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Can Latin American Production Regimes Complement Universalistic Welfare Regimes?: Implications from the Costa Rican Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Juliana Martínez Franzoni  and
Diego Sánchez-Ancochea
Juliana Martínez Franzoni
Affiliation:
University of Costa Rica
Diego Sánchez-Ancochea
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Abstract

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Much of the literature on political economy expects complementarities between (universal) welfare regimes and production regimes. This article draws from Costa Rica's showcase of human development and universalistic social policies to address how the production regime supports and constrains the welfare regime. We show that there were some positive relations between the two regimes at various points but that they were neither fully nor mostly complementary. At the heart of our interpretation of Costa Rica's performance—and Latin America's pervasive lack of complementarities—lies the dominance of structural heterogeneity in the production regime. Our analysis has significant implications for current theoretical and policy debates in Costa Rica and elsewhere. At the theoretical level, we highlight key features of production in Latin America and the need to consider such material bases as part of robust welfare policies. At the policy level, our argument stresses the importance of promoting both leading and low-productivity sectors simultaneously and of securing stable funding mechanisms for the welfare regime. Our article thus offers a cautionary note to Latin American countries slowly moving toward the creation or re-creation of universal social programs in the context of relatively unchanged production regimes. Since tensions between production and welfare regimes may also be appearing in a growing number of postindustrialized developed countries, theoretical and policy implications can easily travel beyond Latin America.

Resumo

Resumo

Desde la economía política se espera generalmente encontrar comple-mentariedades entre regímenes (universales) de bienestar y regímenes de producción. A partir del caso de Costa Rica, país ejemplo de desarrollo humano y de políticas sociales universales, este artículo aborda cómo el régimen de producción apoya y restringe el régimen de bienestar. Si bien identificamos algunas relaciones positivas entre ambos regímenes (incluyendo un sistema de financiamiento de la política social bastante exitoso entre 1950 y 1980 así como un cierto salto tecnológico en las exportaciones desde los años ochenta), mostramos que en realidad ambos nunca fueron plena o principalmente complementarios. En el centro de nuestra interpretación del desempeño de Costa Rica —y de la falta de complementariedades que caracteriza a América Latina— ubicamos la prevalencia de la heterogeneidad estructural del régimen productivo. Dado que éste es un problema de carácter regional, nuestro análisis tiene implicaciones significativas para los debates teóricos y de política que tienen lugar más allá de Costa Rica. En términos teóricos, subrayamos los rasgos principales de la producción en América Latina así como la necesidad de considerar la importancia de las bases materiales a la hora de promover políticas de bienestar robustas. En términos del diseño de políticas, nuestro argumento subraya la importancia de apoyar simultáneamente tanto a los sectores de punta como a los de baja productividad así como la necesidad de crear mecanismos de financiamiento estables para el régimen de bienestar. Frente a la experiencia de muchos países latinoamericanos que actualmente están buscando recrear políticas universales sin modificar sus regímenes productivos, nuestro análisis plantea una nota precautoria. Dado que algunas tensiones entre regímenes de producción y de bienestar empiezan también a observarse en un número creciente de países de la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económico (OCDE), nuestras implicaciones teóricas y de política pueden fácilmente ser útiles más allá de América Latina.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , 2013 , pp. 148 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

We thank Evelyne Huber, Maxine Molyneux, Jorge Rovira, Andrew Schrank, Ken Shadlen, Jorge Vargas Cullell, and three anonymous LARR reviewers for their substantive contributions, and the British Academy for two small grants supporting our larger research project on the formation of universal social policies in peripheral countries.

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