Policy mandates and re-election among single issue parties

Recent studies point to dramatic ‘mandate switches’ by elected politicians, while others suggest higher levels of mandate loyalty. Yet, two of the oldest party systems in Latin America, Colombia and Venezuela, have not been extensively examined. Legislative activity across single issue parties is examined to determine whether they are able to stay focused and consistent with the party's policy goals. The analysis identifies the importance of stated policy goals, which are likely to provide long-term electoral benefits, and nomination procedures as important determinants of legislative action among single issue parties. The results shed a new light on parties in Latin America by suggesting that parties are capable of acting in accordance with their stated single-issue platforms.     

Mothers at the Service of the New Poverty Agenda: Progresa/Oportunidades, Mexico's Conditional Transfer Programme

This article considers some of the changes and continuities in social protection in Latin America through a focus on the ways in which motherhood is positioned as key to the success of the new anti‐poverty programmes that have followed structural reform. It examines a flagship cash transfer programme known as Progresa/Oportunidades (Opportunities) established in Mexico in 1997 and now being widely adopted in the region. Characterized by some commentators as a quintessentially neo‐liberal programme, it is argued that Oportunidades represents a novel combination of earlier maternalist social policy approaches with the conditional, co‐responsibility models associated with the recent approaches to social welfare and poverty relief endorsed by international policy actors. In the first section, the gendered assumptions that have governed Latin American social policy are described; the second outlines social policy provision in Latin America and identifies the key elements of the new approaches to poverty; and the third critically examines the broader implications of the Mexican programme's selective and gendered construction of social need premised, as it is, on re‐traditionalizing gendered roles and responsibilities.     

Social policy expansion and segmentation in the first two decades of the 21st century in Latin America

Latin American countries saw an important expansion in social policy in the first two decades of the 21st century. Along with this increased inclusion, however, social policy remains segmented. Using recent data from ECLAC, World Bank, and other sources, this paper offers a comprehensive analysis of trends in social policy for the period 2000–2020 for 17 countries in Latin America. Four areas of social policy are assessed in longitudinal and comparative perspectives: transfers, health care, education, and family policies. Conditional cash transfers (CCT) and noncontributory pensions (NCP) are the two main policy innovations that allowed countries in the region to expand social rights to previously excluded populations (outsiders). At the same time, due to their design, these policies have introduced new layers of fragmentation to the welfare mix, without resolving—or even increasing—segmentation in social policy. Segmentation is still the rule for the areas of health care and education, and increasing privatisation went unabated even in the periods of social policy expansion and in the countries governed by left coalitions.     

Latin America's recovery from debt problems: An assessment of model-based projections

This paper examines economic assumptions used in assessing prospective economic adjustment of Latin America in response to its debt problems. The analysis compares forecasts obtained by combining parameter estimates from different researchers' trade models with the authors' macroeconomic models for Brazil. Chile, and Mexico. The influence of econometric procedure on simulation results is discussed. Then, by simulation analysis, the following issues are addressed: (1) likelihood of high domestic growth rates for Latin America in the late 1980s; (2) whether OECD growth or interest rates have a larger impact on developing-country economies; (3) effects of dollar depreciation and high interest rates on Latin America's debt problems.     

Does inflation targeting lower inflation and spur growth?

Over the last few decades several countries have turned to inflation targeting as a policy choice for instilling stability into their economies. Prior studies have shown that inflation targeting has reduced inflation in those countries without significantly impacting GDP. This study seeks to improve upon these results by identifying the impact of timing on the policy decision as well as its impact as related to specific regions of the world. The focus is on developing countries across six regions. We find significant regional variation in developing countries in our sample in terms of the direction of changes in inflation following a switch to the inflation targeting policy. Moreover, although the impact of inflation targeting on real GDP is minimal overall, there is a statistically significant increase in real GDP among developing countries in certain regions only, namely, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.     

Social Policy and Development in Latin America: The Long View

In the new development strategy currently shaping Latin America, alternative social policy models have emerged. This article argues that far from being rival alternatives, each of these models considers the wide differences among countries. The region is emerging from a century of transformation – from a traditional agrarian economy to an urban industrial one – in which countries have taken diverse historical paths. Some have almost completed this transformation, others are taking early steps, and the vast majority are living through it. State‐led transition has followed two successive development strategies. From the 1920s up to the 1980s, state developmentalism has mostly successfully assumed the twin challenges of economic and social progress. In the last two decades of the century, Latin American states adopted the policies of the Washington Consensus, which emphasized the importance of business in the framework of globalization and benefited the affluent few. However, an unambiguous shift in direction has been taking place in Latin America since the 1997 economic crisis. This article suggests that a new developmental welfare state model seems to be in the making. How will it evolve over the wider space of an increasingly integrated Latin America?     

