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Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the relationship between social protection and state legitimacy, examining perceptions of fairness and deservingness. It draws on primary mixed-methods data in the case of Timor-Leste: a post-conflict country facing a looming fiscal crisis.

Paper long abstract:

Social protection can be a tool for stabilisation in post-conflict settings but can also undermine state legitimacy, depending on local perceptions of fairness (McLoughlin, 2015). Following a violent independence campaign against Indonesian occupation, Timor-Leste became a sovereign state in 2002. The government introduced several social protection programmes in response to a bout of civil unrest in 2006 that caused high levels of internal displacement and humanitarian crises. Government expenditure on social protection is high in Timor-Leste by regional and international standards, with the largest amount going to cash payments for veterans. And yet Timor-Leste is also facing a fiscal cliff as oil revenues cease and the Petroleum Fund declines (World Bank, 2022), bringing the sustainability of these payments into question.

This paper examines government and citizen perceptions of social assistance allocation in Timor-Leste, based on primary data from semi-structured key informant interviews with policy-makers, as well as workshops conducted with community members in selected districts. An innovative methodology is used combining a “lab-in-the-field” experiment to reveal targeting preferences among participants with focus groups discussions to gain qualitative insights into the results of the experimental data. Drawing on this mixed-methods data, the paper considers how perceptions of fairness and deservingness may shape the prospects for social protection in a context where support for veterans is politically charged and difficult to change or remove. It also considers the implications for state legitimacy in a country caught between a longstanding crisis of stability rooted in the independence struggles and a looming fiscal crisis.

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Paper short abstract:

My research aims to study the impacts of an unconditional basic income and community organising pilot in South India. I explore its impacts on poverty and unfree labour, and potential implications for social policy.

Paper long abstract:

As the debate on basic income as the future of social protection and policy continues to gain ground, including in the global south, its effects on specific aspects of poverty and political economy is important to explore. Scholars and advocates of UBI have long argued that giving an economic floor to all can enhance people's 'power to say no' to exploitative relationships. This is particularly significant in situations of unfree and indecent labour, current efforts to combatting which can be classified into two broad categories. One, stopping/abolishing work deemed indecent/exploitative, disregarding the agency of those involved; two, tokenistic efforts that do not address the reasons that push workers into this condition in the first place. Both do little to prioritise or enhance workers' subjective and material agency and dignity. Critical to the ‘Decent Work Agenda’ and the architecture of welfare regimes historically, is empowering people with a greater sense of freedom and dignity, as well as the capacity to fight against or 'exit' indecent work. Two broad gaps emerge. One, there is no emic conceptualisation of 'dignity' and 'freedom' rooted in the voices and relationships of those policy aims to target. Two, UBI's emancipatory claims on poverty and exploitative labour have been subject to limited empirical scrutiny. I am conducting an ethnographic study of a UBI pilot in five slum communities in urban India, to create a more people-centred conceptualisation of freedom and dignity and put to scrutiny the emancipatory claims of a basic income with regards to indecent labour.

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This paper raises the need to rethink social protection orthodoxies in the light of accelerating climate change which is profoundly reshaping the socio-economic shocks and stressors drivign need while also reducing the ability of existing institutions and approaches to meet these needs.

Paper long abstract:

This paper brings climate analysis into the social protection discourse and identifies the implications of current climate analysis for the social protection sector in the medium term. It argues that some key aspects of social protection conceptualisation and design which have become orthodoxies over recent decades, may not be appropriate in a context of accelerating climate change. It argues that key institutional, policy and programming issues need to be revisited in order to address the increase in protracted crises which are likely to occur in coming decades.

While there is considerable uncertainty in terms of the detailed timeframe and location of climate impacts, and climate models are broadly consistent in predicting the nature of the climate impacts that this will engender, and how these will be distributed regionally. Climate impacts on human and natural systems will have profound adverse implications for sustainable livelihoods, the structure of national economies and labour markets, health, access to basic resources, and poverty. In the face of multiple compounding climate and socio-economic shocks, for some populations the limits to adaptation may be reached. Many of these impacts will be experienced simultaneously by significant populations at national or regional levels, and will challenge social protection orthodoxy in a number of ways.

This paper proposes that as a sector we need to accommodate these factors in our current thinking in order to prepare for future challenges. The six key issues discussed in the paper are; institutions and mandates, financing, coverage, targeting, delivery modalities and instruments.

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Paper short abstract:

What role does crisis play in competing visions of social protection? This paper focuses on the possibilities afforded (or foreclosed) by the Covid-19 pandemic in South Africa, by arguing that the temporarily of work and welfare is crucial to popular and state visions of just distribution.

