A survey of the development of social policy regimes in Australia, India and South Africa
1. Welfare Regimes of Australia , India and South Africa
This paper will seek to canvas the historical development of the welfare regimes of these three countries through the typology of various scholars. The key contending typologies are that of Gough and Wood (2004) and Seekings (2008) in relation to the global south. This paper will canvass the historic and current status of the welfare regimes and seek to analyse them with reference to the typologies.
In Section 2 this paper will provide a brief overview of some differing theories of welfare regimes. Section 3 will provide a historical and current survey of welfare regimes in Australia , India and South Africa
2. Welfare Regime Debates
In the late twentieth century, following the breakdown of the post war economic order in the 1970s, much of the developed world entered a period where the welfare state came under pressure (Huber 1996). Paradoxically, as economic crisis threatened the post war welfare state, scholarly inquiry into defining, comparing, and analysing welfare states accelerated.
A key landmark in developing our conceptual understanding of welfare regimes came when Esping Andersen published his Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Esping Andersen was both a critique of previous studies into the welfare state, and clarion call for more study of cross-national differences between welfare states – that is comparative study. Esping-Andersen argued that a comparative study of first world welfare capitalism revealed three types of welfare regimes, liberal, conservative (or corporatist) and social democratic based on (a) patterns of state, market and household forms of social provision, (b) welfare outcomes, assessed on the degree that labour is shielded from market forces - decommodification and (c) stratification outcomes (Esping-Andersen 1990).
Over time critiques of the Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism have emerged. Some have sought to refine the model to accommodate welfare states in the Mediterranean (Liebfried 1992) and their approaches to family policy (Bonoli 1997; Ferrera 1996), to accommodate labourist approaches to welfare in Australia and New Zealand (Castles & Mitchell 1993; Hill 1996; Korpi & Palme 1998). Others have sought to adapt Esping-Andersen’s ‘three worlds’ with gender perspectives (Siaroff 1994). More recently Jeremy Seekinsg has sought to adapt Epsing-Andersen to the global south and proposed agrarian, workerist or pauperist welfare regimes with differing incentives, objectives, and extent of redistribution (as represented in the table below) (Seekings 2008).
Of greater import to this paper is how Esping-Andersen and subsequent critiques have dealt with the global south. Of particular interest is Insecurity and welfare regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America : social policy in development contexts (Gough & Wood 2004). Gough argues that the welfare state regime theory is not applicable to nations and regime clusters outside the OECD. Rather a new framework which tries to define and compare nations as welfare regimes (as distinct from welfare states) should be applied. Welfare states (which are now a regime type) depend on the supremacy of the state, and its power to regulate both labour and financial markets for social policy ends. In other regime types – which are labelled informal security regimes and insecurity regimes, the authority of the state is weaker or more diffused.
How then do these frameworks apply to our three nation states? To explore this question we now must turn to what are the welfare regime characteristics – historical and current – that we have elected to study.
3. Historical development of Welfare Regimes in Australia, India and South Africa
Australia’s Welfare Regime: Historical Development
Pre-federation, welfare provision in the Australian colonies was dominated by non state actors in the forms of charities, benevolent societies and the state (in terms of provision of welfare to the convict workforce) informed by the notions of self help (Smiles 1958; Wearing & Berreen 1994). This network of provision, both informal and formal[*], began to break down as a result of the 1890s depression. The conflicts of this decade resulted in a labour movement that sought to advance welfare utility through the establishment of a regulated labour market and through that the provision of a ‘basic wage’[†]. Underpinning this approach was a commitment to restrictive immigration policies (removing competition for labour) and a gendered assumption of there being a single (male) breadwinner (Castles & Mitchell 1993).
Other advances in the period of the ‘Australian Settlement’ included a pension scheme and public work schemes for the unemployed, as well as the beginnings of what we now call occupational health and safety legislation (Kelly 1992). These together came to represent what has been described as a labourist or a (male) wage earners welfare state (Castles 1985).
Post world war two the Australian welfare state that emerged was based upon a protected economy, full employment, wage fixing, and reliance on an unpaid (female) workforce to provide an economy of care (Howe 2008). The welfare state relied on a heavily regulated wage system for decommodification, with elements such as unemployment and sickness benefits (the dole) acting as a ‘safety net’ which were deliberately kept below the basic wage. Health care was the domain of the private sector.
