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Paper short abstract

This paper analyses how elite technocratic actors shape what counts as ‘successful’ social protection in Pakistan and Brazil. Using document analysis of Ehsaas and Bolsa Familia, it shows how epistemic hierarchies depoliticise development and privilege donor-aligned expertise.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates how elite technocratic actors - policy advisers, donor specialists, consultants and transnational experts - shape the knowledge infrastructures that define 'effective' social protection in the Global South. Using Bacchi’s (2009) 'What’s the Problem Represented to Be?' framework, it traces how policy documents, evaluations and donor narratives in Pakistan’s Ehsaas programme and Brazil’s Bolsa Familia construct particular representations of success and legitimate expertise.

Across both cases, the analysis shows that what is framed as objective, technical or evidence-based is in fact produced within narrow epistemic hierarchies. Authority is concentrated among actors trained in elite academic institutions and embedded in donor networks, whose econometric and managerial logics shape policy design and evaluation. Their influence determines which indicators matter, which outcomes count and which forms of knowledge are elevated or dismissed.

In Pakistan, the longstanding imprint of IMF programmes reinforces these hierarchies. Fiscal conditionalities, targeting frameworks and quantification-driven evaluation metrics bolster the dominance of economists and data specialists, narrowing political debate and legitimising depoliticised policy templates. Lived knowledge from frontline implementers, communities and local administrators is marginalised or translated into pre-existing technocratic categories.

Brazil’s Familia, despite its stronger rights-based framing, reflects similar patterns: elite policy economists and internationally recognised evaluators play a central role in defining success and circulating Brazil’s model globally.

By juxtaposing these contexts, the paper demonstrates how epistemic hierarchies within transnational development ecosystems shape not only policy solutions but the very definition of the 'problem', while sidelining relational, contextual and lived knowledges.