Paper short abstract:

Based on empirical material from Zambia, this paper studies the possibility of the state in income redistribution. It finds that government-led social protection gains consensus where it is clearly targeted at the extreme poor, whereas the state is supposed to stay out of productive subsidies.

Paper long abstract:

After a period of disengagement, the state is now back as a provider of social policy in many East and Southern African countries. Since the beginning of the 2000s, several governments have introduced policies targeted at vulnerable members of society. Part of the background was the realisation that macro economic adjustment policies had created losers, contributing to a discursive shift towards poverty reduction, or "adjustment with a human face". Some call the current stance the "post-Washington Consensus" but the controversy around the appropriate role of the state in income distribution is far from resolved. This paper asks: what type of state is possible today?

The paper is based on empirical research in Zambia, and compares a cash transfer programme with a subsidy for small scale farmers. It studies what type of state is negotiated in these new interventions. The starting point is the assumption that new relationships are formed in the new state-led social policies: Firstly, relationships between the state and the beneficiaries; and secondly, between the state and the international community. The comparison shows that the appropriate type of state involvement is still unresolved: While its engagement in basic social protection programme grows and is generally welcomed (and leads to deeper reach into society); there is domestic and international pressure to reduce its direct engagement in the subsidy programme. It appears that poverty reduction needs to be the overriding logic of any state engagement in order for it to reach an enabling consensus among domestic and international policy makers.