Globalization and the Welfare State in Latin America: A New Theory?

• In Event: 544 - Regular Session. Welfare State 2

Abstract

Economic globalization has previously been connected to welfare state outcomes in four distinct ways: it has been tied to welfare state expansion, it has been seen as necessitating retrenchment of the welfare state, it has been thought to bring about welfare state convergence through an initial expansion tied to economic development but retrenchment among more advanced welfare states when the costs of the welfare state become too burdensome, or the connection between globalization and the welfare state has been, rather, identified as insignificant. However, through a nested analysis approach consisting of an analysis of the relationship between multiple measures of globalization and the size of the welfare state in terms of public social expenditure for 16 Latin American countries, and case studies of four of them, for the period between the debt crisis and 2010, I find evidence of an additional relationship between globalization and welfare states not identified by prior research. This analysis reveals an alternate process of welfare state convergence in Latin America in which globalization brought about region-wide retrenchment, but was subsequently followed by a resurgence of these welfare states during the 2000's that can be traced to the political responses of those disadvantaged by the conditions of both greater risk and reduced social protection that initially followed globalization, primarily in relation to the domain of pensions.

Author

• Kory Johnson, Northwestern University