The study of emerging welfares states (EWS) is becoming more and more relevant in the field of comparative politics. Some questions are necessary to answer when talking about EWS : why some countries managed to develop a social policy while others have big problems nowadays to do it?, what type of social policy are developing EWS?, what level of universalization of the social policy can reach countries of the Third World? The hypothesis of this paper is that in the XXI century there is an incremental process of Welfare State building at a global scale and some countries have reached institutional structures similar to the ones of the mature welfare states. However it is clear that there are big differences among countries when we compare them in a regional basis. So the aim of the paper is to participate in the debate about characteristics and degree of development of social policy in the EWS of Asia, Africa and Latin America, trying to understand the main challenges they face.
