Varieties of Regulatory Welfare Regimes in Middle-Income Countries: A Comparative Analysis of Brazil, Mexico and Turkey
Işık D. Özel is a visiting professor at the Department of Social Sciences at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and a member of the Carlos III-Juan March Institute. Broadly situated in comparative political economy, her research focuses on the politics of institutional change, its diverse determinants and outcomes in middle-income countries (MICs). She is interested in understanding social policy, and the politics of regulation, education and skills in MICs. Her work so far has appeared in Regulation & Governance, Socio-Economic Review, the Review of International Political Economy, South European Society and Politics, the Journal of European Public Policy, and Democratization, among others.
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Salvador Parrado teaches public administration at the Spanish Distance Learning University (Madrid) and is faculty associate at the Hertie School of Governance (Berlin). He is founding director of Governance International. He has carried out comparative research on executive politics, administrative systems, public management, public service coproduction, public values, public-private partnerships, and civil service.
He is an associate editor of Public Administration since 2011.
The expansion of social welfare regimes in middle-income countries (MICs) has become a global trend that has involved the adaption of robust social assistance programs aiming to alleviate poverty and diminish inequalities. We analyze conditional cash transfers in Brazil, Mexico, and Turkey, identifying the types of regulatory regimes that exist in each, namely “loose decentralism” in Brazil, “strict centralism” in Mexico, and “subcontracted dirigisme” in Turkey. We argue that regulatory design is key to understanding how the newly flourishing welfare regimes can control political manipulation and that where manipulation occurs, social assistance programs can deviate from their initial objectives endangering the welfare of the poor and hazard trust in the government and political institutions. . However, when social welfare regimes work in line with their objectives and eschew political discretion, regulatory welfare states can enhance trust in and legitimacy of political institutions. Our analysis indicates that a centrally regulated social assistance governance nurtured by local knowledge is key to avoiding political manipulation and to alleviating poverty, a major issue in MICs.