The increase in inequality and social exclusion in a context where the growing divide between the wealthy and powerful and the rest is fracturing society in new and more dramatic ways has led to new debates about the role of social policy in creating more egalitarian societies. The key question the themed issue aims to address is which factors have led to recent social protection reforms and expansion in different contexts in the Global South and what role these policies play in overcoming or reinforcing inequalities. This is explored in three case studies, Kenya, Philippines, and South Africa, providing in-depth insights into recent social protection reforms, their economic and political drivers, the role of national and transnational actors and institutions, as well as social impacts and the transformative nature of reforms.
Social protection and inequality in the global South: Politics, actors and institutions
Katja Hujo
published on 13 May 2021
The article explores the links between contemporary social protection approaches and inequality in developing countries, focusing on political economy drivers and the role of actors and institutions in recent reform and implementation processes. This introduction article establishes some common ground by introducing context, concepts and questions. Reducing inequality is identified as a key condition for achieving inclusive and sustainable development as aspired in the Sustainable Development Goals governments committed to in 2015. The introduction situates the three articles in this issue, two studies of pro-poor cash transfers in the Philippines and Kenya, and an analysis of the new national minimum wage policy in South Africa, in a context of contested globalisation, increasing inequality and the social turn, a come-back of social policy as a key development instrument. After identifying the limitations and opportunities of this social turn, the article discusses the three social protection reforms and their impact on equality and social change in the different country contexts through a lens of contestation, institutions and transformative change.
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Targeting versus social protection in cash transfers in the Philippines: Reassessing a celebrated case of social protection
Emma Lynn Dadap-Cantal, Andrew M. Fischer, Charmaine G. Ramos
published on 4 May 2021
This article provides a corrective to the dominant celebratory narrative about the conditional cash transfer programme in the Philippines, the Pantawid, and its associated social registry, the Listahanan. Based on extensive documentary analysis and fieldwork in the Philippines in 2017 and 2018, we argue that the targeting system has in fact been unable to function according to its primary purpose of identifying the poor and providing them social protection, despite being celebrated precisely for this purpose. This has been partly – but not only – due to the increasingly obsolescent data of the registry, which the political system has been incapable of correcting, leading to stasis at a fairly low level of coverage, at a peak of about 19 percent of national households in 2014 and since subsiding to about 17 percent by 2020, with transfer amounts at a fraction of the food poverty line. This dysfunction has resulted in a quasi-permanent group of cash payment recipients, with little or no reflection of evolving poverty profiles. This revised reading of the Pantawid and Listahanan, in what might be considered as a strong case to examine social protection performance, brings us back to the perennial problems associated with poverty targeting in even best-case social protection programmes promoted by international donors and organisations.
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The politics of implementation: The role of traditional authorities in delivering social policies to poor people in Kenya
Barbara Rohregger, Katja Bender, Bethuel Kinyanjui Kinuthia, Esther Schüring, Grace Ikua, Nicky Pouw
published on 2 May 2021
The article contributes to understanding the political economy of implementation of social protection programmes at local level. Current debates are dominated by technocratic arguments, emphasizing the lack of financial resources, technology or skills as major barriers for effective implementation. Describing how chiefs, assistant-chiefs and community elders are routinely at the centre stage of core implementation processes, including targeting, enrolment, delivery, monitoring, awareness and information, data collection or grievance and redress, this study on Kenya argues for the need to look more closely into the local political economy as an important mediating arena for implementing social policies. Implementation is heavily contingent upon the local social, political and institutional context that influences and shapes its outcomes. These processes are ambivalent involving multiple forms of interactions between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ institutional structures, which may support initial policy objectives or induce policy outcomes substantially diverging from intended policy objectives
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Inequality in the South African labour market: The political economy of the national minimum wage
David Francis, Imraan Valodia
published on 7 July 2021
In 2019, South Africa implemented a national minimum wage (NMW) for the first time. This is an important intervention, given that the South African labour market continues to generate some of the highest levels of income and wealth inequality in the world. The minimum wage is intended as a structural intervention to transform the labour market by setting a wage floor, while highlighting larger issues that continue to reproduce inequality in the labour market. The process raises interesting questions about the role of social dialogue in the policy making process, especially at a time when the roles of experts and evidence are contested in political economy. This article reviews the national minimum wage process from two angles: assessing the economic evidence and examining the political economy of minimum wages in South Africa. We take this approach in order to better understand the roles of evidence and politics in the policy making process. While both processes were contested, important differences emerge from the analysis: the economic lens highlights the intersection of evidence and ideology, while a political economy review identifies important lines of contestation in the policy making process itself. The national minimum wage process shows that institutionalised social dialogue continues to be a central part of the policy making process, but that it cannot be taken for granted: the particular configuration of the social dialogue process and the roles assigned to each player matter.
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Additional articles will be posted here as they become available.
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Overcoming Inequalities in a Fractured World: Between Elite Power and Social Mobilization".