Paper short abstract:

The paper reviews the emerging policy discourses in the Arab region around social protection programming. It assesses the political ideas and governance structures underpinning this policy shift and examines to what extent they can contribute to greater social justice outcomes in the Arab region.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2011, policy discourses in the Arab region have intensified around the provision of social protection programmes, partly due to donor influence and the Syrian crisis but also in response to the Arab spring. This paper offers a critical mapping of the full range of social protection policies which are currently in place in the Arab region in order to assess: (i) the direction which the emerging social protection policy discourses are taking; (ii) the impact of existing social protection policies on poverty and inequality in individual Arab countries. The discussion is placed in the context of other social protection policy experiences in developing countries. The paper is based on extensive ESRC-funded research by the author. It makes the following arguments: (1) social protection discourse in the Arab region is narrowly defined in risk management and consumption-smoothing terms; (2) Arab countries have an overreliance on social assistance and social safety net programmes, particularly to food and fuel subsidies; (3) social protection policies have limited coverage and impact on poverty and inequality save for very few countries like Gaza and West Bank; (4) though there is no established discourse of social citizenship in the Arab region, traditional Islamic principles of social justice and charity could be better managed to support a broader framework for social protection; (5) Arab countries are now in the process of creating fiscal space to reform social protection policies but these efforts remain hampered by clientelism and weak governance structures.