Social Protection: Addressing Risk
or Certainty?
Recent developments and current
challenges to the extension of donor
supported social protection in developing
countries
Thursday 21st November 2013
European Commission
Dr Anna McCord
Research Associate, ODI
Honorary Research Fellow, University of Manchester
Research Affiliate, SALDRU, University of Cape Town
Structure of Presentation
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Definitions
Historical development of social protection
Social protection in developing countries
Key players
Recent developments
Challenges
Opportunities
Conclusion
Definitions
• Social policy is ‘the public pursuit of secure welfare’ (Gough et
al, 2004)
• Social protection provides benefits, (in cash or in kind), to secure
protection, inter alia, from:
• lack of work-related income (or insufficient income) caused
by sickness, disability, maternity, employment injury,
unemployment, old age, or death of a family member
• lack of access or unaffordable access to health care:
• insufficient family support, particularly for children and adult
dependants:
• general poverty and social exclusion.
• Social security schemes can be contributory or noncontributory- social insurance or social assistance
Two Forms of Social Protection
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Universalist Social Protection
Welfare state aims to cover entire population with adequate benefits , claimable
entitlements.
Potentially includes means testing, pragmatism in response to fiscal realities
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the provision of a Guaranteed
Minimum Income (GMI)
Current embodiment is the Social Protection Floor (SPF) ILO Recommendation
202.
Residual Social Protection
The welfare state caters essentially to the working class and the poor.
Private insurance and occupational fringe benefits cater to the middle classes
(dualism)
Risk extension resisted by non- beneficiaries
Services for the poor are poor quality services (Tizard, 1975)
Historical development of social
protection
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Democracy, demography and economic growth
Pre WW2 UK, Sweden and Germany
Russian revolution and WW1
ILO 1919
Depression and WW2
UN charters, rights, welfare state development
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948,
International Covenant on Economic and Social and Cultural
Rights (ICESCR), (66) and the Convention on the Rights of
the Child (CRC) of 1989
• ILO Social Security Convention (no 102) of 1952
Social Protection in Europe
• Social Contract
• European welfare model – core is guaranteed minimum
income
• Golden age to early 80s
• Breakdown of model 80s – fiscal and ideological change in
social contract
• Privatisation of provision and dualism – residual model
• Increased ‚active‘ social protetion – enhance work (Lisbon
European Council of 2000)
Current provision of Social
Protection
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International instruments provide legal and normative basis or provision for more
than six decades
Estimated 80% of the global population has no access to any formal social security
protection (Felice, 2010)
Coverage is particularly low in developing countries, particularly in low income
countries (LIC)
Varies by region - 40% in ECA and 1% in sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank, 2013)
In developed countries, mainly in Europe, provision is based on assumption that
social contract requires state to ensure income floor (GMI)
No such assumption guides policy in most developing countries
Result:
50% of children living in poverty,
60% of the elderly receiving no form of pension, and
30% of the world’s population having no access to essential health care
(Cichon, 2013)
Social protection in developing
countries
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Mix mostly cash transfers and public works
Embryonic post colonial provision – for elites
Diversity
Regional, income level play major role, plus level of policy
autonomy
• LAC at one end of spectrum, SSA at other
• Notable examples – Brazil, South Africa, China, India –
innovation and endogenous
• Also sig developments Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Nepal
Key players
• Historically global social welfare ministry – ILO (mandate, social security
provision – 1952)
• Since 80s increased engagement by World Bank, initially – dominant – est.
concessional resources 70% conditional (2007)
• Aim to become ‘knowledge’ bank & RSR
• UNICEF - counterpoint
• UNRISD, UNDESA
• WFP & FAO interested in increased scope of SP
• INGOs
• Knowledge actors
 Supra-national policy making, reduction in national policy space
Summary of contestation
• “… ideas about desirable national social policy carried and
argued for by the international organisations surveyed ….
reveals something approaching a ‘war of position’ between
those agencies and actors within them who have argued for a
more selective, residual role for the state for the state with a
larger role for private actors in health, social protection and
education provision and those who took the opposite view.