Paper long abstract:

How does crisis open-up - or foreclose - new possibilities for a radical expansion of social protection? This paper focuses on the policy futures afforded by the Covid-19 pandemic by exploring possibilities for radical redistributory policies in contexts where access to income via work is increasingly tenuous. To do so, we turn to South Africa, where we examine the unfolding political possibilities and support for more radical and universal forms of social protection and (re)distribution during and after the Covid pandemic. In particular, we analyse visions of redistribution both from above and from below, via original empirical data on the views of low-income inner-city residents in Johannesburg; interviews with government actors and civil society activists; and a close reading of media and policy discourse around social protection between 2020 and 2022. We argue while framing Covid as a crisis forced the state to embrace less workerist approaches to social protection, the very fact that new policies are rooted in a moment of perceived 'crisis' may have blunted more radical redistributory visions. This argument is underscored by the vacillations and internal contradictions of the South African government's expansion of its social grant system, as well as by the delimited scope of grassroots demands for direct economic support through multiple lockdowns. We make the case that a 'crisis temporality' -- and the temporality of work and redistribution more generally -- is critical to understanding the lack of popular demands for more radical forms of redistribution and economic security beyond work.

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Taking the case of the bourse familiale cash transfer in Senegal as a starting point, this paper examines how continual experimentation with giving cash is pulled between dynamics of charity, financialization and crisis in a way that challenges ideas about the consolidation of welfare states.

Paper long abstract:

The bourse familiale is a national cash transfer introduced in Senegal in 2013 as a grand projet at the heart of the government’s new development, or ‘emergence’ plan. A direct nod to the more famous bolsa família in Brazil, it has come to encompass a ‘welfare state rhetoric’ (Olivier de Sardan & Piccoli 2018: 5) in a comparable way. This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork on social protection and poverty in a small informal settlement in the capital, Dakar. Situating the bourse familiale in ideas about the possibilities of a ‘quiet revolution’ from over a decade ago, the first half of the paper demonstrates how the bourse familiale itself is received as a form of aid or charity rather than amounting to a state obligation or right or share. To do so I attend to the language used to describe it and the way it came to be conflated with earlier charitable projects. The second half of the paper moves to consider the way the bourse familiale has come to sit alongside a set of logics characterised by financialization and crisis, demonstrated through discussion of Yook Koom Koom (increase the economy), an adjacent project aimed at entrepreneurialism, and cash aid received during Covid-19 and again in the wake of the war in Ukraine. I conclude by suggesting that ongoing experimentation with giving cash, pulled as it is between dynamics of charity, financialization and crisis, works to undermine the consolidation of a welfare state.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper explores using a major part of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) in Uganda to fund large-scaling of social cash transfers. We analyse the economic impact of providing old age pensions and child grants at selected scaling scenarios using the UGAMOD tax-benefit microsimulation model.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores the radical idea of using a major part of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) in Uganda to fund large-scaling of social cash transfers (SCTs). We use UGAMOD, a tax-benefit microsimulation model, to analyse the economic impact of providing scaled old age pension and child grants. Ten selected scenarios include different levels of universal and means-tested SCTs allocating between 4% and 115% of ODA in Uganda (currently about 2.37 billion USD).

Donor funding for SCTs has typically been given either to provide immediate relief for recipients, in particular in humanitarian aid, or as a tool to help governments in the Global South to build their own social protection systems, which are seen as an integral part of a responsible state taking care of its vulnerable citizens. However, ambitious “out of the box” thinking is emerging which explores large-scaling SCTs in the Global South as a way to substantially reduce or even eliminate poverty.

Our key conclusion is that shifting substantial parts of current ODA in Uganda to SCTs is predicted to lead to relatively large reductions in poverty levels. It is a banal and trivial point that giving poor people money results in reduced poverty. But the scale at which this could be achieved within current aid budgets in Uganda is far from banal. Our data suggest that reducing national poverty by close to 1/3 or 2/3 is possible and this would, seen in isolation, be remarkable. This comes with considerable opportunity costs, which are discussed in the paper.

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This paper approaches the African Group's resolution for the creation of a United Nations convention on international tax cooperation as a watershed moment for the redistribution of global corporate wealth, provides an overview of the distributive shortcomings of the OECD-led global tax reforms.

