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.