Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America: Social Policy in Development Contexts

Description

Written by a team of internationally respected experts, this book explores the conditions under which social policy, defined as the public pursuit of secure welfare, operates in the poorer regions of the world. Social policy in advanced capitalist countries operates through state intervention to compensate for the inadequate welfare outcomes of the labour market. Such welfare regimes cannot easily be reproduced in poorer regions of the world where states suffer problems of governance and labour markets are imperfect and partial. Other welfare regimes therefore prevail involving non-state actors such as landlords, moneylenders and patrons. This book seeks to develop a new conceptual framework for understanding different types of welfare regime in a range of countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa and makes an important contribution to the literature by breaking away from the traditional focus on Europe and North America.

Ian Gough is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Bath and Editor of the Journal of European Social Policy. Professor Geof Wood is Head of the Department of Economics and International Development and Director of the Institute for International Policy Analysis at the University of Bath. Armando Barrientos is Lecturer in Public Economics and Development at the Institute for Development and Management at the University of Manchester. Philippa Bevan is a Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology of Development at the University of Bath. Peter Davis is Lecturer in International Development at the University of Bath. Graham Room is Professor of European Social Policy at the University of Bath.

From the hardback review: 'This is the book that social policy scholars have been awaiting a very long time. Thanks to Ian Gough, Geof Wood and their collaborators, we now have a rigorous, comprehensive, and extraordinarily nuanced and subtle analysis of social protection systems in the Third World. The scholarly challenge is truly formidable, and they have met it with courage and aplomb. Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America is one of those rare books that no welfare state scholar or practicioner can ignore.' Gosta Esping-Andersen