Can we say that emerging market economies are developing a new welfare regime? If so, what has caused this?

This project has two hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: China, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa and Turkey are forming a new welfare regime that differs from liberal, corporatist and social democratic welfare regimes of the global north on the basis of expansive, and decommodifying social assistance programmes for the poor,

Hypothesis 2: This new welfare regime is emerging principally as a response to the growing political power of the poor as a dual source of threat and support for governments.

The project challenges and expands the state-of-the-art in three different literatures by developing novel concepts and approaches:

  1. Welfare regimes (by adding a new type of welfare regime – Hypothesis 1),
  2. Welfare-state development (by re-establishing the centrality of political factors– Hypothesis 2)
  3. Contentious politics (by showing that welfare policy changes are by-products of contemporary contentious politics – Hypothesis 2).