Social protection in international development: editor's introduction to the special issue

Abstract

Abstract This introduction reflects on the current state of the debate on social protection, and introduces the contributions to this special issue. It describes some of the main themes in the debate, and why an apparently positive development in policy – direct benefits to poor people – has been contested. This highlights some of the dilemmas for international organisations, and emphasises the need to strengthen – and perhaps democratise – processes of international learning and knowledge transfer.

Résumé Cette introduction étudie l'état actuel du débat sur la protection sociale et présente les contributions dans ce numéro spécial. Elle décrit quelques thèmes principaux dans le débat et questionne pourquoi le développement d'un politique semblant avantageux et ayant des bénéfices directs pour les personnes pauvres est contesté. Cela souligne quelques dilemmes pour les organisations internationales et met l'accent sur la nécessité de renforcer et peut être de démocratiser les processus d'apprentissage internationale et le transfert de connaissance.

Keywords:

• social protection
• cash transfers
• policy transfer

Notes

Ortiz et al. (2011) show in their recent report for the United Nations Childrens' Fund (UNICEF) that the great majority of developing countries are now significantly reducing government expenditures. Most recent publications on social protection include the forthcoming November 2011 IDS bulletin 42 (6), ‘Social protection for social justice’; DFID (2011); the recent evaluation of World Bank investments by the World Bank Independent Evaluation Group (2011); Barrientos and Hulme (2008); and ILO (2006).

As Lindert (2004) also highlights in his seminal text on the expansion of public intervention in OECD countries over two centuries.

See, for example, the work by the Abdul Lateef Jamal Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), http://www.povertyactionlab.org/about-j-pal, at MIT, led by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Also, Alzua et al. (2011) discuss the predominance of multilateral organisations in funding of impact evaluation studies in Latin America, and low (though growing) participation of local researchers.

This is the normative emphasis in the forthcoming IDS bulletin on the theme of social protection for justice, which ‘demands an explicitly political approach, driven both from the top and by civil society activism from below’.