In recent decades Australia
- limited universal elements such as Medicare
- otherwise targeted benefits for unemployment, sickness, old age and disability
- in a framework of a living wage, though less strong then before is enshrined in the idea of a minimum wage[‡]
British policy in India
The new Indian nation state following independence in 1949, and the constitution settlement that followed, sought to establish a pure Hindu nation[**]. It was much influenced by the ideas of socialism and the Beveridge report. Accordingly it established a constitution which conferred a range of social rights[††] on the citizens of the new state. These rights however, are not enforceable in law (Jayal 1999) rendering them in practice to be aspirational goals to be attained, than obligations of the state.
The first steps were to institute a welfare state of sorts, through a series of laws aimed at regulating the labour market and establishing a form of a social security system for employees of the state[‡‡]. These actions were important signposts towards the ambitions of the Congress Party and the government of its leader Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. However, it was constrained by the constitutional settlement of 1950. For although the constitution had included social directives granting citizens a range of basic rights, many inhabitants were deprived of the exercise of such rights due to the continuance of various traditional and regional practices related to caste, tribe, class, community, religion, education, and ethnicity (Sahoo 2008). This and the failure of the state to enact agrarian reform and its dependence of the support of large landowners (Saith 2008) meant that a disconnect would develop between the state and its middle class supporters and the mass of voters, largely rural.
But in the meantime India developed what has been described as the ‘moderate state’(Kothari 2001), which used its centralizing tendencies to develop a growing socialist economy and a strong welfare oriented state. This started to break down as the failure of the state to change the lives of the rural poor lead to growing discontent. This lead to a “politics of postures instead of politics of performance” (Kothari 2001). India
From the 1980s to the 1990s the Indian economy suffered a severe balance of payments crisis. This lead to the adoption of the policies of economic liberalization in 1991. Citizens were now asked to make provisions for their own social welfare and development. Groups in society, who had hitherto not been ensured social services by the state, were now thrown onto the not so tender mercies of the market. Public expenditure in India
While there was an attempt to create a strong, central welfare state under the policies of post independence PM Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the constitutional settlement of 1950, the content of social policy at a national level has become fuzzy (Palriwala & Neetha 2009). The welfare regime has residual characteristics[§§] but otherwise is piecemeal, haphazard and reactive. Overall the welfare regime can be described as having:
- few universal characteristics
- exclusive social protections, which are addressed at organised sectors including the government workforce
- a small amount of social protections which are laxly enforced
- excess in rhetoric, where many social programs are announced, yet many are old programs given new names, or new initiatives that are rarely implemented by regional or local authorities
- an assumption that interactions with the state are at a family level and that women are dependent family members
South African colonial then apartheid policies were driven by political and economic racial capitalism and the deliberate exclusion of the majority of the population from access to social provision, save in the most minimal sense, while the white minority was protected in ways similar to those found in Europe . In the early twentieth century, social policies, mainly in the field of work-related benefits, were modeled on those in the British state (Brown & Neku 2005). Under the apartheid government, the system as a whole could be characterised as residual, rather than institutional – where individuals were meant to be primarily responsible for their own needs, and the state would kick in only in extreme circumstances (as a residual form of provision).
Another way of characterising the model is as a ‘mixed economy’, where both private and public provision co-existed, but along racially segregated lines. The white population was extensively provided for, both in terms of economic and labour market policies, and in terms of health and welfare services (Seekings 2000). In health, there was an extensive public system for those who could not afford to buy private care, and this was gradually extended to other racial groups as well. Welfare services were provided by a combination of state and private agencies, with state subsidies being made to private welfare organisations – and again, such subsidies were extended to other racial groups over time. These private welfare organisations, and faith-based groups, in turn developed cadres of volunteers. There was some corporate provision of health and welfare services, and workers in formal employment and their dependents had access to unemployment insurance, and to maternity disability and death benefits. Black people had proportionately less access to these, as they were disproportionately in types of employment with no access the benefits, or were unemployed.
