14:00 - 15:30
Room: Muirhead – Room 112
Stream: Addressing Inequality: New Forms of Welfare, Social Protection and Citizenship in Africa
Chair/s:
Ruth Prince
The political economy of social assistance in sub-Saharan Africa: Power relations, ideas and transnational policymaking
Tom Lavers, Sam Hickey
University of Manchester, Manchester

This paper presents comparative research examining the political economy drivers of elite commitment to the adoption and expansion of social assistance in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The expansion of social assistance—particularly cash transfers—and the drivers of this reform have been subject to growing debate. While for some this constitutes a ‘revolution from the Global South’, for others social assistance is a donor-driven initiative that merely ameliorates the worst symptoms of neo-liberal reform. Still others contend that the expansion of social assistance flows from recent processes of democratisation and the need for politicians to secure popular support.

Each of these perspectives has some validity. This paper, however, seeks a deeper theoretical and empirical engagement to understand how multiple causal processes have combined to produce distinct patterns of reform. The research constitutes an engagement between the welfare state literature—notably the ‘power resources’ approach and discursive institutionalism—and recent work on the politics of development, particularly that on ‘political settlements’.

While class, unions and leftist political parties tend to be less influential in African politics than was the case in European welfare states, drawing on the power resources approach, social policy is, nonetheless, a key resource that is subject to competition regarding its distribution between elites and non-elites. Equally, while formal institutions exert influence over policymaking, of equal, if not greater, importance are the informal norms and relationships that shape how politics actually work in developing countries. Finally, insights from the discursive institutionalist literature regarding how policy ideas travel and are adapted are of central importance to understanding the expansion of social assistance in SSA.

Methodologically, the paper takes a qualitative approach based both on the importance of delving into the details of decision making in order to understand the causal mechanisms involved, as well as the lack of reliable quantitative data on social protection or related political and institutional factors in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper draws on eight detailed country case studies (Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) that trace the decision making process on social assistance. The results of these case studies are analysed using fuzzy sets / Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs/QCA) that identifies distinct pathways leading to the adoption and expansion of social assistance.

The first of these comprises cases with a highly centralised, dominant party with a clear developmental agenda which adopted particular forms of social protection as a solution to perceived existential crises threatening the party, significantly adapting donor-proposed policy ideas in the process. In the second, where power is more dispersed and a major focus of politics is on winning competitive elections, donors have established pilot schemes reflecting their favoured approaches. These pilots have gradually secured differing levels of elite support as local and national politicians see political opportunity in the highly visible disbursement of resources, particularly around elections. At this early stage, it is the dominant developmental cases that have produced greater levels of elite commitment.


Reference:
Tu-A01 Inequality 1-P-002
Presenter/s:
Tom Lavers
Presentation type:
Panel
Room:
Muirhead – Room 112
Chair/s:
Ruth Prince
Date:
Tuesday, 11 September
Time:
14:15 - 14:30
Session times:
14:00 - 15:30