This division of opinion often reflected a disagreement as to
whether the reduction of poverty was a matter of targeting
specific resources on the most poor, or whether it was a matter
of major social and political-institutional change involving a
shift in power relations and a significant increase in
redistribution from rich to poor.” (Deacon, 2007)
Contestation
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International donor community agreed on desirability of SP provision
Variation - what that should comprise in DCs: for whom provided, and how and in
what form offered
European-type entitlement-based social minimum not central to vision of all
Disagreements between participants
• ‘the UN position’, conforming with the (European) welfarist and (ILO
Recommendation 202) SPF vision, or,
• the more residual World Bank-type policy, which is concerned with residualist
SSN provision, market-based solutions and challenges relating to risk,
resilience and graduation
Additional complexity • the growing focus on ‘active’ social protection,
• emphasis on labour market engagement, graduation, and transformation
• Orientation towards the challenges of risk and resilience
• Crisis response function
Contestation II
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Aspirations associated with social protection beyond the provision of a social
minimum (major challenge in developing country contexts),
Term ‘SP’ at risk of becoming used synonymously with the process and goals of
development itself – broad and loose definition and objectives
Arguably some move to middle ground currently;
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Nominal endorsement of the SPF among the key agencies
Discussion of equity in relation to the social protection agenda in the post-MDG/SDG
debates represents convergence on universal and rights based approaches - potential
shift in favour of social justice.
But adoption of a common language not necessarily imply a common analysis or
desired end points
Eg discussion of equity (WB, HLP) focussed on equity of opportunity, not
redistributive agenda
Unclear whether opportunity represented by Recommendation 202 will inform
changes in key institutions at national and international levels
Recent developments
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Changing global context
Changes in the global labour market
The 2008/9 financial crisis
G20 Development Working Group
New strategies: World Bank, UNICEF, WFP
The Social Protection Floor 2012
SPIAC-B and donor coordination 2012
The post-2015 agenda – MDG and SDG
Challenges
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1 Instrument Choice, Design and Implementation
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2 Sustainability
• National demand and ownership
3 Financing
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IMF macro-economic dominance
6 Beyond Income Security
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Financing innovations, Global funds
4 Donor Competition and Coordination
5 Tension with macro-economic policy
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Instrument choice, The Working Age Poor, Targeting and Universality, Cash Transfers
and Conditionality, Implementation
Productive Safety Nets,Growth, Graduation, Transformation
7 Social Protection Systems and Crisis Response
8 Contested Vision
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Rights, Social justice, Redistribution, Social minimum, Risk or certainty, Social
protection as development
Opportunities
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Instrument Choice, Design and Implementation
Sustainability
Financing
Donor Competition and Coordination
Tension with economic policy
Moving Beyond Income Security
Social Protection Systems and Crisis Response
Shared vision
Instrument Choice
• Develop evidence base to inform instrument choice, design and
implementation options,
• Greater objectivity rather than reflecting institutional preferences or path
dependency
• Harmonisation of programming and research
• Improved evaluation - development of shared definitions and indicators
across programmes, institutions, and regions
• Enable greater comparison of performance, meta analysis and cross
programme learning
• Opening debate around Working Age Poor (WAP), given the recognition
of the scale of the WAP challenge, given recognition of global shifts in
the nature of under- and unemployment.
Sustainability
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Opportunity to promote greater national policy autonomy and ownership
Move away from donor-led /‘one size fits all’ and institutionally preferred policy ‘packages’
Promote bespoke programming choices and contextually designed support
Promote greater coordination and harmonization within the donor community
Practical steps to enhance joint programming, eg shared data gathering and analysis initiatives, joint
evaluations, common situation analysis instruments and basket funding and joint programming
• increase IDI efficiency,
• improve quality across the IDI board,
• require agencies to give up a degree of institutional autonomy and influence
• require a deepening of trust and commitment between agencies
• agreement of areas of common vision (the intended role of SPF).
• reduce the opportunity costs of engagement on the part of national governments through a reduction
in the multiple parallel analytical, data gathering and financing and reporting processes currently in
receipt of donor support.
Greater IDI support for domestically initiated programming
IFI commitment to support rather than undermine domestic investment in the sector in contexts requiring
macro-economic stabilization.
Promote re-energised debate on international financing options, and support for national level dialogue on
options for capturing future mineral dividends for the provision of social dividends linked to social
protection provision.
