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This article examines the diffusion of the conditional cash transfer (CCT) model to Turkey and Indonesia, and the role of World Bank bureaucrats in these cases of early-stage diffusion. The article finds that learning, and not coercion or emulation, is the primary mechanism of policy diffusion in both cases. This learning was mediated by the World Bank bureaucrats even before the CCT model gained mainstream acceptance inside the World Bank. The findings from these two cases suggest World Bank bureaucrats to be engaging in domestic policy processes not by ‘powering’ but by participating in the national bureaucrats’ ‘puzzling’. The findings also underline the importance of trusting relationships between international and national bureaucrats in these policy processes. More broadly, the article makes the case for conceptualizing international organizations (IOs) as organizations with heterogeneous staff who play more nuanced and contingent roles in policy diffusion processes than is commonly conceived.

This article provides a corrective to the dominant celebratory narrative about the conditional cash transfer programme in the Philippines, the Pantawid, and its associated social registry, the Listahanan. Based on extensive documentary analysis and fieldwork in the Philippines in 2017 and 2018, we argue that the targeting system has in fact been unable to function according to its primary purpose of identifying the poor and providing them social protection, despite being celebrated precisely for this purpose. This has been partly – but not only – due to the increasingly obsolescent data of the registry, which the political system has been incapable of correcting, leading to stasis at a fairly low level of coverage, at a peak of about 19 percent of national households in 2014 and since subsiding to about 17 percent by 2020, with transfer amounts at a fraction of the food poverty line. This dysfunction has resulted in a quasi-permanent group of cash payment recipients, with little or no reflection of evolving poverty profiles. This revised reading of the Pantawid and Listahanan, in what might be considered as a strong case to examine social protection performance, brings us back to the perennial problems associated with poverty targeting in even best-case social protection programmes promoted by international donors and organisations.

Payment for ecosystem services (PES) is an environmental policy looking to improve ecosystem conservation and well-being. Assets have been used to evaluate socioeconomic outcomes of the program; however, the allocation of PES at a household level and its explaining variables have not been addressed. Thus, the aim of this article is to study the allocation of PES in nondurable and durable goods and the determinants of this household decision. Results from the La Antigua watershed located in Mexico indicate that the PES program is primarily used in durable goods, mainly on health, house infrastructure, agricultural inputs, and reforestation. Econometric models show that this allocation to one or several assets depends on the average age of the household head, on participation in a community organization, and on the average income. In contrast, government transfers are not significant. Based on this, policy recommendations are made related to the program’s socioeconomic outcomes and alignment with other conditional cash transfer.

The Bolsa Família Program (BFP) is one of the largest conditional cash transfer programs in the world, providing cash transfers and intersectoral actions. The aim of this study was to compare whether there is a difference in access to health services, intersectoral actions and social control, between families entitled or not, to the BFP. A cross-sectional study was carried out. A representative sample of a peripheral, socioeconomically vulnerable population from a large urban center in southeastern Brazil was calculated, totaling 380 families. Chi-square or Fisher’s exact tests and multiple correspondence analysis were used to compare groups. Families entitled to the BFP had worse living conditions in general and greater access to health services, such as: medical care ( p-value 0.009), community healthcare agent ( p-value 0.001) and home visits ( p-value 0.041). Being entitled or not affected the variability in the pattern of access to services by 31%; low access to intersectoral actions was identified in both groups; social control was incipient. There was an adequate focus on the program; greater access to health services was related to compliance with conditionalities; low access to intersectoral actions can restrict the interruption of the cycle of intergenerational transmission of poverty.

Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) can be an extended procedure since ASC tend to both vary greatly across individual symptoms and diagnostic pathways with serious challenges to opportune access and diagnosis in low resource settings. We adapted the Q-CHAT-25 for use in a routine health check-ups programme at Chilean primary health clinics by developing a 10-item version of this questionnaire recruiting n = 287 (F: 112/M: 175) participants (Controls: n = 125, F: 58/M: 67; Developmental Delay: n = 149, F: 53/M: 96; Autism Spectrum Conditions: n = 13, F: 1/M: 12). Our findings show that the Q-CHAT-10 can be successfully applied in health-check programmes. The results for the Q-CHAT-10 show high internal consistency (Cronbach’s α: 0.85) and good overall performance, significantly correlating (r = 0.79, p Lay abstract Getting a diagnosis of autism can take long, because autism is different across people, but also because it depends on the way it gets diagnosed. This is especially important in poorer countries or in the case of poor people living in wealthier countries that have significant groups of disadvantaged communities. We adapted a 10-item version of the Q-CHAT-25 questionnaire for use in routine health check-ups programme in Chile and recruited 287 participants under the age of three divided into three groups: Controls (125), Developmental Delay (149) and Autism Spectrum Condition (13). Our results show that a short questionnaire for autism screening can be successfully applied in a health-check programme in poor resource settings. Our results show that our questionnaire had good overall performance, not different to its longer version, the Q-CHAT-25. Our questionnaire was autism specific, with good sensitivity and reliability, and is suitable to be used in a screening setting. This study provides evidence that the implementation of Autism Spectrum Condition screening programmes using the Q-CHAT-10 provides value for money and improves diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Condition in those participating in routine health check-up programmes in developing countries or poor areas of wealthy countries.

Utilizing Foucault’s insights on neoliberalism, his notion of governmentality in relation to the State, and his insights on the processes of subjectivity (2007; 2006) the following article seeks to critically examine Chile’s Ethical Family Income (IEF), a conditional cash transfer program that was implemented in the country from 2011 to 2016. Utilizing interview excerpts with women who participated in the program, the article analyzes the manner in which the program operated as a contemporary form of governmentality by installing a particular production of subjectivity in which meritorious recipients of state aid are shaped as productive, responsible, independent citizens who actively invest in accumulating human capital in order to transform themselves and their children into entrepreneurial individuals. The article concludes discussing possibilities of resistance to neoliberal rationality processes of subjectivation in poverty eradication policies and programs.

This article brings together two discrete studies of Indonesian welfare innovations, the conditional cash transfer and the deinstitutionalisation of children, both delivered at the lowest administrative level by social workers. Patterns across the two studies indicated a confounding variable influential in social workers’ innovation implementation and administrative decisions. This variable, incentive-based remuneration, was inhibiting implementation and potentially sustaining the social inequalities and rights violations that each innovation proposed to address. Social workers’ over-reliance on remuneration incentives has inherent problems. Increases to base-rates of pay and realignment of incentivisation in development are needed to support change.

Cash transfers, both conditional and unconditional, have become increasingly popular in emerging economies, but relatively little research investigates the types of countries most likely to adopt this form of social assistance. A notable exception is a study by Brooks, which concludes that conditional cash transfers (CCTs) are more likely to be adopted by divided governments and in places where neighbouring, democratic countries have already implemented them. This comparative research tests Brooks’ findings in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and finds that they largely do not apply. Instead, programme funder is offered as a better explanation of cash transfer adoption in SSA from 1990 to 2011. The results show that CCTs are adopted in poor African countries with financial support from the World Bank, while unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) are adopted across a range of countries with the support of various donors. This research contributes to the literature by showing quantitatively that donor support may be more important than some domestic factors, such as bureaucratic capacity, for understanding CCT implementation in SSA.

A growing number of schools have begun experimenting with giving students cash rewards to improve academic performance. This practice has come to be known as ‘cash-for-grades’. In this article, I examine some of the philosophical and ethical questions involved with cash-for-grades programmes, rather than focusing on whether such incentives ‘work’ to increase academic performance. Building on the framework of philosopher Michael Sandel, I examine whether cash incentives are more coercive or corruptive than currently accepted educational practices. An answer to these questions ultimately requires a careful analysis of the meaning of cash as an incentive. Comparing cash incentives to grade incentives, I argue that the individuality and immediacy specific to cash incentives make them uniquely problematic in an educational environment.

