The Politics of Social Assistance in Contemporary Asia: Comparative Analysis of China, India, and Turkey

This paper investigates the role of social assistance in the making and unmaking of political power in contemporary China, India and Turkey. We argue that despite the variation of political regimes (one-party versus multi-party regimes), social assistance (in-cash and in-kind assistance to the targeted poor populations through various types of programs) has emerged as a powerful tool to obtain poor people’s consent to political regimes in all three countries. Effective provision of welfare through grassroots party and non-party organizations as well as local administrations has underlined the spectacular rise of political Hinduism in India and Islamism in Turkey during the last two decades. Capitalizing on their successful capturing of political power at the center, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Indian People’s Party (BJP) have been attempting to use the massive financial resources under their control to expand the coverage and increase the quantity of social assistance to low-income groups and thereby consolidate their power. Although Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is, unlike the AKP and BJP, not under the pressure of electoral competition, perceiving a potential threat of low-income groups (such as migrant workers and poor villagers) to regime stability, it has taken a similar path of expanding social assistance to maintain its political power. Overall, there is an ongoing convergence among three countries in terms of the political significance of the poor and social assistance as an apparatus to manufacture their consent to political regimes.