The Politics of Welfare in the Global South, edited by Sattwick Dey Biswas, Cleopas Gabriel Sambo, and Sony Pellissery, is both timely and provocative. Across 12 chapters, the editors and contributors collectively push us to challenge longstanding assumptions about how and why social policies take shape in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. They highlight a host of overlapping themes in modern welfare practice, including discourses of universalism versus selectivity, the place of a “residuum” in welfare policy, and how cultural norms shape dignity, shame, and empowerment (or disempowerment) among social-assistance beneficiaries.
The book vividly outlines how rapidly social assistance has grown across the Global South. Over a billion people now benefit from at least one program, with coverage levels in Brazil’s Bolsa Família or China’s Dibao rivaling those of many OECD nations. On this point, one should highlight a defining puzzle: even as the global North grapples with austerity and retrenchment, many low- and middle-income countries have introduced sizable safety nets that decommodify large segments of the population. As I have argued elsewhere, this phenomenon amounts to a “second shift” in global welfare: the rising prominence of cash transfers and healthcare expansions that operate partly outside formal contributory frameworks. It is a shift that classical welfare-state theory—rooted in industrialized contexts—struggles to grasp, underscoring The Politics of Welfare in the Global South as a timely, necessary intervention.
Chapters by Jeremy Seekings, Armando Barrientos, and others prompt us to reconsider or expand Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s (1990) Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Rather than simply appending “southern” subtypes, these authors point out how novel configurations of social policy can emerge where labor markets are largely informal, kinship networks remain strong, and states attempt to balance selective programs against universalist ideals. The result, they suggest, could be new regime “families” anchored in noncontributory social assistance—a regime that we have identified as the “Populist Welfare State Regime” elsewhere (Erdem Yörük et al., 2022, “The four global worlds of welfare capitalism,” Journal of European Social Policy, 2022).
At the same time, the book engages deeply with the “residuum” problem (i.e., reliance on means-tested schemes for the most marginalized) and the normative debates surrounding universal coverage. Moreover, it attends closely to cultural and subjective dimensions of welfare, emphasizing how shame, empowerment, or dignity shape both policy uptake and public legitimacy. In these respects, the volume reaches beyond standard accounts of cost–benefit calculations by governments and donors.
Despite these strengths, the volume’s definition of “politics” is somewhat narrow, chiefly spotlighting discourses on universalism versus selectivity and how institutions construct (in)justice or dignity. Two important elements of welfare politics remain underexamined: First is the effect of contentious politics. Some contributors, most clearly Sony Pellissery, mention that grassroots protests—especially over material deprivation—can lead states to adopt or expand social assistance. Yet, the book does not fully capture how nonwelfare movements (e.g., over land rights, regime legitimacy) can indirectly yield new benefits as a containment strategy. Recent research, including my own, shows that violent unrest can spur significant expansions of social assistance in emerging markets—a dynamic that The Politics of Welfare in the Global South might have engaged more systematically. Second, although electoral motivations occasionally surface in certain chapters, the book lacks a cohesive exploration of how vote-seeking and populist tactics shape welfare policy. In many post-authoritarian or rapidly democratizing contexts, social benefits can be leveraged to cultivate political loyalty. This dynamic might have enriched the volume’s discussion of how the “politics of welfare” unfolds in practice.
The volume notes international policy diffusion but could probe deeper into why organizations such as the World Bank champion social protection. Bank papers often describe cash transfers not just as poverty relief but as a political technology for calming unrest and shoring up regime legitimacy (Eske van Gils and Erdem Yörük, “The World Bank’s social assistance recommendations,” Current Sociology, 2022). Yet The Politics of Welfare in the Global South treats global actors largely as conveyors of policy templates, bypassing their overt concern with maintaining regional and global stability.
A second, deeper theoretical friction involves Ian Gough’s (2004) claim that classic welfare-state typologies cannot apply where capitalist labor markets remain partial and livelihoods rely on petty production, informality, or kin networks (Ian Gough. “Welfare regimes in development contexts.” in I. Gough and G. Wood (Eds.), Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America, 2004). Gough therefore argues that the South can generate only “informal-security” or “insecurity” regimes, because Western social policy presumes a mature capitalist economy and an autonomous state. Genuine de-commodification, he suggests, is impossible when labor itself is not fully commodified.
This stance sidelines research showing that informal and rural economies are tightly interwoven with modern capitalism across regions (Manuel Castells and Alejandro Portes, The Informal Economy, 1989; Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change, Kumarian Press). It also shifts empirical focus: instead of measuring de-commodifying programs directly—through benefit generosity, unemployment insurance, pensions, or sickness cover—Gough relies on broad welfare outcomes such as the Gini coefficient or Human Development Index. While data gaps are real, critics argue that social assistance in the South should be assessed with indicators comparable to those used in the North, rather than defaulting to aggregate well-being measures that conflate diverse developmental processes (Yörük et al., “The variable selection problem,” Social Indicators Research, 2019).
This tension speaks directly to one of The Politics of Welfare in the Global South’s core contributions: several chapters effectively illustrate that the presence of “partial” or “hybrid” commodification does not negate the possibility of robust welfare policies. Indeed, the volume’s authors demonstrate that social assistance programs in emerging markets can provide significant decommodification, even if wage labor is only one part of household survival strategies. The evolving experiences of Africa, Asia, and Latin America complicate such binary distinctions—highlighting how capitalism in the South can encompass both informal and formal dynamics, as well as unique variations of decommodification that do not fit neatly into “insecurity” frameworks alone.
While the volume successfully delves into questions of universalism, selectivity, cultural norms, and the “welfare residuum,” it pays limited attention to how colonialism’s institutional legacies and contentious politics shape contemporary welfare systems in the Global South. A deeper engagement with research on the topic would have enriched the historical and empirical dimension of this edited volume. Also, its analysis of contentious politics, electoral motives, colonialism, and international organizations’ strategic concerns could go further. An explicit critique of the assumption that the Global South is somehow “outside” capitalism productively underscores the need for more globally inclusive theories of welfare.
By weaving together case studies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and by stressing the cultural dimensions of social policy, The Politics of Welfare in the Global South lays crucial groundwork for anyone eager to revisit or revise classic welfare-state theories in light of 21st-century realities. It is a vital addition to comparative social policy literature, highlighting how emerging and developing countries are reshaping welfare-state theory from the ground up.
