Political Economy of Social Protection in Developing Countries

The political economy of social protection in developing countries examines how states design and implement welfare measures—such as cash transfers, public works and pensions—to mitigate poverty, manage risk and foster human development. Central to this field is the relationship between state capacity and citizen expectations, framed by evolving notions of the social contract. Political survival imperatives, electoral competition and the influence of transnational actors shape both the adoption and deepening institutionalisation of social protection. Programme design features—including targeting mechanisms, conditionality clauses and accountability structures—interact with local social norms to produce varied redistributive and reconstitutive effects. Emerging research highlights how social protection generates feedback loops that alter state legitimacy, citizen behaviour and policy learning, emphasising the practical importance of integrating equity, gender responsiveness and durable funding commitments into welfare regimes.

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Political Economy of Social Protection in Developing Countries publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in political economy of social protection in developing countries across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Social protection: Public measures designed to reduce poverty and vulnerability by promoting efficient labour markets, reducing economic risks and supporting human development.
Social contract: The implicit agreement between a state and its citizens, whereby the state’s authority is legitimised through the provision of social welfare in exchange for political acquiescence.
Targeting: The process of defining eligibility criteria and selecting beneficiaries for social protection programmes, typically involving administrative data and community input.
Conditionality: Requirements imposed on beneficiaries—such as school attendance or health check-ups—as a prerequisite for receiving social assistance.
Institutionalisation: The embedding of social protection programmes within formal political and budgetary frameworks to secure continuity and funding.
Deservingness heuristic: A cognitive framework used by decision-makers and communities to assess which individuals merit assistance, based on perceived responsibility for their circumstances.

References

1. Social Protection and State–Society Relations in Environments of Low and Uneven State Capacity. Annual Review of Political Science (2021).
2. Alternative routes to the institutionalisation of social transfers in sub-Saharan Africa: Political survival strategies and transnational policy coalitions. World Development (2021).
3. Twenty-First-Century Crises and the Social Turn of International Financial Institutions. Human Rights Review (2023).
4. Tanzanian social policy in the new millennium – a cross-sectoral analysis from a gender perspective. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy (2024).
5. The Politics of Who Gets What and Why: Learning from the Targeting of Social Cash Transfers in Zambia. The European Journal of Development Research (2022).
6. From policy to politics? Exploring feedback effects of social protection on state‐citizen relations in Ghana. Social Policy and Administration (2023).