UC Berkeley

A large share of the population in Latin America has historically lacked access to health care, stable income, and old-age pensions. While social protection was granted to workers in the formal sector--that is, those with labor contracts--workers outside the formal sector and their dependents remained unprotected or underserved by social policy. Labor-market outsiders include the urban informal sector--i.e., the self-employed, street vendors, and employees hired off the books--as well as rural workers and the unemployed. Over the last quarter of the 20th century, this mass of unprotected outsiders and dependents represented at least 50 percent of the population in the most industrialized countries in Latin America, and a large part of them lived in poverty.

Beginning in the 1980s, the debt crisis and ensuing market reforms did not seem to augur well for initiatives to address this welfare gap. Most comparative analyses on social policy in Latin America have pointed to declining state capacity to extend social protection, and limited channels for outsiders to influence policymaking. In the face of fiscal constraints and capital scarcity, most research has described a process of social policy retrenchment and the distribution of clientelistic provisions for the poor. In this political and economic scenario, the creation of broad-reaching, stable, rule-based social transfers and services for outsiders appeared highly unlikely.

Contrary to these expectations, this study documents a dramatic expansion of rule-based social policy--health care, pensions, and income-support programs--in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico starting in the late 1980s. These social policy innovations are surprising not just because they reach outsiders, but also because they are massive. For example, pension benefits have been extended to the majority of outsiders aged 65 and over in Argentina and Brazil, where they reach 97 and 80 percent of this population, respectively. Chile and Mexico have also seen significant expansions, with benefits reaching 62 and 38 percent of the outsider population aged 65 and over, respectively. These levels of protection contrast with pronounced lack of coverage before expansion.

Within the general trend of expanding social programs for outsiders, this study identifies two distinct models of social policy, which I term restrictive and inclusive. Restrictive policies have limited scope of coverage, provide lower benefit levels, and do not include the participation of social organizations in implementation. Inclusive policies, by contrast, are broad reaching, often achieving universal or near-universal coverage, provide higher benefit levels, and include social organizations in policy implementation.

To account for social-policy expansion, this study provides an analytical framework that highlights the importance of democracy for social policy change. In contrast to prevailing views about the failure of democratic regimes to respond to outsiders, I argue that social policy expansion was triggered by two causal factors generally favored by democratic politics: a) electoral competition for the vote of outsiders, and b) mobilization from below. These causal factors have further shaped the process of policy design, producing different social policy models. In Mexico and Chile, electoral competition for outsiders propelled incumbents to expand social policy, with the resulting compromises leading to the creation of a restrictive policy model. In Argentina and Brazil, mobilization from below put pressure on incumbents to expand social policies and to include social groups in the implementation of the new programs, producing an inclusive policy model.

This study is based on extensive fieldwork and original data collection in each policy area and country case from the 1980s through 2009. It also undertakes in-depth analyses of the secondary literature and archival materials to test the argument in the four Latin American countries from the mid-20th century until systematic institutionalized program expansion began. It explains not only the massive expansion of programs for outsiders beginning in the 1980s, but also the limited, clientelistic, or even non-existent, coverage in the earlier period. Finally, the argument is tested on other middle-income countries--Venezuela, Uruguay, and South Africa--to provide an assessment of its broader applicability for understanding the conditions under which social protection is extended to populations outside the formal labor market.