Paper short abstract:

This paper sets out the forms of political economy, ideology & governmentality that led to social protection becoming a global public policy, with further insights on the role that organisational sociology played in this process through a case-study of how DFID has promoted cash transfers in Africa.

Paper long abstract:

International actors and ideas have shaped the uptake of social protection in sub-Saharan Africa for a century. However, this negotiated process of 'policy transfer' underwent a watershed moment in the early 2000s, since when international development agencies have played an unprecedentedly active role in promoting social protection as a new global public policy. Catalysed by significant shifts within the global political economy and a related ideological shift towards the more inclusive forms of neoliberalism, international development agencies have deployed strategies of governmentality to 'render technical' social protection, and cash transfers in particular, as the logical solution to myriad development problems. This involved building a new 'epistemic community' around researchers, think-tanks and policy entrepreneurs as well as often highly politicised campaigns to build support for social protection amongst political elites in Africa. These broad shifts were filtered through specific development agencies, whose distinctive ideas and approaches to development as a form of 'institutional practice' would play a critical role in shaping the form that social protection would take, not only as a new global public policy but also, via negotiation with African elites, as a particular type of political and developmental strategy within specific African contexts.

Paper short abstract:

This paper argues for a reassessment of the role of external pressure and coercion by donors involved in the dissemination of the social protection agenda in developing countries. Emphasis is given to structural and institutional factors conditioning the exercise of power in the aid relations.

Paper long abstract:

External pressure by donors is acknowledged to have played a part in the rapid dissemination of social protection programmes across developing countries. However, there is also a general consensus that such pressures have amounted to just one among many intersecting contributing factors, to the extent that coercion exercised by donors within such agendas is often dismissed or relegated to a minor causal role, in contrast to contextually-specific domestic political economy and ideational factors. While such research has made important contributions to understand how various aid-dependent countries can maneuver within the constraints of dependence, it has nonetheless discouraged more systemic assessments of coercion operating within aid relations, in ways that condition maneuverability in fundamental ways. Moreover, most of the regression analysis testing for external pressure has been conducted on the basis of obtuse, inappropriate and/or poorly conceived variables. This paper argues for an urgent reassessment, particularly at a time when many developing countries are experiencing virulent reassertions of external constraints, which reinforce the leverage of donors even in situations where aid might only amount to a marginal addition to overall external financing needs. Structural and institutional insights are central to this reassessment. The particular contributions of this study are to highlight more nuanced understandings of how power is exercised through strategic marginal financial contributions within broader patterns of financial integration, and notions of institutional embeddedness, whereby the insertion of donors into domestic policy making becomes increasingly normalised, even where donors have little or no obvious financial clout.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the interaction of national level policy decisions and local level implementation, leading to contestation and policy change through direct channels. Social and political acceptability can thereby over-ride evidence-based policy decisions, influencing social protection design.

Paper long abstract:

The adoption of the social cash transfer (SCT) programme in Zambia has been shaped by the efforts of a transnationalised policy coalition aligning with the interests and ideas of a new ruling coalition.

In search of a national targeting strategy, a harmonised methodology was developed aiming to reach the poorest of the poor. This was based on recommendations from an OPM report and approved by the policy coalition. However, when it hit the ground it caused many complaints in communities. Intervention by the Minister of Community Development escalated this situation, and as a result the perception of 'undeserving' recipients was considered a political risk which could harm the image of the programme when it was not yet fully established.

Control of neediness has emerged as being the most important criteria of deservingness and at an 'experts' workshop the decision was made to replace the dependency ratio with categories of households. The question being asked by the policy coalition is no longer how do we reach the poorest but who do we not want to exclude?

Framed by technocrats as 'lessons learned', these changes reflect the ways in which social and political acceptability influences the type of social protection provided. The move towards a categorical approach is a policy choice rather than a targeting methodology. However, this change has not been brought about through rational choice models of voting behaviour but through direct channels of contestation facilitated by political pressure, even in the absence of accountability structures within communities.

Paper short abstract:

The paper critically interrogates what is new about the concept of social protection and offers new empirical research from the MENA region. Conceptual and policy links are drawn with social policy.

Paper long abstract:

Based on extensive empirical research in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA), funded in part by the ESRC, this paper advances a conceptual and policy critique of social protection with a view to highlighting the of significance of social policy systems in developing countries as frameworks for social protection action. The paper fulfills two key objectives: First, it offers a critical review of social protection academic and policy discourses over the last two decades; identifying and critically evaluating three distinct strands: crisis or risk management; extending social contracts and social justice; institutionalizing social policy systems. The paper argues that it is the latter approach which has received least attention in the social protection literature yet it can be conceptually forthcoming in orienting policy towards the creation of more socially and politically sustainable societies. Second, the paper focuses on a geographical region which has not received sufficient academic attention in relation to social protection: MENA. Social protection arrived late to MENA, gaining a sense of urgency in policy spheres only after the "Arab Spring". This factor, along with the post-2015 SDG agenda have opened up political space for social protection but in the narrow sense of targeted social safety nets and support for vulnerable groups. Using the findings from a recently completed ESRC project encompassing Lebanon, Turkey and Iran as well as other research completed on North Africa and the Arab Gulf, the paper argues that only by engaging directly with social policy frameworks in MENA will social protection successfully offer a new paradigm for development action.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the dynamics of power at different levels in the uptake of social protection policies in Kenya.

Paper long abstract:

Power relations has a pivotal role in explaining the uptake of social protection polices in Africa. Recently, research has shown an increased interest in understanding the determinants to the exponential growth of social protection policies on the continent. However, an analysis of the play of power as an explanatory variable remains unexplored. This paper investigates the significance of power relations in the transfer and adoption of social protection policies in Kenya. Drawing from the nexus of policy transfer and Foucauldian perspective on power, the paper investigates the extent to which power relations determined the uptake of the policy and programmes. By employing qualitative modes of enquiry, the study attempts to illuminate the dynamics of power in social protection uptake considering ideational influence, domestic mediational factors and coercive mechanisms. The study analyses how the different spaces and multi-layers of power played out in the process of transfer and subsequent adoption of the policies. The study argues that asymmetrical power relationship based on positional power balances amongst domestic and transnational actors, and institutions were central to the uptake of social protection policies.

Key words: power relations, social protection, policy transfer, Kenya, policy uptake

Paper short abstract:

This paper, applying a political settlements approach, analyses the political economy dynamics that have influenced the adoption and implementation of social protection in Mozambique.

Paper long abstract:

Social protection (SP) programmes in Mozambique has after the new millennium been developed with donor support from an initial 250,000 beneficiary households to almost 500,000 households by 2016. The expansion was secured through primarily two programmes: the Basic Social Subsidy Program (PSSB) and the Productive Social Action Program (PASP). This paper, applying a political settlements approach, analyses the political economy dynamics that have influenced the adoption and implementation of social protection in Mozambique. The paper finds that the ruling elite's commitment to social protection, has been shaped by the specific characteristics of the political settlement and is intimately related to key challenges confronting the ruling elite. The specific policies that form part of social protection as it evolved in Mozambique is a direct response to key distributional problems related to consistently high levels of poverty and key challenges related to subsidizing the growing urban populations that rioted in 2008 and 2010. Both the poverty and the riots were perceived by the ruling Frelimo government as posing a threat to the reproduction of power and thereby the political settlement. We argue that the objectives and framing of social protection have shifted over time, just as the Mozambican political settlement has changed. In contrast to other countries (like Rwanda), the Frelimo government viewed social protection predominantly as a social transfer program, but over time it also came to see it as integral to addressing key government challenges.