Paper short abstract:

Comparative research on the political economy of elite commitment to social assistance in sub-Saharan Africa. QCA analysis of eight countries reveals the causal processes that underpin this shift and offers a challenge for contemporary interpretations of the drivers of social assistance in Africa.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents comparative research examining the political economy drivers of elite commitment to social assistance —particularly cash transfers — in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The rapidly growing number of countries with cash transfer schemes has been variously interpreted as a 'revolution from the Global South', a donor-driven initiative and/or as flowing from recent processes of democratisation. Although each perspective has some validity, we seek a deeper theoretical and empirical engagement to understand how multiple causal processes have combined to produce distinct patterns of reform. The research constitutes an engagement between the welfare state literature and recent work on the politics of development, particularly that on 'political settlements'.

Methodologically, the paper offers a new approach to analysing the politics of social assistance. Eight country cases (Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) are subject to fuzzy sets / Qualitative Comparative Analysis that identifies two distinct pathways leading to the adoption and expansion of social assistance. The first involves highly centralised, dominant party settlements with a developmental agenda, which adopted social assistance as a solution to perceived existential crises threatening the ruling party. In the second, where power is more dispersed and electoral competition more influential, donors have established pilot schemes reflecting their favoured approaches. These pilots have gradually secured differing levels of elite support as local and national politicians see political opportunity in the highly visible disbursement of resources. At this early stage, it is the dominant developmental cases that have produced greater levels of elite commitment.