This article examines how beneficiaries of Brazil’s Bolsa Família (BFP) conditional cash transfer program find employment in a Brazilian municipality and assesses their participation in decent work. Using Belo Horizonte as a case study, researchers conducted a survey of BFP recipients. The article compares responses of informally and formally employed workers to assess how their employment meets the criteria of the decent work agenda. Results indicate no significant difference between perceptions of formal and informal employees concerning discrimination and poor working conditions. Findings lead to recommendations about formalization of employment, coordination with existing job training programs, child care, and transportation.

This article examines how poor people negotiate obligations placed on them by social welfare initiatives. More specifically, it considers conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs), and the ways beneficiaries harness program conditionalities to make demands on authorities, in some cases even enacting subtle forms of resistance to state governance. Drawing from Michel de Certeau, it argues that while CCT conditionalities function as strategies of state development, they are not always/already under exclusive state control. Marginalized groups like CCT recipients can tactically harness these conditionalities. Through such tactics, poor people make demands on the state and deflect program obligations, but in calculated ways that avoid exposing them to greater vulnerability. Drawing from empirical data collected as part of a case study in rural northeastern Brazil, this article contributes to existent bodies of literature on CCTs, governance, and critical development studies in the 21st century.

Examining homicide across Brazil’s 5,562 municipalities, we find that violence nearby has a positive effect on local violence (diffusion effect), violence exerts an unusual negative spatial effect in small clusters of communities in northeastern Brazil, and a prominent poverty-reduction program (Bolsa Família [BF]) has mixed effects. The spatial dimensions of violence complement existing non-spatial research on violence in Brazil, and the results regarding BF offer a spatial complement to research on conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, clarifying the sources of violence in Latin America’s largest country and shedding light on the content and geographic targeting of violence reduction policies.

As conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs spread in African countries, there is a need for well-designed programs that reflect their economic, institutional, political, and sociocultural circumstances. Using both qualitative and quantitative data analysis, this article examines the perspectives of beneficiaries, program managers, and community leaders regarding Ghana’s CCT program. It addresses sociocultural attitudes toward poverty, perceptions of CCT as a poverty reduction strategy, and experiences with CCT implementation. Findings indicate favorable views of CCT but little support for giving money to the poor as a long-term poverty-alleviation strategy. Ghana’s CCT program is seen as fair and popular, but current payment levels are viewed as inadequate, impractical, and unreliable.

Conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) have shown mixed effects on child development outcomes in the context of poverty. Direct parenting support integrated with CCTs may improve the effectiveness of CCTs for children’s development, and benefits could occur via improvements in parenting practices or the home environment. Here, we use data from a randomized effectiveness trial to examine the pathways connecting parenting support and child development. The parenting program ( EI: Educación Inicial) was implemented at scale among beneficiaries of Prospera (a CCT, previously Oportunidades and Progresa). Participants included children between the ages of 3 and 5 years old ( n = 1,362) from 91 rural communities in three Mexican states. Communities were stratified by indigenous classification and randomized to one of three arms: (T0) Comparison group (CCT benefits only); (T1) CCT benefits plus availability of EI in the community; or (T2) CCT benefits plus promotion and encouragement by the CCT program to participate in EI. Findings were that participation in the T2 arm of the study was associated with a 13% increase in the number of play activities that parents engaged in with their children, particularly shared storybook reading and singing. Parents in T2 showed nearly two times greater odds of reading daily to their children. In mediation analyses, the amount of play activities and shared book reading explained up to 32% of the effects of the EI parenting program on child development outcomes. In this study, collaboration and integration of two social programs was critical for program impact, which occurred through pathways relating to parental engagement in reading and play.

Since poverty is often believed to be a root cause of clientelism, government policies to reduce poverty should also help to reduce clientelism. However, scholars studying clientelism are more likely to view social policy as a potential resource for clientelist politicians. This article examines this paradox in the Philippine context by offering a general framework to identify when social welfare policies are likely to reduce clientelism, and by applying this framework to the Philippines, focusing on the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino conditional cash transfer programme, or Pantawid. I argue that the policies that are most likely to undercut clientelism are universal social protection policies that provide poor families with security, although these are the least acceptable to middle-class taxpayers. This is exemplified by the Philippines, which has tended to introduce social policies that increase the scope for clientelism by making discretionary allocation more likely, rather than policies that offer income security to the poor. The Pantawid programme attempts to overcome these problems by introducing a centralised targeting mechanism to identify beneficiaries and by guaranteeing the benefit to all eligible families, but like all conditional cash transfer programs falls short of guaranteed and universal social protection. (author's abstract)

