The Domestic Drivers of Cash Transfer Adoption and Entrenchment

• In Event: Social Policy and Social Spending in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

What explains variation in the adoption and implementation of cash transfer policies? Extant research points to the important role that international organizations have played in the adoption of conditional and unconditional cash transfers as favoured development tools by states across sub-Saharan Africa. However, there is little research to account for the variable evolution of these policies over time. Across different contexts, national cash transfer policies have been localized in unique ways as government actors shape the scope and reach of these policies over time. The aim of this paper is to account for important variations in the design and scope of government cash transfer programs by examining sources of localization.

Through a comparative study of long-term government-implemented cash transfer programs in Tanzania and Kenya, this research highlights the role of domestic political incentives to account for the variable adoption and development of cash transfer programs. I center attention on a number of domestic political drivers of cash transfer policy uptake and expansion in the case of Kenya and Tanzania. I trace political elites’ decision-making processes surrounding cash transfer programs in each country by drawing on original interview data collected over a period of three years, including 73 interviews with government officials and development partners in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and 71 interviews with local government officials and politicians in Homa Bay County, Kenya and Rorya District, Tanzania.

The paper finds that the efforts of international development partners, through the provision of funding and spaces for cross-country learning, account for the initial implementation of similar cash transfer programs across diverse contexts. However, the form and scope of programs over the long run are shaped by two salient domestic political factors: local electoral politics and the consequent pressures for program expansion in local contexts. More specifically, the case studies in the paper show that competitive elections in Kenya have led to political pressures for the broad expansion of cash transfers nationwide rather than a focus on key elements of program design and implementation. In contrast, in Tanzania, the increasingly authoritarian political space has included a reinvigoration of productivist rhetoric focussed on hard work and self-reliance. Instead of concentrating on program expansion, political elites have thus focused on redesigning cash transfer programs through an emphasis on conditionalities and public works programs, which are seen as central to the creation of ‘productive’ citizens. Through its focus on the local political drivers for expansion and reform, this argument challenges the existing literature on conditionalities in sub-Saharan Africa, which emphasizes the decisive role that international development partners play in shaping program design. More broadly, the paper argues that to understand the contours of policy adoption and change over time, scholars must analytically separate the initial processes of policy adoption from the subsequent policy entrenchment and center attention at both international and local developments and factors.

Author

• Alesha Porisky, Northern Illinois University