Tourism and the Hispanicization of race in Jim Crow Miami, 1945-1965

This article examines how Miami's significant presence of Anglo Caribbean blacks and Spanish-speaking tourists critically influenced the evolution of race relations before and after the watershed 1959 Cuban Revolution. The convergence of people from the American South and North, the Caribbean, and Latin America created a border culture in a city where the influx of Bahamian blacks and Spanish-speakers, especially tourists, had begun to alter the racial landscape. To be sure, Miami had many parallels with other parts of the South in regard to how blackness was understood and enforced by whites during the first half of the twentieth century. However, I argue that the city's post-WWII meteoric tourist growth, along with its emergence as a burgeoning Pan-American metropolis, complicated the traditional southern black-white dichotomy. The purchasing power of Spanish-speaking visitors during the postwar era transformed a tourist economy that had traditionally catered to primarily wealthy white transplanted Northerners. This significant change to the city's tourist industry significantly influenced white civic leaders' decision to occasionally modify Jim Crow practices for Latin American vacationers. In effect, Miami's early Latinization had a profound impact on the established racial order as speaking Spanish became a form of currency that benefited Spanish-speaking tourists—even those of African descent. Paradoxically, this ostensibly peculiar racial climate aided the local struggle by highlighting the idiosyncrasies of Jim Crow while perpetuating the second-class status of native-born blacks.     

Social welfare and social work: the meaning of poverty programs in Latin America

During the last decade, the concern about poverty has turned into a key issue in the government discourse, and participatory poverty programs have multiplied all over Latin America. Nevertheless, poverty and social unrest keep growing. The objective of this article is to explain this apparent paradox. First there is an analysis of the relationship between structural adjustment, the growth of poverty, and the reorientation of broad social policy away from social rights towards selective and targeted poor relief. In order to illustrate the content and operation of a typical Latin American poverty program, the Mexican National Solidarity Program is examined. The initial question posed is whether this program alleviates poverty and grants a social minimum for the poor in view of the magnitude of poverty, the quantity of resources and their allocation. Next the participatory approach of the program is analyzed in relation to the empowerment of poor groups and communities. Finally, there is a reflection on the place of social work in this program and how the role of the social worker has been transformed.     

Including informal economy workers in contributory social protection: Current challenges in Latin America

Owing to a favourable economic situation and to national labour market and social protection policy reforms, Latin America has witnessed significant progress in social protection coverage. Some countries, however, have seen weaker progress, with stagnant coverage levels. Several factors underlie the extension of pensions and health care coverage and the formalization of the labour market: substantial improvements in the quality of employment, more flexible eligibility criteria for contributory coverage, and the strengthening of the supervisory and regulatory roles of the State. This article first addresses the link between social protection and informality in Latin America to show the relationship between informal labour markets, the lack of social protection and the scale of unpaid contributions. Also highlighted is regional progress in extending social protection as a result of labour market formalization. Countries in the region have used various policies to encourage formalization and these have also helped to reduce wage inequalities, since formalization has had especially beneficial effects on low‐income sectors. Finally, we discuss dichotomous views on social protection financing in the region that tend to place contributory and non‐contributory financing in opposition to one another but do so in favour of the latter, tend to support proposals for limited coverage, and which do not challenge the stratification of access to social protection. The move towards a convergence of benefits is deemed essential: strategies to universalize social protection in the region should not focus exclusively on increasing resources, but must address institutional change as a crucial part of the locus of innovation.     

Structural reform of social security pensions in Latin America: Models, characteristics, results and conclusions

The structural reform of social security pensions is the subject of international debate, and Latin America has been a pioneer of such reform. The region has gathered experience over two decades, and had an important influence on other regions. This article gathers legal and statistical data about reform in ten countries of Latin America, in order (1) to analyse the three distinct general models followed and note the characteristics of the reforms in the different countries; (2) to evaluate the performance of the reforms against nine conventional assumptions about its effects; (3) to draw useful lessons from these reforms for the region and other countries.     

