Welfare regime trajectories: Latin america in perspective

Within the context of the emergent polycentric world-order, the reorganization of global capitalism and global markets has led to far-reaching transformations of welfare regimes, not only in the Global North but also the Global South. On a global scale, however, challenges and outcomes of welfare regime transformations differ considerably according to specific historical trajectories, path dependencies and critical junctures. Despite vast differences between the individual welfare regimes in the region, Latin American welfare regimes share some characteristics which differentiate them from East Asian models (relatively early foundation, narrow and biased tax base, concentration of benefits and rights on a small group of original stake-holders, insufficient redistributive capacity of the state among others). In contrast to much of the research which is concentrated on adaptations of Esping-Andersen´s seminal work, the proposed paper borrows from historical institutionalism in order to explain foundational moments and critical junctures of Latin American welfare trajectories.  We will show how international (timing and form of integration into the global markets) and national factors (extreme rates of inequality not only of income but also of access to central goods such as health, education and land, tension between high rates of social inequality and rather advanced democratic rights and institutions, incapacity of the state to tax the rich) shaped regional welfare regimes and their transformation/or reproduction through the decades, leaving a legacy of truncated welfare regimes based on small coalitions of stake-holders which make current reform processes towards more universal models of prevision a difficult enterprise.