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3 - Diffusion Dynamics

Shaping Social Policy in Latin America’s Inclusionary Turn

from Part I - Extending Social Policy and Participation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2021

By
Wendy Hunter
Edited by
Diana Kapiszewski ,
Steven Levitsky  and
Deborah J. Yashar
Diana Kapiszewski
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Steven Levitsky
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Deborah J. Yashar
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
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Summary

In the last two decades governments across Latin America have adopted and implemented conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, lifting large numbers of poor families out of economic destitution and inducing child beneficiaries to attend school and receive preventive health care on a regular basis. First emerging in Mexico and Brazil, this social policy innovation was quickly adopted in a wide range of other countries in the region. This chapter employs the analytical framework of diffusion to examine and analyze the spatial and temporal clustering that characterized the spread of CCTs in Latin America. Distinguishing between the adoption of the new policy innovation and its implementation, the chapter argues that diffusion dynamics were crucial in the adoption phase. It leverages a diffusion framework to explain why so many countries adopted CCTs at all. At the same time, the chapter grants that many other factors influenced how CCTs unfolded during the implementation phase, shaping the varied forms they have taken across the region.

Keywords

social policydiffusionCCTs
Type
Chapter
Information
The Inclusionary Turn in Latin American Democracies , pp. 93 - 116
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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