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International organisations and their local allies continue to press for the further expansion of social protection across Africa, often in the face of resistance. The future politics of social protection in Africa will be shaped by endogenous and exogenous changes. Endogenous changes involve feedback effects from the past and continuing expansion of social protection; these can be either positive or negative in terms of further expansion. Exogenous effects result from the changing structural context, including especially population growth, urbanisation, and climate change. As the Covid-19 pandemic and related lockdowns showed, even those exogenous shocks which reveal gaps in current provision need not prompt enduring expansions of social protection. Neither endogenous nor exogenous changes are likely to shift African countries off their current varied pathways; considerable political obstacles to the further expansion of social protection will persist.

AbstractSocial protection has grown in importance in framing the relationship between citizens and states across much of Africa. Botswana's conservative welfare regime relies heavily on local officials – many of whom are trained social workers – to exercise discretion in assessing the needs of poor people and registering them on social protection programmes. Interviews with local officials reveal that they attribute poverty and destitution primarily to the deficient attitudes and behaviour of poor people. These are in turn seen as the consequence of social protection policies that disempower people by fostering 'dependence' on state provision. Local officials prefer programmes that 'empower' poor people. Whilst they recognise that the state has responsibilities towards the poor, they implement policies that reinforce and reproduce the status of poor citizens as often undeserving claimants on public charity.

International organisations have increasingly advocated a rights-based approach to social protection, especially in Africa, despite persistent criticisms from some African scholars that the globally dominant discourse of human rights reflects a specifically 'western' ideology. Regional African inter-governmental organisations have occupied a frontline between international organisations and national governments in 'vernacularising' global rights, that is, incorporating some 'African' norms and values into the universal claims of the dominant global discourse. This has entailed an emphasis on broadly communitarian responsibilities and obligations (including but not limited to the family and kin) alongside individual claims. The process of vernacularisation has been limited, however, in that it entails the adaptation of exogenous statements about rights. These tend to overlook the specific needs and claims of poor farmers and fail to recognise the full extent to which communitarian norms and values in Africa challenge the predominant global discourse.

Because redistribution concerns 'who gets what and from whom', redistributive conflicts revolve around 'who should get what and from whom'. Individuals as well as states distinguish between deserving and undeserving claimants. People may favour people they know over strangers, kin over non-kin, or some kin over other kin. This paper uses data from survey experiments to show that young South Africans distinguish between deserving and undeserving claimants on both the state and kin. The hierarchy of desert with respect to public welfare is clear and intuitive, with people who cannot look after themselves being considered more deserving than those who can. