Organizing Social Protection in Federal States

Abstract

The provinces/states in the highly decentralized federations of Argentina, Canada, and the US do play important roles in social protection. But their roles tend to be supplemental to the dominant role of the federal government. Provinces/states serve as implementers of specific federal mandates (e.g., SNAP and TANF in the US), operate under a broad intergovernmental agreement (e.g., Canada Social Transfer) or build their social protection interventions around existing federal initiatives (e.g., public pension systems in 13 provinces in Argentina, Ontario Child Benefit as top-up to Canada Child Tax Credit).