When compared to broader social protection measures, political incentives to introduce targeted benefits are definitely few. As a matter of fact, potential beneficiaries of non-contributory policies are known to have limited political resources: material needs hinder the probability to engage permanently in political action. Moreover, would-be beneficiaries form a very heterogeneous group of individuals characterized by different biographies, diverse interests and a wide range of identities and belief systems – all factors that limit their mobilization potential. The selective nature of residual anti-poverty safety nets, combined with socio-demographic characteristics that make recipients’ propensity to vote significantly lower than average, decreases also the electoral incentives to introduce these programs. Furthermore, social assistance may also be viewed with suspicion by trade unions – especially in periods when social insurance benefits introduced during the Golden Age are frequently under attack – because they are not specifically directed to their membership (i.e. standard workers, commonly defined as “insiders”).
Against this background, in the last two decades targeted “pro-outsider” social assistance benefits have been introduced both in Latin America and in Southern Europe. Given the growing competition among social groups for declining social policy resources, how can we explain this expansion in a field characterized by the scant political resources of would-be beneficiaries?
To answer this question, the article compares the introduction of targeted benefits in Italy and Argentina. Non-contributive income transfers have traditionally lagged behind either in Southern Europe and in Latin America. Following the Bismarckian path, both welfare states have been originally structured in order to protect, mainly on a contributory basis, male breadwinner workers and their families. On the contrary, social programs benefitting the so-called labour market “outsiders” were scarcely developed. Yet – also as a reaction of country specific financial and economic crisis – in the last decades targeted benefits have been introduced. More specifically, Italy has recently launched a minimum income scheme called Reddito di Inclusione Sociale (Inclusion Income) while Argentina adopted the Plan Jefas y Jefes de Hogares Desocupados (Unemployed Heads of the Households Program) and the Asignación Universal por Hijo (Universal Child Allowance).
Through an in-depth comparative analysis of the political process built on a process-tracing methodology, the paper shows that, in the shadow of a different configuration of contextual factors (functional pressures, policy legacy and external pressures), the ability to build pro-outsider coalitions may hinge on the willingness of trade unions to reach out to new constituencies and redistributive demands. Beside the comparison of two different geographical areas – though not so different in terms of welfare state configuration - the main contribution of this work is the focus on the politics of social assistance / conditional cash transfers, and in particular on the role of organized labour in relations to non-contributory measures, which has been long denied in the empirical literature and that current theories have failed to disentangle completely.
