IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bwp/bwppap/18213.html

Politicising poverty in Latin America in the light of Rawls’ ‘strains of commitment’ argument for a social minimum

Author

Listed:
  • Armando Barrientos

Abstract

The paper discusses the rise of poverty and poverty reduction in the political and policy agenda in Latin America, reflected inter alia in the growth of social assistance. It identifies and discusses two main explanations offered in the literature: democratisation and left partisan power. It then introduces a third explanation based on Rawls’ theory of justice, in which a social minimum is essential for preventing the ‘strains of commitment’ from becoming excessive. Analysis of cross-country panel data for 18 Latin American countries for the period 1990-2008 assesses the plausibility of these explanations.

Suggested Citation

  • Armando Barrientos, 2013. "Politicising poverty in Latin America in the light of Rawls’ ‘strains of commitment’ argument for a social minimum," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 18213, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    • Handle: RePEc:bwp:bwppap:18213
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/gdi/publications/workingpapers/bwpi/bwpi-wp-18213.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Baez Ramirez,Javier Eduardo & Camacho,Adriana & Conover, Emily & Zarate,Roman Andres, 2012. "Conditional cash transfers, political participation, and voting behavior," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6215, The World Bank.
    2. Barrientos, Armando, 2011. "On the Distributional Implications of Social Protection Reforms in Latin America," WIDER Working Paper Series 069, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Nancy Birdsall & Nora Lustig & Darryl McLeod, 2011. "Declining inequality in Latin America: Some economics, some politics," Working Papers 201, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    4. Juan Luis Londoño & Miguel Székely, 2000. "Persistent Poverty and Excess Inequality: Latin America, 1970-1995," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 3, pages 93-134, May.
    5. Armando Barrientos, 2010. "Should poverty researchers worry about inequality?," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 11810, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    6. Shor, Boris & Bafumi, Joseph & Keele, Luke & Park, David, 2007. "A Bayesian Multilevel Modeling Approach to Time-Series Cross-Sectional Data," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(2), pages 165-181, April.
    7. Armando Barrientos, 2011. "On the Distributional Implications of Social Protection Reforms in Latin America," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2011-069, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. Sergei Soares & Rafael Guerreiro Osório & Fábio Veras Soares & Marcelo Medeiros & Eduardo Zepeda, 2009. "Conditional cash transfers in Brazil, Chile and Mexico: impacts upon inequality," Estudios Económicos, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, vol. 0(Special i), pages 207-224.
    9. Skoufias, Emmanuel & Lindert, Kathy & Shapiro, Joseph, 2010. "Globalization and the Role of Public Transfers in Redistributing Income in Latin America and the Caribbean," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 895-907, June.
    10. Giovanni Andrea Cornia, 2010. "Income Distribution under Latin America's New Left Regimes," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(1), pages 85-114.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tony Addison & Rachel Gisselquist & Miguel Niño-Zarazúa & Saurabh Singhal, 2015. "Needs vs Expediency - Poverty Reduction and Social Development in Post-Conflict Countries," Working Papers id:7371, eSocialSciences.
    2. Tony Addison & Rachel M. Gisselquist & Miguel Niño-Zarazúa & Saurabh Singhal, 2015. "Needs versus Expediency: Poverty Reduction and Social Development in Post-conflict Countries," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-063, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Armando Barrientos & Juan Miguel Villa, 2014. "Economic and political inclusion of human development conditional transfer programmes in Latin America?," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 20014, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    4. Tony Addison & Rachel Gisselquist & Miguel Niño-Zarazúa & Saurabh Singhal, 2015. "Needs vs Expediency - Poverty Reduction and Social Development in Post-Conflict Countries," Working Papers id:7371, eSocialSciences.
    5. Armando Barrientos, 2013. "Human Development Income Transfers in the Longer Term," Working Papers 116, International Policy Centre.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Seguino, Stephanie & Braunstein, Elissa, 2012. "The impact of economic policy and structural change on gender employment inequality in Latin America, 1990-2010," MPRA Paper 43261, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Barrientos, Armando, 2011. "On the Distributional Implications of Social Protection Reforms in Latin America," WIDER Working Paper Series 069, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Armando Barrientos & Juan Miguel Villa, 2014. "Economic and political inclusion of human development conditional transfer programmes in Latin America?," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 20014, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    4. Andy Sumner, 2012. "The Buoyant Billions: How “Middle Class” Are the New Middle Classes in Developing Countries? (And Why Does It Matter?)," Working Papers 309, Center for Global Development.
    5. Carrera Troyano, Miguel & Muñoz de Bustillo, Rafael, 2013. "Tres décadas de economía, ideología económica y políticas en la evolución de la pobreza y la desigualdad en América Latina [Three decades of economics, economic ideology and policies in the evolution of poverty and inequality in Latin America]," MPRA Paper 51867, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2013.
    6. Bird, Richard M. & Zolt, Eric M., 2015. "Fiscal Contracting in Latin America," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 323-335.
    7. Armando Barrientos, 2011. "On the Distributional Implications of Social Protection Reforms in Latin America," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2011-069, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. Javier Rodríguez Weber, 2018. "Alta desigualdad en América Latina: desde cuándo y por qué," Documentos de trabajo 51, Programa de Historia Económica, FCS, Udelar.
    9. Richard M. Bird & Eric M. Zolt, 2014. "Taxation and inequality in the Americas: Changing the fiscal contract?," Chapters, in: Richard M. Bird & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez (ed.), Taxation and Development: The Weakest Link?, chapter 7, pages 193-237, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. von Jacobi, Nadia, 2014. "Can the context mediate macro-policy outcomes? Contextual differences in the returns to Bolsa Familia in Brazil," WIDER Working Paper Series 049, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    11. Fernández, Manuel & Messina, Julián, 2018. "Skill premium, labor supply, and changes in the structure of wages in Latin America," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 555-573.
    12. Facundo Alvaredo & Leonardo Gasparini, 2013. "Recent Trends in Inequality and Poverty in Developing Countries," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0151, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    13. Giovanni Andrea Cornia, 2012. "Inequality Trends and their Determinants: Latin America over 1990-2010," Working Papers - Economics wp2012_02.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
    14. Bronfman H., Javier, 2021. "Challenges for optimizing social protection programmes and reducing vulnerability in Latin America and the Caribbean," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), April.
    15. Camila Arza, 2019. "Basic Old‐Age Protection in Latin America: Noncontributory Pensions, Coverage Expansion Strategies, and Aging Patterns across Countries," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 45(S1), pages 23-45, December.
    16. Manuel Fern√°ndez & Gabriela Serrano, 2022. "New Perspectives on Inequality in Latin America," Documentos CEDE 20295, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    17. Nadia von Jacobi, 2014. "Can the Context Mediate Macro-Policy Outcomes?: Contextual Differences in the Returns to Bolsa Familia in Brazil," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2014-049, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    18. Andy Sumner, 2012. "The Buoyant Billions: How “Middle Class†Are the New Middle Classes in Developing Countries? (And Why Does It Matter?)," Working Papers id:5169, eSocialSciences.
    19. Leonardo Gasparini & Guillermo Cruces & Leopoldo Tornarolli & Mariana Marchionni, 2009. "A Turning Point? Recent Developments on Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0081, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    20. Gómez-Arteaga, Natalie & Ocampo, José Antonio, 2017. "Social protection systems, redistribution and growth in Latin America," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), August.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bwp:bwppap:18213. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Rowena Harding (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wpmanuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.