Abstract
This article aims to analyze the fragmented mix of social policies in Latin America, guided by minimalist principles and instruments of liberal thinking on individual meritocracy and contributory insurance, in order to discuss the challenges to and possibilities of developing universal policies. The article describes the historically social, economic and political contexts and pressures that frame the process of building fragmented social policies in the region; the contradictions, disadvantages, and limited achievements of these fragmented systems in terms of coverage, generosity and quality of health and pensions. Results show that expansive and fragmented welfare policies reproduce differences in quality and scope and increase social inequalities and conflicts; the challenges of building universal rights, citizenship and equality in Latin America, considering current public-private agreements, political coalitions, and interclass alliances, and the need to reorient social policies in order to overcome conflicts of interest, discrimination and market resistance, and to
 promote equality.
Highlights
This article analyses why universalism is not a reality in Latin America, from a relational and historic framework of poverty and inequalities, and how each society legitimized the historical process from which Bismarckian’s social security systems have emerged, expanded and been legitimated along with the current social security and rights in the region. This process is analyzed from a framework of unequal social citizenship and economic, social, political, and institutional weakness reproduced since the colonization to the 1980s, after which neoliberal measures of the Washington Consensus were implemented under the influence of international organizations, weakening further the role of the State and citizenship rights, through privatizations in social welfare schemes
Universalism or even universal coverage has never been achieved in Latin America, precisely due to the State and societies having never seriously debated the values of solidarity and equality as an axis of universal rights and citizenship
Few debates just lead to the incapability of the States in developing countries to provide universal protection. This socially and politically accepted limitation explains why expenses in health and pensions are lower in Latin America, compared to Europe, as well as benefits and rights effectively exercised
Summary
This article analyses why universalism is not a reality in Latin America, from a relational and historic framework of poverty and inequalities, and how each society legitimized the historical process from which Bismarckian’s social security systems have emerged, expanded and been legitimated along with the current social security and rights in the region. This process is analyzed from a framework of unequal social citizenship and economic, social, political, and institutional weakness reproduced since the colonization to the 1980s, after which neoliberal measures of the Washington Consensus were implemented under the influence of international organizations (such as the WB, MIF, IADB), weakening further the role of the State and citizenship rights, through privatizations in social welfare schemes.
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