Financing
• Identify financing, both nationally and internationally, to provide basic
coverage for all the extreme poor, and thence for the progressive expansion
of systems, which currently provide only marginal coverage in many
developing,
• Promote debate from an ideological/political perspective, exploring the
reluctance to countenance any significantly extended redistributive agenda
in IDI and national discourses
• Need advocacy with generalized, rather than single agency, mobilization
around a call for increased financing.
• Review innovations eg a global fund and transaction tax, mineral taxation,
engaging with the mineral resource debate actively – consider lessons from
the RSR and other trust fund approaches
Donor Competition and
Coordination
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Continued focus on donor harmonization and efficiency
Build on the SPIAC-B in promoting interagency work
• social protection data definitions and conceptual harmonization in terms of interventions
and impacts, data gathering, data analysis, and social protection system performance,
World Bank led SPARCS initiative on mapping provision
Support goodwill across the IDIs, and pooled financing for a public good to benefit of whole
sector
Utilise SPIAC-B potential as general forum for actively promoting the exchange of ideas,
experiences and innovation and identifying and developing issues, eg future financing
Create space for genuine dialogue and interchange between agencies
Require adequate intellectual and financial resources to take forward such initiatives,
recognizing the capacity constraints faced by many in the IDI community.
SPF offers opportunity for coordination - provide a normative framework for social
protection internationally
However, if harmonization (Paris, Busan, Accra) is to be realized at international and country
level, formal processes and further international leadership guidance are required.
Require development and promotion of incentives for harmonization, and changes to
institutional culture, structure and practices.
Tension with economic policy
• Promote explicit debate on tensions between pursuit of social protection
objectives, and the economic policy, (both micro- and macro-) promoted
by the BWI with IDI support
• Need for principles to govern the policy dissonance between macroeconomic and poverty/social justice objectives
• Also to explore relationship between the micro-economic issues
(employment, taxation, trade, education etc) which also contribute to social
protection performance
• Not consider social protection in isolation from economic policy in general
Moving Beyond Income Security
• Interest in the Productive Safety Net approach and the role of social
protection in promoting active social protection and labour market
participation
• Opportunity for critical interagency interrogation of growing evidence base
relating to livelihoods development, food security, graduation and
transformation to identify success determinants
• Growth of research in this area in recent years, need to take into account
the implications of changes in the structure of the global economy and
labour market
• Root the debate in the reality of social protection provision at country level
– ie minimal and low level in many LICs
• Assess policy objectives relating to graduation and transformation in this
light
Social Protection Systems and Crisis
Response
• Opportunity to initiate critical discussion around the meaning
of ‘systems development’ in relation to social protection
• Identify areas common interest and where incongruence of
schemata
• Promote explicit discussion of implications and options for
resolution
• Also promote open debate on tensions in promoting SP as
both the provider of a social minimum and also as
mechanisms for countercyclical crisis response
• Identify and address challenges, conceptually and in
programming.
Shared Vision
• Articulation of SPF vision in Recommendation 202 and formal support
across the IDIs represents both a challenge and also a key moment for the
exploration of a contested agenda
• Opportunity for the articulation of the contested visions underlying the
social protection project
• Explicit exploration of areas of agreement and dissent and the ideological
impulses underlying them, - in many cases remained implicit heretofore
• Recognise ideologies and the pragmatism informing current institutional
positions
• Recognise programming implications of the different stances to identify
core areas for collaborative engagement to reduce future contestation.
• Particular challenges around equity (limited to equity of opportunity) and
residualism vs universalism
Conclusion
• De jure requirement on IDIs to address social protection in line with
Recommendation 202
• ‘The great consensus’ (Cichon, 2013)
• Initial responses on the part of the IDIs show some signs of resistance to
the implementation of the SPF principles as the primary framework for
future social protection and associated commitment to the progressive
realisation of a social minimum (‘great ambivalence’)
• Challenge now is to consolidate
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Support initiatives already underway in IDI policy and practice
Promote national sovereignty in social protection policy selection, design and
implementation
• Develop responses to outstanding challenges in the sector
Recommendation 202, if supported by national governments and the IDIs, has the potential
to provide a framework to support this process
Thank you
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