Welfare in the Global South: Between Popular Contention, Statebuilding and Internationalisation I

Abstract

This panel interrogates postcolonial welfare states in the Global South as processes and products of entanglement between domestic, international and transnational political configurations. On the national level, public welfare connects state organizations and social groups. It may increase state legitimacy, but also trigger new demands. It addresses social inequality, but also manifests group privileges. It symbolises nationhood and provides vision, but also exposes gaps between ambition and implementation. Geographically, welfare bureaucracies embody the state in the most remote village, but also reproduce urban-rural divides. Welfare administrative knowledge is the backbone of planning for the public good, but such data can also be used as a tool of control and repression. In sum, welfare provision creates colourful, often contradictory bonds between states and populations. At the same time, welfare states of the Global South are strongly internationalised. The design, finance, and provision of welfare is a complex process in which international organisations, bilateral donors, transnational NGOs, religious organisations and expert communities are centrally involved. While such international involvement arguably creates a “global social policy” in its infancy, it also renders concepts of sovereignty, citizenship, democracy, accountability, entitlement, and durability highly precarious. This fundamentally puts into question previous assumptions on welfare state formation. To address these processes of entanglement between international, transnational and domestic configurations, the papers address or relate to the following questions: How can we conceptualise welfare in the Global South? How does internationalisation impact on everyday patterns of legitimation and contestation? In what ways did neoliberalism and structural adjustments disrupt postcolonial welfare politics? Where do countervailing ideas emerge against dominant welfare approaches?

Title	Details
Struggles over austerity: The implementation of contested IMF reforms in Egypt and Tunisia from a comparative political economy perspective	View Paper Details
Representation without a state: studying the long-term political consequences of neoliberalism in the countryside	View Paper Details
The Trajectory of Food Security Policies in South Africa, 1910-1994: The Persistence of Redistributive Food Subsidies	View Paper Details