Powerplay behind the scene of redistributive social protection systems?

Over the past decade, social protection has come to feature more and more prominently on international and national development agendas. One key challenge that the quest for social protection currently faces, is the resource mobilization to finance social protection. Redistributive social protection has been put forward as a way to address this challenge. Previous research argued that the redistributive potential of social protection systems is determined by their financial, technical and socio-political dimension. A deeper understanding of the overall concept and its manifestations in practice is still needed. In particular the insight in the socio-political processes behind redistributive social protection is lagging behind. This study uses a multiple case study design to explore the redistributive potential of social protection systems in the making in Senegal and Morocco. Both cases focus on ongoing social protection reforms in health and investigate the financial, technical and socio-political factors that will determine their contribution to redistribution at the national level. Four key questions are put forward: 1) What are the key traits of the ongoing social protection reforms in health in Senegal and Morocco? 2) What are the implications of these key traits for the potential for redistribution? 3) Which national and international stakeholders are involved and what role do they play? 4) What can be learned for supporting redistributive social protection? Preliminary findings from the cases confirm the importance of the structure of wealth and the administrative capacity at country level in navigating different financing options with differing redistributive potential. They also illustrate the variation in redistributive and/or transformative potential of different delivery mechanisms (insurance, assistance, employment promotion, social services) for social protection. Most significantly, the case studies provide ample evidence of how different socio-political actors (political leaders, administration, civil society, elites, technical and financial partners) and the interplay between these actors set the scene - or not - for advancing more redistributive social protection systems. The paper also investigates donor policies and practices in both cases, in order to establish to what extent the redistributive nature of social protection is an explicit concern. It concludes with a reflection on what lessons both cases offer on the promotion of redistributive protection.

Publication year:2016

Accessibility:Open