Social Development, Integration and Public Policies in Latin America

1
Social Development, Integration and Public
Policies in Latin America

• Carlos Sojo
• FLACSO Costa Rica

2
Contents

• Development as an end.
• A case for social development?
• Social development and poverty reduction
• Social policy and distribution
• From social policy to social integration in LA
  How do we live together?
• Reinventing the social Citizenship and
  territory.

3
1.1.Social Development

• The achievement of development in its integral
  sense (politic, social, economic, enviromental,
  cultural) is the result of specific and
  specialized public decisions and activities
  (governments norms and policies, markets
  operations, cultural associations).
• During the past two decades, the dominant
  strategy was based on the capacities of market
  operations, mainly through the increasing of
  export supply. The results do not show
  significative gains in the population well being.
  
• Now its time for a development strategy with a
  distributive (instead of productive) bias.

4
1.2. Social development and poverty reduction

• The progresive reduction of the poverty levels
  should be understood as the result of a
  sustainable means for social mobility.
• The purpose of the social policy is to
  strenghtening the mechanisms for social mobility,
  both in inter and intra generational basis.
• Targeted policies for social compensation produce
  changes on the intra generational mobility
  because of the short term consequenses they have.
  The social policies with universal
  characteristic influence long term
  transformations and for that reason are more
  relevant on inter-generational mobility.

5

• There is no opportunities for social mobility
  without stability both political and economical.
  Democracy and economic growth are conditions for
  social mobility.

6
1.3. The distributional character of the social
policies.

• The distributional efforts, aimed to impulse
  social mobility, come from four sources
  government, markets, communities and families.
• Each one of those sources has a role to play in
  the setting of a distributive strategy.
• Besides its particular responsabilities (taxation
  and public expenditures) governments are key
  players in the setting of interactions between
  those sources of distribution.

7
2. Latin America. How we do live together?

• Social integration can be achieved with the
  concourse of three factors norms resources and
  relations.
• Norms are the battle field of the State
  resources call for the market capacities for
  production and relations are based on cultural
  assets like identity, traditions, trust and
  solidarity.
• I propose to examine the current situation of
  Latin America using this three factors of social
  integrations. Behind the chaos images there is a
  sort of cohesion forces that maintain social
  institutions actives and alive.

8
2.1. Markets a tale of informal integration

• The trends of economic growth shows unstability,
  high vulnerability and ambiguos paths In the
  past five years the regions has lost 2 points in
  the average rate of growth. ECLAC calls for a
  lost half a decade. GDP
• The general employment rates are falling down
  Employment,p.20 and the precariousness of the new
  jobs increase with hight rates of informality
  between new jobs.Informal sector,p.21

9

• The poverty rates has increase in the past two
  decades. Since 1990, 11 millions persons became
  poor. Poverty, p.7
• The export led oriented model allowed that the
  gains of the economic growth are socially
  concentrated. Gini Index, p.17

10
2.2. Politics Crisis as usual

• In LA countries the democratization phase during
  the 80s was in conflict with the emergence of an
  anti-Governmental ideology. As a result the
  social rol of the State is changing from a core
  support of the social mobility during the post
  WWII period to a sort of villain the main cause
  of economic unstability.
• Consequences
• Unbalanced development of the public capacities.
  Bias on fiscal discipline and macroeconomic
  equilibrium.
• Crisis in the political representation less
  electoral support to old and traditional
  political parties electoral success of ad hoc
  coalitions based in personality, charisma, or
  even a sort of authoritarism nostalgia.

11

• Responses a second chance for democratic
  governance
• Good governance and social aggregate demands.
  Public investment in social sectors, p.27
• Social dialogue experiences of deliberative
  democracy.

12
2.3. The dynamics of social exclusion

• Social conflicts are still more sensitive to
  structural (market related) demands than to a
  complex array of distributive needs associated to
  cultural differences in society
• Extreme poverty levels are deep in households
  with female head.
• Poverty is higher between indigenous and afro
  populations
• Unemploymet is higher for the youth
• Inclusive policies Require a rigths oriented
  social policies (institutionalization and
  connection between selective targeted policies
  with universal services).

13
3. Reinventing the social

• A social development approach to public policy
  need to cease with the bipolar analysis of
  distributive capacities State vs. Markets
  economic policy vs. Social policy.
• Citizenship
• The making of a new social contract.
  Globalization as a state of nature what are the
  rules for commerce? Or security?
• From targeted groups to interest groups.
• Rigths beyond the market.
• Citizenship beyond political rigths.

14

• Territory
• Limits to the definition of public policies on
  national basis social policies affected by
  international migrations and fiscal constrains.
• Inclusion from community level the LA response
  to globo-cities or regional development