Thus there emerged a system which, within the African context, had relatively ‘good’ welfare provision, though offered on a discriminatory basis. In the 1980s welfare provision came to be used as one of the arms of the twin strategy of reform and repression, giving direct welfare services and grants, while at the same time attempting to use the welfare and other social sectors to police activist activity. Yet compared to OECD countries, provision was and remains patchy and uneven, blind to the changing nature of the labour market, and to the gendered implications for health and welfare of the HIV/ AIDS pandemic.
Democratization in the 1990s lead to further extension of welfare in terms of coverage and generosity. The new ANC government though constrained by economic difficulties, extended support in the form of child support grants and disability grants (Seekings 2008). The post democratization settlement involves:
- conservative macroeconomic policies to prevent a flight of skills and capital by white South Africans
- protective labour market legislation, budget grants and a state sector for the organised black working class
- redistribution through the budget to the poor to preserve the ANC’s voting base (Seekings and Natruss 2002)
4. Welfare Regime Analysis for Australia , India and South Africa
The first question to be asked is, ‘do our nations constitute a welfare regime cluster’? Given these states common British colonial experience it would be reasonable to expect many elements of the United Kingdoms UK welfare activism were influential they developed along different trajectories in Australia , India and South Africa
For during this period Australia was continuing to develop its rather unique labourist welfare regime, South Africa
Given that these three nation states do not form a welfare regime cluster, how can they be characterised in reference to key questions, namely:
- what is the role of the state, family and community in welfare?
- what is the level of decommodification – in this sense of means tested benefits vs universalism?
- does the welfare regime act to maintain or break down stratification?
- how does the welfare regime treat female participation?
The table below offers some comparisons.
Role of: State Family Community Employment | Central Marginal Marginal High | Varied Central Varied Varied | Central Marginal Marginal Marginal |
Decommodification | Medium – some universal benefits (Medicare) along side with targeted means testing | High (in state employment) Low( outside of public sector and formal labour market) | Medium (extensive targeting of welfare benefits, but proportion of population receiving benefits is high) |
Stratification Objective | Income Smoothing | Poverty Reduction | Poverty Reduction |
Gender in the labour market | Barriers removed and participation encouraged | Barriers removed, but many disincentives | Barriers removed, but many disincentives |
Looking at the above we can reach the following conclusions about regime types for each of our case studies:
a) Australia can be described as a unique (along with New Zealand) radical (Castles & Mitchell) or targeted (Korpi & Palme 1998) welfare regime.
b) India can be described as a informal in/security regime (Gough & Wood 2004) with a mass electorate and exclusive social protections.
c) South Africa
5. Conclusion
Given that the three nation states fall into different regime typologies and trajectories of development what explains this difference? The answer to that question is unclear. But more research is required comparing their experiences under imperial administration, experiences of national liberation, the nature of European immigration and systems of control over the indigenous population. Exploring these questions might yield some clues about the nature of class mobilisation and their respective political settlements.
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[‡] the minimum wage is set by a range of criteria including:
- performance and competitiveness of the national economy, including productivity, business competitiveness and viability, inflation and employment growth, and
- promoting social inclusion through increased workforce participation, and
- relative living standards and the needs of the low paid, and
- the principle of equal remuneration for work of equal or comparable value, and
- providing a comprehensive range of fair minimum wages to junior employees, employees to whom training arrangements apply and employees with a disability.
[§] 1857 was the Indian Mutiny which led to the removal of control over Indian policy form the East India Company to the British Colonial Office
[**] This is best revealed by the effort to establish Hindi as the national language and strip it of Arabic and Persian words.
[††] The constitution included clauses to:
- Minimize inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities (article 38 (2))
- Secure the health and strength of male and female workers, to protect children and to ensure that citizens are not forced by economic necessity to enter vocations unsuited to them
- Make effective provisions for securing the right to work, education and public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement (article 39(e))
- Introduce free, compulsory and universal education to the age of 14 (article 45)
[‡‡] The most significant of these was the Employees State Insurance Act of 1948 which provided for a range of health and injury benefits for public sector workers.
[§§] In terms of social support for state employees – only 11 percent of the working population is entitled to retirement benefits
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