Welfare Regimes in Developing Countries

Abstract

This article considers leading theoretical and quantitative approaches to identifying welfare regimes in developing countries. I. Holliday, I. Gough, N. Rudra, S. Haggard and R. Kaufman made the most important contribution to this strain of thought in recent decades. Academic interest in social security in developing countries and their welfare regimes identification and typology is fueled by the lack of anticipated convergence between them and Esping-­Andersen’s 'worlds of welfare capitalism' in the OECD countries. I. Holliday defined a cluster of the 'productivist' welfare regime with social benefits subordinated to economic ends and its subclusters in East Asia. The cluster started to transform during the welfare program extension in the region as a response to the crises of 1997 and 2008. As a result, some countries from the region started to resemble Esping-­Andersen’s liberal welfare regime. N. Rudra identified the non-geographical antipode of the productivist welfare regime, namely a 'protective' one. Its emergence was closely related with trade protectionism and import substitution industrialization, instead of export-led industrialization and the global market integration endemic for productivist regimes. Protective regimes provided more social benefits to their clients than their respective economies allowed. Apart from the above mentioned 'proto-­welfare state regimes,' I. Gough distinguished two additional clusters of 'informal security regimes' and 'insecurity regime' with poor or no social protection, when extended families, including remittances from migrants, informal and patron-­client networks, and international NPO played a decisive social security role. New generation of researchers, influenced by the mentioned authors, refine the composition of welfare clusters in developing countries as well as cauterization principles itself. They also distinguish intermediate- and sub-clusters and examine them more closely.