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Who Decides Social Policy?: Social Networks and the Political Economy of Social Policy in Latin America and the Caribbean
(Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 2020-11-02) Bonvecchi, Alejandro; Scartascini, Carlos
Who decides the formulation of social policy? What resources do actors bring to decision-making processes? How do those resources position them within decision making networks? This book addresses these questions by combining an institutional political economy approach to policy making with social network analysis of social policy formulation processes in Latin American and the Caribbean. Based on extensive field interviews with governmental and nongovernmental actors, the case studies of social policy formulation in Argentina, Bolivia, The Bahamas, and Trinidad and Tobago show that while in the South American cases societal actors—such as unions and business associations in Argentina, and grassroots organizations in Bolivia—are central actors in the networks, government officials are the main participants in the Caribbean countries. The comparative analysis of the networks of ideas, information, economic resources, and political powers across these cases indicates that differences in the types of bureaucratic systems and governance structures may explain the differences between who decides and what resources underpin their influence in social policy formulation in the region.
Beyond Survival : Protecting Households from Health Shocks in Latin America
(Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006) Baeza, Cristian C.; Packard, Truman G.
This book breaks new ground in the ongoing debate about health finance and financial protection from the costs of health care. The evidence and discussion support the need to consider financial protection, in addition to health status, as a policy objective when setting priorities for health systems. This book reviews the Latin American experience with health reform in the last 20 years and the fundamentals of health system financing, using new evidence to show the magnitude and mechanisms that determine the impoverishing effects of health events (diseases, accidents, and those of the life cycle). It provides options for policy makers on how to protect, and help household to protect themselves, against this impoverishment. The authors use empirical evidence from six case studies commissioned for this report, on Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, and Mexico. This book provides policy makers with a solid conceptual basis for decisions on the contents of mandatory health insurance benefit packages, choices of financing mechanisms, and the roles of public policy in this field. It provides an in-depth analysis of, and organizational alternatives for, risk pooling and health insurance for financial protection. It analyzes the urgent need to extend risk pooling to the informal sector, the challenges for current social insurance arrangements, and options for policy makers to effectively extend risk pooling to the informal sector.