Paper short abstract:

This paper summarises the main findings of our book on the determinants of universalism in the South. We show that democracy and progressive leadership create pre-conditions to promote equal social policy but the “right” architectures, state actors and ideas determine ultimate success

Paper long abstract:

Social policies that cover the whole population with similar generous entitlements could make a decisive contribution to reduce inequality in the South. They can also create more integrated societies and cross-class coalitions between the poor and the middle class. Promoting universalism may be easier if countries combine different instruments, including social insurance and social assistance that if they only try to build tax-funded, citizenship based programs.

How can countries move in the right direction? This paper summarises our main findings from a recent book. We combine a comparative analysis of the cases of Costa Rica, Mauritius, South Korea and Uruguay and a detailed historical account of the Costa Rican experience to answer this question. Our work highlights the role of policy architectures— the combination of instruments that define who access to what specific benefits, when and how —in promoting more or less universalism. Success in building ideal policy architectures comes as a result of democracy and progressive leadership as preconditions and active state actors and adequate international ideas as drivers.