Alongside a randomized controlled trial testing the effectiveness of offering a cash transfer scheme (shopping vouchers)\ud to mothers in areas with low breastfeeding rates, qualitative interviews were conducted with health care professionals\ud delivering the scheme to explore their experiences. Health care professionals (n = 34; mainly midwives and health visitors)\ud were interviewed in depth. Transcripts from recorded interviews were analyzed using a Framework Analysis approach.\ud There was widespread acceptance of the scheme by health care professionals, with prior concerns regarding bribery and\ud coercion being quickly allayed. Health care professionals reported that the scheme fitted in well with their routine ways of\ud promoting and endorsing breastfeeding. They described their experiences of women’s positive reaction toward the scheme\ud and how the scheme encouraged breastfeeding and gave breastfeeding higher value. Health care professionals reported that\ud the incentives helped them engage women and promote and support breastfeeding in areas with low breastfeeding rates.

Latin American social protection systems show that the fundamental ambivalence of modernity is captured by the twin notion of liberty and discipline in the context of a plurality of modes of socio-political organization. According to this understanding, this article analyses the potential of the so-called Conditional Cash Transfer programmes, which are widespread in the region, to strength or reduce personal autonomy. These programmes are promoted by claiming their virtues to reduce poverty and impose good behaviour on poor people in order to improve the ‘human capital’ of future generations. However, numerous elements challenge these alleged virtues: arbitrary selection of beneficiaries, interference in people’s lives, stigmatization of recipients, inability to achieve universal coverage and act in a preventive manner with regards to urgent needs, the creation of poverty traps and informal working, etc. Taking these elements into account, this article explains how these programmes do not improve people’s autonomy and political independence.

This article examines the gender equality component of Prospera, a conditional cash transfer program in Mexico that provides cash contingent on three nodes of civic engagement: health, nutrition, and education. This article draws on ethnographic research in La Gloria, a settlement of indigenous Mayan refugees from Guatemala in the Mexican state of Chiapas. The article identifies the Prospera program’s neoliberal features, the impact its gender equality measures have in the lives of women, their families, and in the political structure of the community of La Gloria. The findings reveal how Prospera reinforces gender and racial hierarchy, and fosters community divisions that undercut efforts to promote community autonomy, which raises questions about the ability of conditional cash transfers to promote development and gender equality in indigenous communities in Mexico.

The article explores the issue of the conditional cash transfers scheme for the girl child in Haryana. The beneficiary mothers and the persons involved in the implementation of the scheme were interviewed with the help of an in-depth interview guide to gather quantitative and qualitative data. It was found that though the scheme’s aim is to improve attitudes and create a favourable attitude towards the girl child, it has not been able to achieve the desired outcomes. Education and the upbringing of the girl child were not concerns of either parents or stakeholders responsible for implementing the scheme. The questions raised by the study are: when parents still want a male heir for their family, will governmental efforts succeed in stopping female foeticide, especially in the case of a third daughter?

Do policy feedbacks interact with transnational policy ideas? How do they impact domestic policy development? Using a qualitative research method based on a comparison of two poverty alleviation strategies in Latin America, this article asserts that in all likelihood, if a previously implemented policy initiative was ‘locked-in’ through domestic policy experimentation and resultant state-building and interest group policy effects, it will not easily be replaced by alternative, transnational policy ideas that appear on the radar screen of national policymakers at a later date. However, if transnational policy ideas and models can draw on or build upon already established ideational and symbolic beliefs, they can actually be used to further the motivations of key political actors and societal interests – here, diffusion opens up great reform opportunities and opens the door to further policy institutionalization.