Paper long abstract:

A decade long, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as the global center of tax expertise, coordinated to reform the global tax framework. Nonetheless, a taxonomy of these projects highlights how these projects fell short in creating more distributive justice for African countries, and in correcting the exclusion of these countries in standard-setting. Multinationals, along with their financial advisors, maintained the opportunity to plan their profits and losses according to the tax benefits associated with the different jurisdictions that are part of their global wealth chain, and the distributional bias of taxing rights largely remained unresolved. Yet, despite network and lock-in effects that for long cemented in the status quo in global tax governance, and steered African countries to OECD norms when trying to ring-fence corporate tax revenues against multinationals’ profits-shifting behavior, the African group successfully introduced a groundbreaking resolution to shift tax leadership from OECD- to UN-level, and to initiate an intergovernmental reform process. This study traces back how the Africa group created this tipping point for more tax justice by wielding international political economy shifts, and the covid-induced global fiscal emergency. From this perspective, we contribute to the literature on everyday international political economy, and incremental change.

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Paper short abstract:

Based on lessons from the Philippines during the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper argues that linking public, private sector, and community partnership present a viable hybrid end-to-end social protection model during protracted crises.

Paper long abstract:

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Philippines was put under one of the longest nationwide lockdowns in the world, which underscored the major gaps in the national government’s social protection system and inability to adequately respond to wide scale disasters. The short period given to address the impacts of the lockdown left majority of local government units (LGU), usually the first line of response, immobilised with limited resources. As the pandemic swept through the lives of the marginalised and vulnerable population, the private sector and affected communities could not stand-by idly. Given mobility restrictions and a highly securitised government approach to the pandemic, the private sector and their partner communities used resources and technology available to them and organised to develop a data-driven proto-social protection system that was able to reach people when the government no longer can.

Examining lessons from the work of the Philippine private sector, non-government organisations, and people’s organisations, this paper argues that linking public, private sector, and community partnership present a more viable social protection model during protracted crises. It is a hybrid end-to-end model that leverages the collective impact framework and is able to overcome the rigidities (i.e. targeting beneficiaries, financing social protection, monitoring, etc.) of massive and more traditional social protection systems. With communities playing a central role, this model also has the potential to grow into a more robust system that is geared towards mutual-aid not only during emergencies, but “new normal” situations.

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Paper short abstract:

Adaptive Social Protection in Indonesia reveals oxymoronic and flippant causality to fix fragmentation. Part of larger neoliberal welfare reform, the study shows how the adaptive imperative were used to prolongs existing social protection politics instead of promoting new redistributive frameworks.

Paper long abstract:

Interest in Adaptive Social Protection has continued to grow since the World Bank introduced it to the development scholarship a decade ago. ASP as a combined force of social protection, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation is claimed to be the best way to build resilience of the poorest and most vulnerable people to climate change. The aim of this piece is to reveal that while ASP is appealing as a policy alternative in an era of economic downturns and ecological crises, adaptiveness as the imperative of social protection is fundamentally flawed. It does this by conducting a meta-analysis of ASP proposed planning in Indonesia, an interesting juxtapose considering its disaster prevalence and vulnerabilities. The findings of the study are three folds, first, institutional governance struggle of the Indonesian administration to mainstream and formulate ASP policies. Second, the adoption of ASP programs works as a new form of governance to fill the void in increasingly impasse Indonesian social protection policy as a result of recent rampant welfare reform and potential political capture. Third, the adaptive imperative represents both an oxymoron and flippant approach to causality. The Indonesian ASP champions, and their international counterparts, do this by framing social protection gaps in times of crises as a cause, rather than a symptom of a weak and faltering welfare state. These findings highlight how crises were used as a tool to prolong the existing politics of social protection and, at the same token, foreclose opportunities for new redistributive frameworks.

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Paper short abstract:

Using new survey data on informal workers in Accra, Ghana, this paper examines the extent to which they have access to social protection and COVID-19 relief. It explores their tax burdens and the degree to which they are able to make additional contributions to social protection or taxes.

Paper long abstract:

In Ghana and across much of Africa, the conflation of two crises - the Covid-19 pandemic and an escalating public debt crisis - have highlighted the importance of expanding social protection and spurred new conversations about how this can be funded. Informal workers have stood at the centre of these discussions: they are often not covered by social protection and are increasingly targeted by attempts to shore up new revenue through contributory social protection or taxes.

Using novel and representative survey data on informal workers in Accra, Ghana, this paper examines the extent to which informal workers in Accra have access to social protection and benefitted from COVID-19 relief programmes. Furthermore, it explores the tax burdens of informal workers and the degree to which they are able to make additional contributions through taxes or contributions to social protection schemes. It investigates the equity, redistributive, and gendered impacts of informal workers’ fiscal burdens and access to social protection and COVID-19 relief programmes.

