Abstract
Grounded in social-contractual ideas about relationships between the governed and those who govern, the provision of social benefits to citizens has historically been predicated on expectations of acquiescence to state authority. However, the rapid expansion of noncontributory social assistance in sub-Saharan Africa, often supported by global donors through technical assistance programs, raises myriad questions about the relationship between social protection and the social contract in fragile and low-capacity contexts. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, but drawing on the theoretical and empirical literature on social protection from around the world, this review parses out the redistributive, contractual, and reconstitutive effects of social protection programming on citizen–state relations. We argue that program features—including targeting, conditionality, accountability mechanisms, bureaucratic reach, and the nature and visibility of state–nonstate partnerships—interact dialectically with existing state–society relationships to engender different social contract outcomes for differently situated populations.
Highlights
In 2015, the government of the Central African Republic (CAR) established the Londö public works program, sponsored by the World Bank, to provide social protection through temporary employment for 35,500 vulnerable individuals across the country
Noncontributory schemes have been popular in aid dependent states, where, rather than emerging from the demands of citizens, social protection has instead been embraced by governments and development partners as a technocratic means to alleviate poverty— and sometimes to build state capacity (Carpenter et al 2012, World Bank 1990)
We suggest that an emphasis on continuities between traditional social welfare models and social protection administered through technical assistance programs can obscure the ways in which uneven state capacity and preexisting state–society relations interact with particular program features to mediate desired social contract outcomes
Summary
In 2015, the government of the Central African Republic (CAR) established the Londö public works program, sponsored by the World Bank, to provide social protection through temporary employment for 35,500 vulnerable individuals across the country. Increased public participation and engagement in social, political, and economic arenas can reconstitute individuals as citizens with rights, responsibilities, and duties that extend beyond immediate kinship networks and derive from their position within a broader political community In this sense, third-order reconstitutive effects capture the ways in which myriad aspects of social protection programming, including cursory or incidental features of program design and implementation, reconfigure both states and citizens, independently and in relation to one another. In several studies in Latin America, financial literacy training and/or programs that provide opportunities for women to interact socially can develop self-confidence and lead to increased public participation and political engagement outcomes (Molyneux & Thomson 2011, Soares & Silva 2010) Such activities have effects at the individual and household levels and at the level of the community, sometimes shifting gender relations more broadly (see Bastagli et al 2016, Holmes 2019). While access to accurate information about program origins and procedures reduces the likelihood of local political manipulation of program benefits (Kramon 2019) and increases citizens’ perceptions of government transparency and accountability (Ayliffe et al 2017), in states with low visibility and reach, or with legacies of violence, information is mediated through prior levels of trust
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