What are the dynamics of distributive politics in a setting of multiparty competition? Existing studies on the allocation of resources across multiple electoral districts focus primarily on a setting of two-party competition and consider only the core versus swing district hypotheses. This framework does not correspond to the actual electoral setting in many countries and ignores valuable information furnished by a context of multiparty competition. Compared with two-party elections, multiparty elections provide more information about the underlying distribution of the ideological preferences of voters in a district; this information could be utilized by the incumbent party to maximize electoral returns. In this article, I argue that a setting of multiparty competition presents incentives to the incumbent party to channel disproportionately more resources to districts with an ideologically close challenger. Systematic evidence from the Conditional Cash Transfer program spending in 878 districts of Turkey from 2005 to 2008 supports this hypothesis.

This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork research conducted in the semi-arid region of northeastern Brazil and addresses the unexpected role the children came to fulfil in the household as a consequence of the Programa Bolsa Família, a conditional cash transfer programme. In its design, the programme was intended for families and had a clear focus on women, aiming at empowering them. However, the article shows how children became considered the main agents responsible for the family’s continued access to the benefit and as a consequence, how they came to bear the responsibility for the family’s financial survival.

In the mid-1990s, Brazil and Mexico created innovative social policies known as Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs). Since then, CCTs have spread to countries throughout Latin America and beyond. While these programs reflect a new development norm, their spread is surprising given that some emulating countries lack the basic education and health infrastructure to support increased demand from beneficiaries. This article draws on a policy diffusion framework to explain the spread of CCTs. The author contrasts domestic preconditions (political ideology, state capacity and human development levels) with international pressure (neighborhood effects, professional norm-creation and financial inducements by international financial institutions) to explain the diffusion of CCTs. In order to elucidate the mechanisms that drive diffusion processes, the article draws on mixed methods to uncover learning and emulation among actors.

Conditional Cash Transfer programs are currently at a crossroads, between consolidating minimum safety nets and laying the basis for a universal system. In assessing which direction CCTs will take, it is important to analyze their formation. What domestic actors have been influential and how have expert-driven international ideas entered the domestic policy process? Is the impact related to existing welfare regimes? In this article the authors show that in general CCTs are the product of top-down and closed policy formation by elite coalitions, in which international factors play a central role. Nevertheless, domestic factors associated with welfare regimes, in particular the difference between state and non-state, informal regimes, account for important cross-national variations. If CCTs are to become a stepping-stone to universal social policy, closed policy communities have to be opened up. UCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Sociales::Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales (IIS)

Building upon recent studies of the electoral effects of social policy and President Lula da Silva's coattails in the 2006 Brazilian elections, this article explains the performance of leftist and conservative candidates in elections for governor during that cycle in the Northeast region. The study assesses three systemic factors: the conditional cash transfer program, Bolsa Família, economic growth, and Lula's coattails on support for right-wing incumbents and left-wing oppositions in the states of Bahia, Maranhão, and Ceará. Based on the analysis of an original municipal-level dataset and a survey of partisan elites, the findings underscore the importance of urbanbased party building strategies across the three states and patterns of elite alliances specific to each state. Alliances made in the capitals coupled with divided conservative establishments, facilitated leftist victories in the examined states. At the same time, variations in alliance patterns and leftist party development across the three states reveal that conservative clientele networks remain vibrant bases of right-wing support, especially in the interior, and despite either social policy or Lula's coattails., Com referência aos estudos recentes dos efeitos eleitorais de política social e o apoio por Presidente Lula da Silva nas eleições brasileiras de 2006, este artigo explica o desempenho de candidatos esquerdistas e conservadores nas eleições para governador durante aquele ciclo na região Nordeste. O estudo avalia três fatores sistêmicos: o programa de transferência direta de renda com condicionalidades, a Bolsa Família, crescimento econômico, e o efeito Lula em suporte de candidatos direitistas e oposições esquerdistas nos estados de Bahia, Maranhão, e Ceará. Baseado na análise de uma base de dados original de casos municipais e uma pesquisa de lideranças partidárias, os resultados sublinham a importância de estratégias partidárias mobilizatórias nos centros urbanos nos três estados e as alianças de elites de cada estado. Alianças feitas por oposições esquerdistas nas capitais em estados com elites conservadores divididos facilitaram vitórias esquerdistas nos estados examinados. Ao mesmo tempo, as variações em modelos de aliança e desenvolvimento dos partidos da esquerda nos três estados revelam que as redes de clientelismo conservadoras permanecem bases vibrantes do suporte direitista, especialmente no interior, e apesar da política social ou apesar do apoio por Lula.