Analyzing the Productive and Protective Dimensions of Welfare: Looking Beyond the OECD

Several theorists have argued that social policy in East Asia can be seen as representing a distinctive welfare ideal type based around ‘productive welfare’. However, we have contested such claims in earlier work (Hudson and Kühner 2009) and, in common with theorists such as Castells, have suggested that some of the welfare states of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) have a distinct bias towards the ‘productive’ rather than ‘protective’ dimensions of welfare. In this article, we build on our earlier work, utilizing fuzzy set ideal type analysis (FSITA) to explore the balance between ‘productive' and ‘protective’ dimensions of welfare state activity. Here we extend our analysis beyond the OECD, incorporating a range of nations on the ‘fringe’ of the OECD from Latin America, East Asia and the non‐OECD parts of Europe. In so doing, we contest simple notions of welfare regimes aligning with regional blocks. Primarily, however, we highlight the advantages of the ‘diversity‐orientated’ approach to data analysis that fuzzy set methods facilitate in comparison with standard quantitative techniques. In particular, we utilize FSITA to avoid data availability and reliability issues that have plagued quantitatively informed classifications of global welfare regimes. Not least, we argue FSITA allows for the contextualization of cases in a way that is sealed to quantitatively driven, comparative research. Thus, we argue FSITA has an important role to play in attempts to extend the inclusiveness of the ‘welfare modelling business’ in a manner that reflects diverse and highly significant cases beyond the Western lens that dominates the literature.     

Does Parental Participation in Schools Empower or Strain Civil Society? The Case of Community‐managed Schools in Central America

Among the various educational models in Latin America that seek to increase parental participation in schooling, perhaps the most far‐reaching is the experiment with self‐managed schools. These are publicly funded schools administered by parents. Broad public powers, such as the capacity to decide the budget and make staffing decisions, are given to parents, many of whom have had very limited prior administrative experience. How does this policy innovation impact on civil society? Does parental participation in school administration empower participating citizens or strain civil society? There are various ways of answering these questions. This article looks at some possible ways to conceptualize and assess the relationship between parental participation in self‐managed schools and civil society. The article draws from the experience of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, where these reforms have advanced significantly since the 1990s.     

Latin America: a new developmental welfare state model in the making?1

Latin America is emerging from a century of transformation – from a traditional agrarian to an urban industrial economy – where countries have taken diverse historical paths. Some have almost completed this transformation, others are taking early steps, and most are living through it. State‐led transition has followed two successive development strategies. From the 1920s to the 1980s, state developmentalism, for the most part, successfully assumed the twin challenges of economic and social progress. In the final decades of the century, Latin American states adopted the policies of the Washington consensus, which emphasized the importance of business in the framework of globalization, benefiting the affluent few. However, an unambiguous shift in direction has been taking place in Latin America since the 1997 economic crisis. This article suggests that a new developmental welfare state model is in the making. How will it evolve over the wider space of an increasingly integrated Latin America?     

科技服务业集聚、地区创新能力与经济增长——以北京市为例

结合知识生产函数和A-H经济增长模型,为科技服务业集聚、 区域创新能力和经济增长三者之间建立理论联系,并以北京市为例,利用1985-2016年的时间序列数据建立VEC模型进行检验.结果表明:科技服务业集聚、 创新能力和经济增长之间存在比较稳定的长期正向关系;科技服务业集聚可以促进地区创新能力的提升,科技服务业集聚与创新能力的提升又会共同推动地区经济增长;进一步发现,从长期来看,科技服务业集聚、 创新能力和经济增长都较大程度上受到科技服务业集聚的影响,即促进科技服务业集聚的政策措施亦可以在提升地区创新能力和促进地区经济增长的过程中起到较大的积极作用.     

Can Latin America carry its international debt? A prospective analysis using the Wharton Latin American debt simulation model

The international debt of the LDCs has become a critical concern, perhaps currently the most critical one, from the perspective of debtor countries and creditors alike. Through the efforts of the IMF, the BIS, the central banks, and the large commercial banks, a crash may have averted for the time being, but the heavy burden of the debt remains, particularly in Latin America, where it is increasingly concentrated. Draconian remedial measures now threaten social and economic development throughout the continent.This article evaluates the perspective for Latin American debts and payments using a debt simulation model. Debt restructuring with the usual “IMF conditions” will impose serious economic shocks in Latin America. But even so, debt service ratios will remain high except under optimistic assumptions about growth in the industrial countries and about commodity prices. Only in case of a solid economic recovery in the United States, Europe and Japan can one be sanguine about Latin America's ability to work its way out from under the debt burden.     

