Economic and Political Factors During the Pre-globalization Era (1940’s-1970’s): Is there a Common Path that could have Conditioned the Degree of Welfare State Development in Latin America and the Caribbean?

Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis this paper aims to assess the possible existence of a common path of economic and political factors during the 1940’s-1970’s that could have conditioned the degree of welfare state (WS) development in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The research of Segura-Ubiergo(2007) is replicated with the novelty of using the Multidimensional Welfare Index (Cruz-Martínez,2014) as the dependent variable. Economic development, trade openness, democracy and the strength of leftist parties-labour movement are used as explanatory variables in the analysis. In contrast to Segura-Ubiergo findings, this paper shows that there is no evidence of a common path of economic and political factors followed by countries with a relatively high/medium WS development. Nevertheless, there is a strong tendency that countries who experienced a low economic development with a low democratic experience during the pre-globalization era, were conditioned to have a relatively low developed welfare state in the 1980’s-2000’s.