The paper finds that most informal sector operators in Accra are not covered by social protection, with the exception of the National Health Insurance. In contrast to a number of claims, the paper finds that informal sector operators in Accra pay a range of taxes, permits, levies and fees. Informal sector tax burdens are highly regressive, with a disproportionate burden falling on the lowest earning segments of the informal sector. The evidence therefore suggests that for substantial proportions of the informal sector there is little room for further contributions.

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Paper short abstract:

Digital transfers are one of the newest social protection delivery vehicles. Although their benefits are numerous, they also allow the global North to engage in novel forms of resource extraction from the global South whilst also compounding existing state weaknesses in the latter.

Paper long abstract:

Covid-19, with its focus on social distancing, has accelerated the shift to digitising cash transfers. Whilst the shift offers several advantages, the actors investing in digital technology are usually global North companies who profit off of each transaction between the state and the welfare recipient in the global South. This presents a new frontier of resource extraction from the global South to the North (Bateman, Duvendack and Loubere, 2019). Alongside, due to their relative novelty, mobile money transfer companies can exploit inadequate regulatory mechanisms, which is often endemic in the weak states of the global South. This paper provides an examination of the specific case of Bangladesh to highlight the need for caution in the adoption of new technology. Rather than advocating for a rejection of technology, it calls for a careful consideration of the potential consequences and a proactive approach to address potential challenges.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how a universal unconditional cash transfer – a basic income experiment –, handed out in a rural Ugandan village, yielded long-lasting (after the end of exposure) impacts on recipients’ employment, savings and investment patterns, despite the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paper long abstract:

The impacts of cash transfer (CT) programs on employment and savings, investment and production have been quite widely analysed by the literature. In particular, while the evidence base on savings and investment points at positive findings, the proofs produced concerning business and enterprise patterns indicate more mixed effects. Furthermore, the hypothesis – representing one of the main criticisms drawn against social assistance programs – that CTs would disincentivize work, has not yet been proved (if anything, rather disproved) by the available evidence.

Less is known about the sustainability (namely, the persistence after end of exposure) of CT impacts, as these programs are traditionally conceptualized as short-term social interventions, insufficient, by design, at yielding long-lasting and transformative benefits in recipients’ livelihoods. However, the (scarce) related empirical literature seems to provide hints validating the contrary, with positive program consequences persisting (even years after CTs’ cessation), on a variety of outcomes, including employment, savings and investment.

In this context, this paper uses a quasi-experimental matching approach to explore the sustainability of the effects of a universal unconditional cash transfer (as such, a basic income experiment), implemented in a rural Ugandan village. Despite the concurrent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, sustained or long-term impacts – with interesting gender differences – were recorded on, amongst others, savings, (agricultural) incomes and business ownership.

In sum, the article aims at contributing to the debate on the transformative potential of alternative types of social protection to make their recipients resilient to the (increasingly frequent) crises of our times.

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Paper short abstract:

we build a database that collects data on carbon pricing and fossil fuel subsidy reform cases to understand how to implement such critical climate policies. We explore how the use of social protection have made such reforms politically feasible and socially acceptable.

Paper long abstract:

In current times of uncertainty and crisis, social protection systems and their budgets are in jeopardy. On one side, austerity policies and lack of fiscal space can limit social protection funding. On the other side, emergencies such as the energy and the climate crises put additional strains on social protection and may lead to maladaptation. But the current context and the focus on just transitions also offers opportunities, as climate change mitigation and improvements in social protection can go hand in hand. For example, ambitious climate action to substantially decrease carbon emissions until 2030, requires carbon pricing policies and fossil fuel subsidy reforms that create fiscal space. Such revenues could fund social protection programmes to support households with increased energy prices, thereby benefiting the “just transition” process.

A systematic analysis of social protection measures in climate policies is critical, as several governments plan carbon pricing and subsidy reforms to achieve climate targets. Particularly, vulnerable households require protection as well as promoting measures to deal with the impacts of mitigation policies in the coming years. We build a database that collects data on carbon pricing and fossil fuel subsidy reform cases. These reforms cases are identified through a systematic literature review and relevant datasets. For all reforms episodes, we collect process and context variables that influence the implementation. By means of statistical analysis, we aim to establish patterns in the use of social protection in carbon pricing and subsidy reforms, and how social protection policies depend on other political economy factors.