Social Policy Expansion and Retrenchment in Latin America: Causal Paths to Successful Reform

Abstract

The literature on social policy expansion and retrenchment in Latin America is vast, but scholars differ in how they explain outcomes, arriving at different conclusions about the role of democracy, left parties, favorable economic conditions, and social movements. What can welfare state developments since the end of the commodity boom teach us about the theoretical power of these arguments? This paper engages this question, seeking to explain recent incidents of successful social policy reform in 10 presidential administrations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. Using a combination of crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA) and case studies, we identify multiple paths toward successful social policy expansion and retrenchment. The QCA results highlight two key findings. First, social policy expansion was generally carried out by programmatic parties (often, though not always, from the left). Second, retrenchment is most likely when nonprogrammatic right parties face fiscal constraints. The case studies affirm these findings and show that differences in electoral competition, social movement pressure, and policy legacies shape the contexts in which expansion and retrenchment is feasible. The results provide new insight into social policy reform, underscoring the relevance of complex forms of causality.

Globalization and Liberalization in Social Policy Expansion: Testing the Compensation and Efficiency Hypotheses in Brazil

“…We chose the control variables based on theoretical justifications and empirical evidence. Changes in social spending can be caused by numerous factors, such as: an increase in a country's wealth and individual income and consumption may increase the political system's resources to finance social welfare (Lamartina and Zaghini, 2011; Myles and Quadagno, 2002; Wilensky, 1975) an increasing electoral competition which may cause opposition and government to back social policy expansion to expand their electoral pool of support to win elections (Altman and Castiglioni, 2020; Ewig, 2016; Garay, 2016; Niedzwiecki and Pribble, 2023) the ideological orientation of the party in the executive, precisely thanks to left-of-center parties (Sirén, 2021). Huber and Stephens (2012) found that left political strength is a determinant of the region's social security and health expenditure. We incorporate four controls 4 in the linear regression analyses to take into account the explanatory effects of the four items mentioned above: Country's wealth (GDP per capita), individual income and consumption (GDP per capita growth), electoral competition (index of effective competition proposed by Altman and Perez-Liñan (2002) 5 , and an additive index to measure the strength of the left combining the orientation of the party of the executive, and the center-left seat share in the lower house (both according to Coppedge's coding rules) (Huber and Stephens, 2014).…”

“…an increasing electoral competition which may cause opposition and government to back social policy expansion to expand their electoral pool of support to win elections (Altman and Castiglioni, 2020; Ewig, 2016; Garay, 2016; Niedzwiecki and Pribble, 2023)…”