Redefining Who’s ‘In’ and Who’s ‘Out’: Explaining Preferences for Redistribution in Bolivia

Abstract

How does welfare state expansion reconfigure political coalitions? This paper challenges traditional accounts that pit social policy ‘insiders’, who univocally oppose policy expansion, against ‘outsiders’ who favour it. It argues that labour market vulnerability and partisan cues can play a critical role in shaping the preferences of both insiders and outsiders, and thus produce new pro-expansion coalitions. To test this claim, it employs historical analysis of key social insurance configurations in Bolivia over the last 30 years, as well as an original survey carried out in Bolivia following that nation’s 2007 extension of a noncontributory national minimum pension.

Acknowledgements

Data and code used in the analyses in this paper are available upon request from Matthew Carnes ([email protected]). The authors are grateful for helpful comments from Erik Wibbels, Ben Ansell, and Isabella Alcañiz. Julian Athaide and Taemin Ahn provided valuable research assistance. All errors remain our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Throughout the paper, for ease of presentation and understanding, we employ the terminology of Portes and Hoffman (2003) to distinguish among social classes.

2. All survey questions and methodology were approved by the Georgetown University Institutional Review Board (ID Pro00000119).

3. Respondents ranged from 18 to 70 years of age; 799 of which were men and 807 of which were women. 437 were age 18–24; 637 were age 24–39, and 496 were aged 40–70 years. Both urban and rural populations were surveyed.