Fabián A. Borges’s new book, Human Capital versus Basic Income, is a well-researched effort to identify alternative ideologies among Latin American presidents over the past several decades, in terms of commitment to economic rights for the poor. The point of departure is the well-documented finding that leftist regimes in Latin America are more likely to embrace social welfare programs than are centrist or right-wing regimes (e.g., Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens, 2012, Democracy and the Left: Social Policy; Gibrán Cruz-Martínez, ed., 2019, Welfare and Social Protection in Contemporary Latin America), yet social welfare programs have been established by regimes across the ideological spectrum. Borges’s focus is on identifying ideological premises underlying the programs, given a wide range of possibilities and significant differences in the implications for rights, the treatment of the poor, and connections to other political and economic patterns. Given the proliferation of different types of social welfare programs, the book necessarily focuses more narrowly; it does so on the most prominent form: the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program. It offers a broad summary of these CCTs across many Latin American countries, and a detailed analysis of the patterns of enrollment and design. In so doing, the book demonstrates that instead of regarding CCTs as essentially alike, significant differences exist in the stringency of eligibility and compliance with the conditions. The reasonable premise is that because cash transfers conceivably could range from universal transfers (i.e., basic income guarantees) to programs with stringent eligibility tests and demanding conditions to maintain eligibility, the programs with looser criteria represent an ideology closer to a rights approach. Borges employs a sophisticated statistical analysis across the many CCT programs in Latin America, resulting in a broad range of correlates of CCT spending and coverage. In a more nuanced case study vein, he also examines the influence of presidents on the CCTs developed in Brazil and Mexico, the two most prominent CCT programs, but also the cases of Argentina, Bolivia, and Costa Rica. Another contribution is a narrative of the patterns of adoption of CCTs across Latin America. The analysis also clarifies the severe limitations of CCTs as redistributive instruments.

Borges’s key, and clearly most controversial, thesis, is that it is the ideology of presidents that determines the degree of permissiveness of the CCTs, with leftist presidents preferring a rights-based commitment best reflected by unconditional transfers, even though political and economic constraints have precluded such transfers except in emergency situations, with the partial exception of the elimination of the health-care condition by Mexico’s leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador (the education condition has been framed as a scholarship). Consistent with this argument is that leftist leaders in Brazil and Mexico initially opposed CCTs instituted by right and centrist governments, though opposing the policy initiatives of the regime in power is hardly surprising in general.

In assessing Borges’s argument, it is crucial to understand the significance of these programs and the strength of the argument that more permissive programs reflect a rights-based ideology, and it is important to clarify the structure and magnitude of these programs. Except for short periods of economic crisis, Latin American cash transfer programs have been conditional, at least in principle, requiring that families deemed poor enough through some sort of means test need to comply with conditions, routinely involving school attendance and healthcare for the children. The conditions are typically a major selling point to promote these programs in the policy process, with the prospect of improving overall human capital for the country through a healthier, better educated workforce, a more civically aware public, and reduction of resentment toward the non-poor (see Candelaria Garay, 2016, Social Policy Expansion in Latin America; Rubén Lo Vuolo, ed., 2012, Citizen’s Income and Welfare Regimes in Latin America: From Cash Transfers to Rights). Thus, the debates are more complicated than universal transfers versus stringent eligibility and compliance with conditions.

It is also important to note that CCTs, even in the most prominent cases of Mexico and Brazil, constitute a rather modest fiscal commitment: .04% of GDP for both countries. The programs do require more fiscal commitment to address the greater demand for education and healthcare, but the CCTs per se, at less than one half of one percent of GDP, are hardly revolutionary in any of the cases. Ana De La O (Crafting Policies to End Poverty in Latin America: The Quiet Transformation, 2005, p. 47) argues that “since 1990 the economic crises and electoral competition compelled the ideologically broad range of regimes to adopt poverty programs, and CCTs have served the purpose of prominent efforts “in lieu of more comprehensive policy responses.” Therefore, a permissive CCT is a rather modest incremental shift toward rights-based economic justice; it can be criticized, as Harold Lasswell (Politics: Who Gets What, When, How, 1939, p. 166), put it, as “restriction by partial incorporation.” The limited funding for CCTs allows for patronage tactics, in that setting a reasonable level of per-family transfer precludes admitting all families qualified by their low incomes. Therefore, fastening on CCTs as a vehicle for moving toward universal benefits is somewhat precarious, compared to alternatives seen both in Latin America, such as food subsidies (e.g., Brazil’s pre-Bolsa Familia Programa Bolsa Alimentação); and India’s Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which was explicitly framed as a rights initiative (Deepta Chopra, 2014, “The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, India: Examining Pathways Towards Establishing Rights-Based Social Contracts,” European Journal of Development Research; Reetika Khera, 2020, “India’s Welfare State: A Halting Shift from Benevolence to Rights, Current History).

From a methodological perspective, it is important to note that Borges’s approach largely forgoes both discourse analysis and process tracing. The discourse analysis could have established whether leftist leaders have articulated preferences for going fully to a rights position of unconditional transfers if conditions would permit. Mexico’s López Obrador, elected with a landslide in 2018, eschewed the opportunity to eliminate the school attendance requirement. Policy process tracing (distinct from chapter 2’s event history analysis), by placing the cash transfer initiatives in the context of resistance to executive initiatives, tradeoffs regarding different policy preferences, coalition formation, and obstacles of budget limitations, would offer alternatives to Borges’s reductive thesis that presidential ideology determines the degree of permissiveness. Carla Tomazini (“Pioneering Anti-Poverty Policies in Brazil and Mexico: Ambiguities and Disagreements on Conditional Cash Transfer Programs”, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 15[3], 2022, p. 12) notes “three types of coalitions with distinct objectives: human capital, universal basic income and food security.” It might not have been feasible to examine these policy-process aspects for all of the countries, but doing so for the clearly most prominent Brazilian and Mexican cases would have been illuminating.

Specifically, the different origins of the CCTs provide a counter-explanation for the differences in permissiveness. Brazil’s Bolsa Familia was the amalgamation of assorted unconditional services, unified to reduce heavily criticized disarray. The basic administrative task was to get the massive number of the poor enrolled in the central data base (Cadastro Único); to address the daunting challenge, the enrollment procedure was minimized to an application entailing self-reported income (Sergei Soares, Rafael Guerreiro Osório, Fabio Veras Soares, Marcelo Medeiros, and Eduardo Zepeda, 2009, “Conditional cash transfers in Brazil, Chile and Mexico: impacts upon inequality,” Estudios Económicos). In Mexico, the succession of CCT programs (Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera) began with blatant political and patronage targets, down to the micro level of deputizing loyal CCT beneficiaries to recommend others for acceptance (Clément Crucifix and Solène Morvant-Roux, 2018, “Fragmented Rural Communities: The Faenas of Prospera at the Interface of Community Cooperation and State Dependency.” In Maria Balen and Martin Fotta, eds., Money from the Government in Latin America: Conditional Cash Transfer Programs and Rural Lives, pp. 85-86).

Human Capital versus Basic Income accomplishes much in placing the CCT controversy within the context of the Latin America’s economic rights debate. The histories and statistical analysis of the rise of CCTs developed and modified by leaders across the ideological spectrum is consistent with the premise that leftist leaders promote more expansive and less demanding CCTs. Yet further research on other strands of the broader set of goals would provide an even richer understanding of how cash transfers—and other social welfare programs—will evolve. Another promising avenue is to explore other types of programs that could move Latin American countries toward rights-based economic policies and programs.