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2. Environmental Justice in the Age of Unnatural Disaster
- Author:
- Chris N. Lesser
- Publication Date:
- 03-2022
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)
- Abstract:
- The recent mudslides in Petrópolis are just the latest examples of the issues of unequal access to land and precarious housing in Brazil.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Environment, Natural Disasters, Inequality, Justice, Land, and Housing
- Political Geography:
- Brazil and South America
3. Social Policy Expansion and Retrenchment After Latin America’s Commodity Boom
- Author:
- Sara Niedzwiecki and Jennifer Pribble
- Publication Date:
- 05-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Kellogg Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- The literature on social policy expansion and retrenchment in Latin America is vast, but scholars differ in how they explain the outcomes, arriving at different conclusions about the role of democracy, left parties, favorable economic conditions, and social movements in shaping reform. What can welfare state developments since the end of the commodity boom teach us about the theoretical power of these arguments? This paper engages this question, seeking to explain recent incidents of social policy reform in 10 presidential administrations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. Using a combination of crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA) and case studies, we identify multiple paths toward social policy expansion and retrenchment that involve the absence and presence of electoral competition, economic resources, party ideology and linkage mechanism, social movement pressure, international pressure, and legacies. The results show that while both parties of the left and right expanded social programs, only the right engaged in retrenchment, yet partisanship alone is insufficient for explaining reform outcomes, as the variable must appear in combination with other factors depending on the party’s linkage mechanism. The results provide new insight into the politics of social policy reform in Latin America, showing the relevance of complex forms of causality.
- Topic:
- Health, Poverty, Social Movement, Democracy, Inequality, Public Policy, and Political Parties
- Political Geography:
- Brazil, Argentina, South America, Uruguay, Latin America, and Chile
4. Inclusion amid ethnic inequality: Insights from Brazil’s social protection system
- Author:
- Natasha Borges Sugiyama
- Publication Date:
- 07-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Policy frames in Brazil have long run up against conflicting visions and understandings about the causes and consequences of group-based inequality. This paper argues that a class-based lens has dominated the social protection framework. In recent years, political leaders have framed social policy measures along ‘universal’ class lines with the aim of improving poverty and wellbeing. This framing is reflective of Brazil’s national narrative on race relations and the idea that class and employment status have been the most salient barriers to social welfare protections. Brazil’s widely well-regarded anti-poverty conditional cash transfer programme, Bolsa Família (2003–21), is emblematic of the country’s universal and ‘race-blind’ approach to social policy. But given the strong correlation in Brazil between ethnicity and income, social protection policies such as the Bolsa Família have indirectly targeted vulnerable black and brown citizens. The analysis addresses how social policy has contributed advances to wellbeing in general and for Afro-Brazilians. A comparative perspective on social welfare systems offers important lessons on how poverty relief can further human development and enhance agency. Future reformers can learn from Brazil’s pursuit of poverty reduction alongside administrative procedures that identify vulnerable groups, as a strategy to address intersectional inequalities of ethnicity and class.
- Topic:
- Poverty, Race, Inequality, and Welfare
- Political Geography:
- Brazil and South America
5. Both hard and soft corporate practices construct and secure industrial mining operations: The case of Colombia
- Author:
- Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen
- Publication Date:
- 01-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
- Abstract:
- This DIIS Working Paper elaborates how local consent to a huge industrial mining complex, including a port and a 150 km railway built in the 1980’s on indigenous arid lands, were created. Showing how both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ security technologies were effective in preparing the complex, constructing the necessary infrastructure and securing the operation, the paper at the same time illustrates how corporate security practices have changed over time in the northern part of Colombia. The paper is based on extended ethnographic fieldwork in La Guajira, Colombia, carried out through 2018 and 2019 as well as historical written documents.
- Topic:
- Security, Environment, Oil, Poverty, Natural Resources, Non State Actors, Gas, Capitalism, Inequality, Economy, Conflict, Ethnography, Violence, Investment, Justice, Land Rights, and Minerals
- Political Geography:
- Colombia, South America, and Latin America
6. The Pandemic Strikes: Responding to Colombia’s Mass Protests
- Author:
- International Crisis Group
- Publication Date:
- 07-2021
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- In Colombia’s history of protest, the 2021 mobilisations against inequality and police brutality stand out for their breadth and intensity. Unrest has quieted for now but could soon return. The government should urgently reform the security sector while working to narrow the country’s socio-economic chasms.
