![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the roles that political leaders have played in the formulation and implementation of government initiatives to tackle poverty and inequality in Brazil, China, India and South Africa since about 2002. While research on social policy and welfare expansion in the industrialised world has largely ignored leaders, we stress the importance of politics and political agency, since political leaders often exercised decisive influence even if their decisions to prioritise certain issues and to adopt certain strategies depend on the convergence of other factors. We examine their management of tensions and opposition within their governments and their political systems – as well as what we can discern of their motivations and political calculations. We consider the impact on government initiatives both of their adroit machinations and, at times, of their ineptitude.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Some recent political science research in this vein includes Mondak (Citation2010), Gerber, Huber, Doherty, and Dowling (Citation2011), discussed by Jervis (Citation2013).
2 Barry Ames (Citation1987) argues that political leaders in Latin America use public policy (and especially public expenditure) for political survival. This is rational but more self-serving than altruism. For a similar assessment of leaders in Brazil, Uganda and India, see Melo et al. (Citation2012), whose study was inspired in part by an earlier analysis that focused solely on Latin America by Ascher (Citation1984).
3 For more in that vein, see Burns (Citation2003).
4 Note, however, that Jiang Zemin did back the adoption of New Rural Cooperative Medical Schemes in 2002 (see Duckett & Wang, Citation2017).
5 Note that the collective leader principle appears weaker under current Party General Secretary Xi Jinping than it was under Hu and Wen.
6 For an introduction to that Chinese process, see Heilmann (Citation2008). For an explanation of how leaders elsewhere lacked the time for such procedures, see Manor (Citation2016).
7 The JNNURM was based in part upon an initiative developed in different state under Congress Party government, the Bangalore Agenda Task Force. The leader of a formidable civil society organisation in that city which grew out of that initiative – Janaagraha – played a key role in that programme’s design and in monitoring it once implementation began (Manor, Citation2007).
8 Interviews with two panel members, New Delhi, 7 and 9 August 2014.
9 Caustic comments from the main opposition party, the BJP, on the implementation of the MGNREGA only arose in 2013 when Narendra Modi began to lead it. His denunciations ignored the fact that BJP state governments had achieved substantial successes in administering that programme – in for example, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh (Jenkins & Manor, Citation2017).
10 For a scorching critique from that quarter, see Business Day, 18 October 2012. Such criticisms helped to persuade the government to introduce an employment generation programme for rural areas (Andersson & Alexander, Citation2016).
11 Interview with a cabinet minister who opposed these cuts, New Delhi, 7 February 2014.
12 Interview with one of those cabinet ministers, New Delhi, 7 February 2014, and with an official in the PMO, New Delhi, 10 February 2014.
13 Surjit Bhalla’s extravagant misrepresentations in the Indian Express are dissected in Jenkins and Manor (Citation2017).
14 For a deeply misleading example dealing with India’s MGNREGA, see Rai (Citation2008), which is subject to a detailed refutation in Jenkins and Manor (Citation2017).
15 For more detail on courts, see the paper in this collection by Steven Friedman and Diego Maiorano.
16 Eight interviews with those civil servants in New Delhi between January 2007 and March 2010.
17 We are grateful to Joseph Fewsmith for this information.
18 Interview with a cabinet minister who was alarmed by this, New Delhi, 7 February 2014.
19 Centre for the Study of Developing Societies polling data showed that Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and poor rural dwellers, all of whom benefitted disproportionately from the MGNREGA, often failed to vote for the UPA or voted for the NDA/BJP (see Jenkins & Manor, Citation2017).
20 This was especially apparent in the case of India’s Integrated Child Development Services (Maiorano, Citation2016). See also the report ‘CAG Audit Reveals Lapses in ICDS Implementation’, The Hindu, 6 March 2013.
21 Interview with N.C. Saxena, New Delhi, 8 February 2014.
22 See also, ‘Only 22 Housing Projects for the Poor Completed under JNNURM’, India Sanitation Portal, 30 November 2012.
23 For a broader perspective on the problem of corruption in South Africa, see Camerer (Citation2011). On Brazil, see Melo, Pereira and Pereira (2016), and Pereira (Citation2016).
24 The complexities that Brazilian presidents face in their dealings with Congress are explained in a study of Lula’s predecessor in chapter four of Melo et al. (Citation2012), pp.115–162.
25 See (Manor, Citation2016); and “Ease Norms for Clearing Infrastructure Projects: PMO to MoEF”, Indian Express, 11 October 2012.