In an era defined by the simultaneous demand for more austere fiscal policy, on the one hand, and populist demands for more attentive government service, on the other, there is a need for empirically robust and theoretically grounded studies of social policy provision. Problematically for scholars working in the global South, such questions are often intricately tied to issues related to state capacity, ethnic heterogeneity, and linkages between voters and parties that are difficult to measure in the developing world. Both texts reviewed here are impressive works in comparative public policy and reflect considerable forethought in their respective research designs.
In The Quest for Universal Social Policy in the South, Juliana Martinez Franzoni and Diego Sanchez-Ancochea ask why some countries in the global South have proven more capable than others of establishing broadly comprehensive social insurance and redistributive programs. This is an arduous task, given both the general lack of consensus as to precisely what constitutes universal social policy and the myriad other variables (revenue collection, state capacity, effective public administration, etc.) that vary from state to state and imperil the comparative analysis of public policy formation and implementation. The key contention here is that it is neither participatory democracy nor the strength of left-wing parties that advances universalism—although these two variables are necessary, to be sure—but, rather, a specific constellation of institutional arrangements that decrease fragmentation within service provision.
By means of careful process tracing of four cases (Costa Rica, Mauritius, Uruguay, and South Korea), Martinez Franzoni and Sanchez-Ancochea identify what they call the “foundational architectures” (p. 70) of social policy in each case, suggesting that path-dependent processes compel either policy fragmentation or unification. The dilemma faced at the outset is not only to provide effective social policies but also to ensure that both wealthy citizens (who may simply seek remedy through private providers in the face of poor-quality public programs) and poor citizens (who lack the resources to benefit from contribution-based programs) are incorporated into any social insurance policy system. Contingent upon the presence of elected political leadership committed to establishing coherent social insurance policy, as well as nonelected policy experts whose knowledge is integrated into the policymaking process, it is possible to develop initial program models that provide quality universal services and remain surprisingly robust in the face of economic challenges and international pressures for austerity. Key here are the erosion of corporatist arrangements that put employment sectors into different benefits “silos,” the successful establishment of payroll taxes to fund programs, and the cultivation of broadly held public attitudes that state-led social programs were simply better than any private option.
The authors present a fairly convincing argument. The Costa Rica case study is particularly impressive and emblematic of recent moves toward systematized case study methodologies, particularly those of Brady and Collier (2014) and Mahoney and Thelen, (2015), that seek ways to improve inferences derived from comparative historical work. But perhaps as a result of this impressive focus on the intricacies of policy formation in four cases, the book tends to suffer from a general lack of generalizability. Despite the authors’ use of pension enactment as a secondary case, as well as the inclusion of three alternative “mini case studies,” there is a sense that the establishment of universal programs in Costa Rica is idiosyncratic and difficult to use as an explanation for policy variance in other cases. Other scholars working in this area have stressed how increased trade volume and financial interactions between developed countries and their developing trade partners have impacted the development of comprehensive welfare states. Nita Rudra, for instance, has marshaled considerable comparative evidence that the variation in social programs is linked to the growth of liberalized trade that compels (or does not compel) political elites to offer citizens, restive in the face of dynamic socioeconomic change, incentives to maintain their political support. For most comparativists, this should not prove a problem. Indeed, the book clearly speaks to the extant literature in very important ways, although it is sometimes up to the reader to fully tease out these conversations.
For political scientists working in the area of comparative ethnic politics, the dependent variables of choice have traditionally been either the presence of violent conflict or variation in democratic and economic outcomes. In recent years, however, there has been a growth in impressive research that links ethnic heterogeneity to comparative policy outcomes. Joel Selway’s Coalitions of the Well-Being is a welcome contribution to this growing literature, and one that challenges some strongly held notions about how the competing preferences attributed to high levels of ethnic diversity are managed by formal institutions like electoral systems.
While Martinez Franzoni and Sanchez-Ancochea focus on the presence of social insurance and universal redistributive policies, Selway’s main focus is on public goods that advance health outcomes. Critically, Selway focuses on the geographic distribution of ethnic diversity in a country and how it interacts with electoral institutions to influence policy outcomes. Instead of picking a side in the majoritarian versus consensus-democracy debate (and, to be fair, Selway’s previous work indicates his skepticism toward arguments that paint consensus democracy as a panacea), he suggests that it is more important to ask precisely why and how ethnicity becomes salient in a state’s national politics. Geographic distribution is key here and, as scholars of ethnic politics know all to well, standard ethnic fractionalization indices do not account for the specific localized densities of ethnic groups. Hence, it is not necessarily surprising that heterogeneity’s impact on policy outcomes is usually difficult to analyze.
Selway posits that three broad dynamics determine the social structure that can interact with electoral system choice in influencing policy outcomes. The first is simply ethnic fractionalization. Second, he asks whether ethnicity serves as a proxy for class in a society that he uses as a measure of assessing the presence of cross-cutting cleavages. Third, he asks whether ethnic groups are localized or intermixed in the population. Various constellations of these dynamics effectively produce different incentives for parties and, in concert with the overall salience of ethnicity, indicate which type of electoral mechanism is more suited to crafting broadly distributed policy.
In states characterized by ethnic geographic intermixing and relative economic parity between groups, all else being equal, majoritarian electoral institutions are likely to deliver better public goods than proportional representation (PR), even when the salience of ethnicity is relatively high. In contrast, in states marked by few cross-cutting cleavages and geographic concentration of ethnic groups, there are few formal mechanisms that can credibly deliver universal social policies. Interestingly, despite claims that PR should produce better goods provision in mixed societies, Selway provides evidence that it tends to perform best not only when ethnic fractionalization is low but also when ethnic identity is not a proxy for class. In other words, PR’s greatest successes happen in places already characterized by relatively few communal cleavages of note. Moreover, his analysis indicates that when groups are not only geographically isolated but also characterized by intercommunal economic differences (e.g., Malaysia or South Africa), neither PR nor majoritarian systems are likely to improve public goods production.
Methodologically, scholars of ethnic politics face the dilemma of relying on national-level ethno-linguistic fractionalization indices or measures of polarization. The problem with these measures, as useful as they are, is that they rarely account for the specific localized densities of ethnic groups. Selway gets around this dilemma in two ways. First, he produces impressive case-study evidence from Thailand (a state with relatively low ethnic heterogeneity and historic variation in electoral system choice), Mauritius (a state with high ethnic salience and high levels of ethnic intermixing), and democratic-era Burma (a country with high ethnic salience and ethnic concentration) to present idealized types of countries with variance on geographic mixing and cross-cutting cleavage. These cases are buttressed with smaller case studies of states that possess comparable social structures but where electoral system variation accounts for divergent policy outcomes. Overall, it is a remarkably impressive case-study design. Second, he relies on a unique data set that incorporates measures for cross-cutting cleavage, as well as the degree to which ethnic groups are geographically mixed or isolated, for 150 countries. Using life expectancy and literacy rate as proxies for public goods provision, his analyses suggest quite strongly that it is the interaction between social structure and electoral institution choice that correlates with outcomes.
Taken together, both books will be important to any comparative policy analyst working in the area of social welfare. In addition, Selway’s book makes a powerful contribution to the scholarship on ethnicity and democracy.
