. This builds on existing work on educational institutions, educational outcomes and welfare regimes. We focus on institutional features associated with inequality of educational opportunity, including academic selection, tracking and public/private provision; on educational outcomes; and on education expenditure. Our quantitative analysis identifies four clusters of countries: the Nordic, Continental, Mediterranean and English-speaking, which bear similarities to those identified in the welfare states literature. Each ‘education regime’ is associated with particular institutional features, educational outcomes and levels of public expenditure. Our analysis suggests that further comparative research on education, viewed as a key component of the welfare state, is warranted.

Understanding the Expansion of Latin America’s New Social Welfare Regimes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rehan Rafay Jamil
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Political Incentives ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
Party Ideology

Latin American countries have been described as truncated welfare states. However, the recent expansion of innovative social welfare programs have brought millions of excluded citizens access to social benefits. This review article examines a new body of scholarship that studies how democratic political competition has created the institutional context for social welfare expansion. This literature makes several important contributions to the study of distributive politics. It moves beyond regime type and party ideology and focuses on the nature of domestic political institutions and citizen-state linkages within Latin American democracies. Countries with robust political competition and denser ties to constituents have had the most extensive welfare expansion, and non-partisan programs have undermined clientelism. In single party dominated settings, the political incentives for informal and clientelist provision remains significant.

Palestinian Diaspora Communities in Latin America and Palestinian Statehood

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-120
Author(s):  
Yousef M. Aljamal ◽  
Philipp O. Amour
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
South America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Right

There are some 700,000 Latin Americans of Palestinian origin, living in fourteen countries of South America. In particular, Palestinian diaspora communities have a considerable presence in Chile, Honduras, and El Salvador. Many members of these communities belong to the professional middle classes, a situation which enables them to play a prominent role in the political and economic life of their countries. The article explores the evolving attitudes of Latin American Palestinians towards the issue of Palestinian statehood. It shows the growing involvement of these communities in Palestinian affairs and their contribution in recent years towards the wide recognition of Palestinian rights — including the right to self-determination and statehood — in Latin America. But the political views of members of these communities also differ considerably about the form and substance of a Palestinian statehood and on the issue of a two-states versus one-state solution.

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