- Topic:
- Inequality, State Violence, Protests, and Police Brutality
- Political Geography:
- Colombia and South America
7. The Pandemic Strikes: Responding to Colombia’s Mass Protests
- Author:
- International Crisis Group
- Publication Date:
- 07-2021
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- In Colombia’s history of protest, the 2021 mobilisations against inequality and police brutality stand out for their breadth and intensity. Unrest has quieted for now but could soon return. The government should urgently reform the security sector while working to narrow the country’s socio-economic chasms.
- Topic:
- Governance, Inequality, Protests, Pandemic, COVID-19, and Social Order
- Political Geography:
- Colombia and South America
8. A decomposition method to evaluate the ‘paradox of progress’ with evidence for Argentina
- Author:
- Javier Alejo, Leonardo Gasparini, Gabriel Montes-Rojas, and Walter Sosa-Escudero
- Publication Date:
- 12-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
- Abstract:
- The ‘paradox of progress’ is an empirical regularity that associates more education with larger income inequality. Two driving and competing factors behind this phenomenon are the convexity of the ‘Mincer equation’ (that links wages and education) and the heterogeneity in its returns, as captured by quantile regressions. We propose a joint least-squares and quantile regression statistical framework to derive a decomposition in order to evaluate the relative contribution of each explanation. The estimators are based on the ‘functional derivative’ approach. We apply the proposed decomposition strategy to the case of Argentina 1992 to 2015.
- Topic:
- Economics, Education, Inequality, Quantile Regression, and Paradox of Progress
- Political Geography:
- Argentina and South America
9. Building back better after the COVID-19 pandemic
- Author:
- Miguel Jaramillo and Bruno Escobar
- Publication Date:
- 11-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE)
- Abstract:
- In this policy-oriented paper, we provide a pre- and post-pandemic socioeconomic analysis of Peru, along with a financially sustainable five-year Building Back Better recovery plan, which emphasizes the urgency of addressing some of the country’s structural weaknesses. We underscore the importance of public investment for this effort, but widen the focus to include current public expenditure, in order to take steps towards building a more universal social protection system. We show that this also contributes to reducing the gender imbalances in the labor market that the pandemic exposed and exacerbated. We provide a financial programming exercise that demonstrates that the plan is financially responsible under a reasonable fiscal rule. Four core ideas stand out from our analysis. Firstly, while public investment can be key to reigniting economic growth, it does not go very far in tackling structural weaknesses. Secondly, public spending in health can actually achieve this from two fronts: by beginning to build a universal access social protection system and by addressing gender imbalances in the labor market. Thirdly, focusing public discussion on social protection enables a broader approach to policy reform by including formal employment and productivity enhancing reforms, which are essential for the sustainability of a broad social protection system. Finally, we also show that the sector mix in public investment has an impact on employment results, both in terms of the volume of jobs generated and their gender composition.
- Topic:
- Health, Inequality, COVID-19, Socioeconomics, Public Spending, and Gender
- Political Geography:
- South America and Peru
10. The Risk of Automation in Argentina
- Author:
- Guillermo Falcone and Carlo Lombardo
- Publication Date:
- 04-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
- Abstract:
- In this paper we characterize workers’ vulnerability to automation in the near future in Argentina as a function of the exposure to routinization of the tasks that they perform and the potential automation of their occupation. In order to do that we combine (i) indicators of potential automatability by occupation and (ii) worker’s information on occupation and other labor variables. We find that the ongoing process of automation is likely to significantly affect the structure of employment. In particular, unskilled and semi-skilled workers are likely to bear a disproportionate share of the adjustment costs. Automation will probably be a more dangerous threat for equality than for overall employment.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology, Employment, Inequality, Job Creation, and Labor Market
- Political Geography:
- Argentina and South America
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