Latin American Welfare States in Comparative Perspective

While the welfare state literature provides an embarrassment of richness on their origins, evolution, and impact, far less is known about how these systems crafted and sustained the social obligations underpinning redistribution. This book explores how labour market dynamics and fiscal politics shaped social obligations in early social security systems.

Tracing the history of social security and taxation in three pioneers of welfare reform in the Southern Cone - Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay - this book shows that tax evasion, labour market dualism, and escalating distributional conflicts persisted even when spending on social security reached comparable levels to advanced European economies. The book argues that by using the moral languages of gift-giving, charity, and reciprocity to underpin social security, these countries did not eliminate distributional conflict but made it functional: periodic friction escalated into conflict that forced short-term cooperation and spread responsibility across actors. The illusion of ‘effortless welfare’ stemmed from attempts to solve three social dilemmas through social security: collective action problems (free-riding on obligations), time consistency issues (prioritizing short-term arrangements), and inclusion failures (weak solidarity with those excluded). The cases of the three countries are compared with Scandinavia and Australasia to show how these societies - often faced by similar challenges resulting from vulnerability to external economic cycles and internal distributional conflict - navigated them through their own systems of social security, labour market governance, and taxation.

This book will be of great interest to readers in the history and development of welfare systems, taxation, and social policy more broadly.