Social Policy and Inequality in Latin America: A Review of Recent Trends

Most Latin American countries have extensive social policies which absorb high levels of state spending. Despite this, Latin America continues to suffer from high levels of inequality in terms of income and access to basic services. This article explores this apparent paradox. It focuses on three aspects of social policy in the region: patterns of resource allocation, the distribution of welfare entitlements and differing capacities to take advantage of these entitlements. It applies this framework to study the distributional effects of education, health and social security policies, paying particular attention to recent changes and developments. The article shows that these three factors combine in various ways to benefit higher-income groups and exclude the poor. Recent changes have marginally improved provision for low-income groups, but the fundamentally inegalitarian nature of social policy in the region remains largely unchanged and unchallenged.     

Social Security at The Crossroads: Toward Effective Pension Reform in Latin America

Individual pension savings accounts in Latin America promised to improve compliance and raise benefits in a cost‐effective manner, while at the same time raising savings rates, which would in turn promote economic growth. A review of the evolution of pension reform in Latin America shows results to have been mixed. Analyses of the recent reforms generally fail to consider the extent to which the success or failure of pension systems is driven by exogenous factors, including macroeconomic and labour market conditions, and institutions. A number of recent studies have issued a reassessment of the region's reforms that stresses the importance of a basic guaranteed pension benefit and recognizes that a range of alternatives are viable in the region. Pension systems based on individual accounts are undergoing a thorough reevaluation.     

拉丁美洲国家应对气候变化法律与政策分析

为有效应对气候变化,拉丁美洲国家在参与气候变化国际谈判的同时,还制定了相应的应对气候变化的法律、政策和行动计划,形成了两种推进方式：以气候变化法律为主、政策为辅的法律主导方式,以气候变化政策为主、少有甚至没有相关立法的政策主导方式。整体上看,拉丁美洲国家在应对气候变化上取得了较大进展,尤其是在气候变化综合性立法上取得了突破,在发展中国家中处于领先地位;气候变化国家政策正顺应时代潮流加速发展。在气候变化立法上,拉丁关洲国家在发展中国家中处于领先地位,在气候变化政策上,拉丁美洲国家正加快发展速度。由于受到多方面因素的制约,拉丁美洲国家在制定与实施应对气候变化法律与政策时仍面临一定阻力,个别国家在应对气候变化上徘徊不前,须尽快弥补政策空白。     

Introduction: social policy and economic development in late industrializers

This Supplement in the International Journal of Social Welfare presents the main findings of a United Nations Research Institute for Social Development research project on social policy in late industrializers, covering countries in East Asia, Latin America, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the Nordic countries. One of the findings from the research is that social policy has been used as an integral part of economic development in successful late-industrializing countries. In the MENA region and sub-Saharan Africa, however, social policy was tried for too short a period to be properly implemented and tested. East Asian and Latin American countries started with a narrow-based social policy, but social policy in East Asia was extended to foster social solidarity, bringing people into the mainstream of social change. Such findings suggest that social policy is multifunctional, not only in terms of social protection but also economic development and democratic governance.     

The Retrenchment of the Welfare State in Latin America: The Case of Argentina

According to the conventional approving account of the transformations which have been taking place in public policy and in markets in Latin America, Argentina constitutes one of the most successful examples of wide-ranging and rapid change. Certainly the experience of Argentina offers an excellent case-study of what in the literature is termed " the retrenchment of the welfare states"; that is those institutional transformations associated with the "neoconservative revolutions" of recent years. In this paper I analyse the characteristics of Argentinian welfare state retrenchment, distinguishing between two fields of analysis: (1) "systemic retrenchment" which is linked to changes in the "referential environment" of social policy institutions, especially changes in the economic, fiscal, labour market and politico-institutional contexts: (2) "programmatic retrenchment" which refers to changes in the institutional ordering of specific social policies. Finally I draw conclusions in respect of the strategies adopted for the retrenchment of the welfare state in Argentina and discuss probable prospects for the future.