Seventeen Latin American countries have put into place conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs as a core element of their antipoverty strategy. These transfers benefit 27 million of the poorest households in the region. Intended to increase income as well as human capital development among poor families, CCTs have garnered widespread support among key societal, state, and international actors. Yet not all CCTs are alike; some are designed to operate in a strict programmatic manner while others are intentionally open to political maneuvering. In this informative and interesting book, Ana Lorena De La O seeks to account for this crucial difference. In the former type, exemplified by Mexico’s Oportunidades, program rules limit politicians’ ability to manipulate resources for political gain. In the latter type, exemplified in Bolivia’s Bono Juancito Pinto and in Argentina’s Plan Famílias under President Nestor Kirchner, the executive has considerable discretion over the program.

What is at stake in the specific design and implementation of a cash transfer program? As De La O explains and illustrates, having clear and enforced bureaucratic guidelines minimizes opportunities for politicians to engage in corruption, fraud, and patronage politics. Among the hallmarks of a well-run CCT are clear rules of eligibility, transfer of the income subsidy through the banking system, bureaucratic rather than politically brokered methods of assistance, and strict rules against expanding benefits in the period before elections. Besides being more likely to reach the needy and reduce their poverty, CCTs that operate in a clean fashion tend to build wider and more enduring bases of social and political support. Design, implementation, and impact all work together to create a virtuous circle. Conversely, in a vicious dynamic downward, CCTs that leave open the possibility of political brokerage and exchange often leak precious resources to the nonpoor and generate widespread ill will and criticism, especially from middle-class sectors, thereby undermining their chance of renewal.

After establishing that CCTs in most countries were born of economic crisis, Crafting Policies to End Poverty in Latin America sets out to explain why some cash transfer programs developed in a highly programmatic direction while others failed to do so. The author convincingly dismisses the notion that diffusion dynamics are responsible for the type of CCT that develops in a country. Rather, inspired by literature on the political economy of delegation, De La O’s answer rests in whether there is divided government or not. Where different parties (or factions of parties) control the presidency and legislature, presidents tie their own hands and form an apolitical CCT. This is so that the legislative opposition will renew support for it and also so that the CCT will not be used against presidents and their party should the opposition come to power. Conversely, where the same political forces control both bodies of government, executive calculations move in the direction of supporting CCTs with design features that increase their political support through nonprogrammatic means.

The theoretical framework that De La O develops in Chapter 3 is impressive, intriguing, and highly plausible. The problem comes in the connection between the theory and the empirical analysis in Chapters 4 and 5. With the clear exception of the Mexican case, as well as the illustrative comparison made between Plan Famílias and Asignación Universal por Hijo in Argentina, the empirical illustration of the model is fragmented and not well fleshed out. A more elaborate, step-by-step, systematic treatment of the various comparative cases, including attention to some of the more recent work on the specific CCTs under examination, would have strengthened the book.

Chapters 6 and 7, which prominently display the author’s firsthand knowledge of Mexico, are among the most compelling chapters of the book. De La O cites examples of party brokers trying to use Oportunidades to their own benefit, even falsely promising to enroll people in the program or threatening to withdraw them. Yet clear information about the ways in which the program operates protects the poor from such efforts at manipulation. Evidence presented by De La O suggests that beneficiaries know that Oportunidades is a federal program, and that continued enrollment rests not on one’s political loyalties but rather on income eligibility and conditionalities of school attendance and health care. In a country where social provisioning long entailed an exchange of benefits for votes, the insulation of Mexico’s CCT from political clientelism represents an important break with the past. Moreover, it is even possible that women who enrolled in the CCT Progresa were more likely to vote inasmuch as registration in the program stimulated the acquisition of an official identification card of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE). We also learn that program meetings around Oportunidades have become a context for women to discuss their communities’ needs and to defend their rights in general. Indeed, CCTs that operate in a strict programmatic fashion can empower poor people in significant ways. As these chapters make clear, their impact can go well beyond the money they disburse and the poverty they alleviate.

The book reaches an important conclusion that deserves to be underscored. As De La O correctly observes, the multiple requirements of a well-run CCT—accurate demographic data collection, registry development, and targeting, together with undertaking careful monitoring and making provision for independent evaluation—mean that the state will assume a more active role, rather than a less active one. Similarly, reaching millions of poor households that were formerly outside the reach of national governments has meant an expansion of the central government’s presence throughout the national territory. These activities, which build the state, run counter to the criticism of CCTs as a neoliberal innovation in which the state intervenes only as much as necessary to diminish poverty and thereby placate social discontent.

Crafting Policies to End Poverty in Latin America makes an important contribution in illuminating the politics surrounding the design, implementation, and feedback support of CCTs in the region. As De La O convincingly argues, ”the quiet transformation” that the best of such policies represent has indeed improved the well-being of millions of poor people in the region.