Understanding the Third World Welfare State after Neoliberalism: The Politics of Social Provision in Chile and Mexico

Abstract

While much attention has been focused on the political foundations of social welfare regimes in the advanced industrial countries, less is known about the politics of social provision in underdeveloped areas, in Latin America in particular. Discussions highlight the fiscal constraints attendant upon free market economic reforms, questions of policy efficiency, and the political uses and abuses of antipoverty spending.1 This emphasis is jarring, however, in the face of a voluminous literature on the emergence of the first world welfare state that emphasizes interests (business, labor), institutions (federalism, corporatism), ideas and culture, social structure (development, industrialization), and politics (left or Catholic power).2 Moreover, the pressures of globalization and economic liberalization are not sufficient to justify the technocratic focus. Recent scholarship has demonstrated that even small or poor states have substantial capacity to govern markets and support welfare regimes.3 Finally, arguments that emphasize pressures for convergence around a minimalist social welfare regime in poor countries run afoul of an empirical reality of persistent difference.

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