from the participants in the expert workshop on a rights-based approach to conditional cash transfer programmes held in the FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, on 17 and 18 March 2011.United Nations publication ISBN: 978-92-1-121757-5 E-ISBN: 978-92-1-055172-4 LC/G.2497-P N° de venta: E.11. II.G.55 • 2011-263 Copyright © United Nations, September 2011, all rights reserved Printed in United Nations, Santiago, ChileRequests for authorization to reproduce this work in whole or in part should be sent to the Secretary of the Publications Board, United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y. 10017, United States of America. Member States and their governmental institutions may reproduce this work without prior authorization, but are requested to mention the source and to inform the United Nations of such reproduction. Cuadernos de la CEPAL ForewordEver since its founding, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has maintained that social development, poverty eradication and, above all, efforts to secure greater equality are the cornerstones of democratic, fair and prosperous societies in the region. This message was made explicit in the publication launched on the occasion of the thirty-third session of the Commission, entitled Time for equality: closing gaps, opening trails (ECLAC, 2010b). In that publication, ECLAC emphasized the importance of taking action on various fronts as a way to secure broader social inclusion, equality and respect for human rights.Designing and implementing social policies that ensure a multidimensional approach to the complex issues of exclusion, vulnerability, inequality and poverty therefore needs to be one of the region's top priorities. A crucial component of that task will be the strengthening of social protection systems.In that connection, the present volume seeks to identify and describe the role played by conditional (or co-responsibility) cash transfers (CCTs) as one of the main tools used in the fight against poverty over the past 15 years in the region. These programmes, whose scope and replication have extended well beyond the region's borders, aim to break the chain of intergenerational transmission of poverty by building human capacity in the most vulnerable families. To that end, CCT schemes provide direct cash transfers that are tied to certain conditions being met, mainly in the areas of school attendance and medical check-ups. They should thus contribute not only to reducing levels of income poverty but also to building human capacity, which is a key component for the sustainable development and advancement of the region's societies. 6 ECLAC The CCTs implemented in various countries of Latin America and the Caribbean share the same basic architecture but exhibit significant differences in their overall conceptual design, including in terms of coverage and implementation. This publication presents a detailed compilation of those differences together with a review of the areas of ongoing discussion, in the hope o...

The global financial crisis has stimulated much research about the resilience of neoliberalism. However, concrete mechanisms of neoliberal resilience are yet to be elaborated. This article elaborates such mechanisms by incorporating Amable's notion of institutional hierarchy into Mahoney and Thelen's gradual institutional change theory. In doing this, it provides a dynamic and politically grounded framework to analyze institutional resilience. Neoliberalism is maintained over time because dominant social blocs defend those policies and institutions that they perceive as more favorable to their interests (high-hierarchy institutions), while allowing degrees of freedom in those that matter less (low-hierarchy institutions). Four mechanisms account for the resilience of high-hierarchy institutions: marginal adjustment, solidification, accommodation and compromise. I explore the potential of this framework by comparing the trajectory of two related policy domains, exchange rates and industrial policy, in countries with a long history of neoliberal policymaking: Chile and Estonia.

This article analyzes the role of social movements and environmental organizations in crafting contingent coalitions to advance renewable energies in Chile. Until recently, Chile presented several conditions predicting the continuation of an arm’s‐length energy policy and a deregulated energy market heavily concentrated on environmentally and socially unfriendly sources. However, gradual but transformative policy change in the last decade has made the country a world leader in renewable energy development. Studying two key moments in energy policy reform, we argue that the contingency of the coalitions that social movements and environmental organizations forged was crucial to the advancement of renewable energy policy and the transformation of the energy sector in the country. The paper advances our understanding of policy change in contexts of high path dependency and status quo bias, and builds the concept of “contingent coalitions,” unifying similar but scattered and under‐theorized notions that capture the fluid dynamics of coalition formation and policy change in environmental policymaking.

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Research on the politics of skills formation in Latin America is severely underdeveloped. This article offers a novel characterisation of the supply of skills in the region or ‘skills supply profiles’, taking inspiration from the comparative capitalisms literature. We identify four configurations of skills supply profiles – universalising, dual academic-oriented, dual VET-oriented and exclusionary – and analyse their historical dynamics. By doing this, we challenge general assessments of Latin America's skills formation systems as pertaining to one overarching type. This sets the stage for a deeper understanding of the politics of skills in the region and their connection with different development alternatives.

Chile is a country where path dependency made energy policy change extremely difficult by international standards. However, the country has recently become a renewable energy poster child thanks to a gradual process of policy change. How was this possible? This article contributes to discussions about policy change driven by ideas and to explaining the puzzling case of Chilean energy policy change. It does so by discussing the mechanism of bricolage—the recombination of old and new ideas by policy entrepreneurs—and its capacity to produce policy change in contexts of high path dependency. The article develops the political manifestations and consequences of bricolage and problematizes how actors continue to contest and change ideas' meaning after they have been institutionalized, a key question when analyzing processes of bricolage. The analysis is based on an array of data sources including interviews with key actors, newspaper notes, and legislative proceedings.

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