This article takes as its starting point the current scholarly concern with democratic quality, poverty, and inequality. It notes the tendency of political leaderships at the federal level in Mexico and Chile to exclude political pressures that contravene their neoliberal imperatives. It develops this argument with specific reference to the contestation over conditional cash transfer programs. Research reveals the existence of two competing visions of democracy and development at the root of this conflict. The neoliberal perspective is supported by political-technocratic leaders who developed these programs, while the community development perspective is found among their civil society critics. The community development perspective challenges the key tenets of the neoliberal viewpoint, making its exclusion from policy development and monitoring understandable. However, this exclusion may give rise to increased criticism of the responsiveness of democratic institutions and to less than efficacious policy outcomes.

The article explores the implications for gender roles and relations in Nicaragua of implementing a Conditional Cash Transfer programme aimed at improving the situation of the extreme poor. Nicaragua's programme, the Social Protection Network/Red de Protección Social (RPS), is modelled on the Progresa/Oportunidades programme of Mexico and shares many features in common. Evaluations of Progresa have suggested positive outcomes for women. However, examination of the findings highlight some cause for concern particularly around what inclusion on the programme means for the women involved. The article explores the consequences of translating this programme aimed at addressing the structural causes of poverty into a more overtly neoliberal and neo-conservative policy context such as that in Nicaragua. It highlights how a key feature of the RPS is the `social adjustment' of women's behaviour for economic growth gains and discusses the possible consequences for the women included and excluded from the programme.

Social programmes in Peru have been plagued historically by a culture of dependency, clientelism and corruption. Juntos, a conditional cash transfer programme targeting children under the age of 14, was initiated in 2005 to provide a new model for social protection provision and tackle the country's widespread childhood poverty. Its design largely follows that of counterpart Latin American programmes and seeks to address the risks to children's future human capital development that stem from inadequate access to basic services and various forms of social exclusion. An innovative dimension of Juntos is its explicit focus on populations most affected by the country's political violence during the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on document analysis and qualitative field research, this independent assessment considers the impacts of the programme on childhood poverty, the strengths and weaknesses of a conditional approach, and changes in intra-household and community dynamics as well as state—citizen relations. It concludes by discussing policy challenges and directions for future research.

HIV risk remains high among Cambodian female entertainment and sex workers, driven by amphetamine-type substance use and sexual risk. Conditional cash transfer is an evidence-based approach to reduce stimulant use and optimize HIV/AIDS prevention, but questions remain regarding implementation in resource-limited settings. We conducted formative qualitative research to enhance acceptability of a conditional cash transfer intervention aimed at reducing amphetamine-type substance use and HIV risk among female entertainment/sex workers and inform implementation as part of a large cluster randomized trial. We conducted in-depth interviews with 30 female entertainment/sex workers. Interviews were digitally recorded and conducted and transcribed in Khmer. English transcripts were read for emerging themes and an initial coding scheme was developed. Data were coded using open and axial coding to clarify and consolidate initial themes. While most participants expressed enthusiasm for the intervention, financial and transportation issues emerged as key barriers to participation. The proposed incentive of USD$1 per screen was regarded as unacceptable and participants identified a need for transportation assistance. Participants also expressed concerns about directly observed urine specimen collection. Finally, while most participants found the 4-week aftercare program acceptable, the need for enjoyable as well as educational content was emphasized. Revisions to the protocol taking these data into account were made to optimize the acceptability of the intervention and the implementation of the trial. Findings identified key concerns and preferences that were taken into account in the final trial protocol. In particular, financial and transportation issues were identified as critical barriers to participation, with the potential to impact both intervention uptake and trial feasibility. Results demonstrate the value of formative qualitative research for clinical trial planning and implementation, particularly in settings where little is known about acceptability of interventions or willingness to participate.