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This book is one of the first attempts to analyze how developing countries through the early twenty-first century have established systems of social protection, and how these systems have been affected by the processes of globalization and democratization. The book focuses on Latin America to identify factors associated with the evolution of welfare state policies during the pre-globalization period prior to 1979, whilst studying how globalization and democratization have affected governments' fiscal commitment to social spending. In contrast with the Western European experience, more developed welfare systems evolved in countries relatively closed to international trade, while the recent process of globalization that has swept the region has put substantial downward pressure on social security expenditures. Health and education spending has been relatively protected from greater exposure to international markets and has actually increased substantially with the shift to democracy.
Comparing the welfare states of Latin America, East Asia and Eastern Europe, the authors trace the origins of social policy in these regions to political changes in the mid-20th century, and show how the legacies of these early choices are influencing welfare reform following democratization and globalization.
Offers a comprehensive, region-wide analysis of the politics of taxation in Latin America to make reforms politically palatable and sustainable.
Although inequality in Latin America ranks among the worst in the world, it has notably declined over the last decade, offset by improvements in health care and education, enhanced programs for social assistance, and increases in the minimum wage. In Democracy and the Left, Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens argue that the resurgence of democracy in Latin America is key to this change. In addition to directly affecting public policy, democratic institutions enable left-leaning political parties to emerge, significantly influencing the allocation of social spending on poverty and inequality. But while democracy is an important determinant of redistributive change, it is by no means the only factor. Drawing on a wealth of data, Huber and Stephens present quantitative analyses of eighteen countries and comparative historical analyses of the five most advanced social policy regimes in Latin America, showing how international power structures have influenced the direction of their social policy. They augment these analyses by comparing them to the development of social policy in democratic Portugal and Spain. The most ambitious examination of the development of social policy in Latin America to date, Democracy and the Left shows that inequality is far from intractable—a finding with crucial policy implications worldwide.
Understanding Latin America's recent economic performance calls for a multidisciplinary analysis. This handbook looks at the interaction of economics and politics in the region and includes a number of contributions from top academic experts who have also served as key policy makers (a former president, ministers of finance, a central bank governor), reflecting upon the challenges of reform.
The untold story of how welfare and development programs in the United States and Latin America produced the instruments of their own destruction In the years after 1945, a flood of U.S. advisors swept into Latin America with dreams of building a new economic order and lifting the Third World out of poverty. These businessmen, economists, community workers, and architects went south with the gospel of the New Deal on their lips, but Latin American realities soon revealed unexpected possibilities within the New Deal itself. In Colombia, Latin Americans and U.S. advisors ended up decentralizing the state, privatizing public functions, and launching austere social welfare programs. By the 1960s, they had remade the country’s housing projects, river valleys, and universities. They had also generated new lessons for the United States itself. When the Johnson administration launched the War on Poverty, U.S. social movements, business associations, and government agencies all promised to repatriate the lessons of development, and they did so by multiplying the uses of austerity and for-profit contracting within their own welfare state. A decade later, ascendant right-wing movements seeking to dismantle the midcentury state did not need to reach for entirely new ideas: they redeployed policies already at hand. In this groundbreaking book, Amy Offner brings readers to Colombia and back, showing the entanglement of American societies and the contradictory promises of midcentury statebuilding. The untold story of how the road from the New Deal to the Great Society ran through Latin America, Sorting Out the Mixed Economy also offers a surprising new account of the origins of neoliberalism.
Globalization and the Future of the Welfare State focuses on the effects of globalization and free trade on social welfare policies in a variety of developing countries in Asia and Latin America.
Why is there a disparity in the levels of technical and institutional capacity of national statistical offices (NSOs) in the Latin American and Caribbean region? There is a consensus about the importance of having up-to-date and quality official statistics. The data from censuses, household surveys, and administrative records are an essential input for decision-making, and for the design, implementation, and evaluation of public policies in a country. However, this recognition of the value of statistics does not necessarily translate into greater support for the institutions responsible for their production. To understand the disparity in the capacity of NSOs, the publication provides an innovative approach: it uses the theoretical framework of the study of State capacity, and it develops a methodological framework to compare the political economy factors that influence statistical capacity, through case studies in ten countries of the region: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru. Additionally, the publication offers a series of recommendations to strengthen the capacity of NSOs in the region, which include the implementation of institutional reforms to modernize the legal frameworks that govern NSOs in order to grant them more autonomy and allow them to assume a coordinating role of the national statistical system; the greater use of administrative records; the promotion of a dialogue between the NSOs and the community of data users; the establishment of links with non-governmental and international actors; and adherence to international standards and best practices for the production and dissemination of official statistics.
In Latin America as elsewhere, politicians routinely face a painful dilemma: whether to use state resources for national purposes, especially those that foster economic development, or to channel resources to people and projects that will help insure political survival and reelection. While politicians may believe that a competent state bureaucracy is intrinsic to the national good, political realities invariably tempt leaders to reward powerful clients and constituents, undermining long-term competence. Politician's Dilemma explores the ways in which political actors deal with these contradictory pressures and asks the question: when will leaders support reforms that increase state capacity and that establish a more meritocratic and technically competent bureaucracy? Barbara Geddes brings rational choice theory to her study of Brazil between 1930 and 1964 and shows how state agencies are made more effective when they are protected from partisan pressures and operate through merit-based recruitment and promotion strategies. Looking at administrative reform movements in other Latin American democracies, she traces the incentives offered politicians to either help or hinder the process. In its balanced insight, wealth of detail, and analytical rigor, Politician's Dilemma provides a powerful key to understanding the conflicts inherent in Latin American politics, and to unlocking possibilities for real political change.
Latin America suffered a profound state crisis in the 1980s, which prompted not only the wave of macroeconomic and deregulation reforms known as the Washington Consensus, but also a wide variety of institutional or 'second generation' reforms. 'The State of State Reform in Latin America' reviews and assesses the outcomes of these less studied institutional reforms. This book examines four major areas of institutional reform: a. political institutions and the state organization; b. fiscal institutions, such as budget, tax and decentralization institutions; c. public institutions in charge of sectoral economic policies (financial, industrial, and infrastructure); and d. social sector institutions (pensions, social protection, and education). In each of these areas, the authors summarize the reform objectives, describe and measure their scope, assess the main outcomes, and identify the obstacles for implementation, especially those of an institutional nature.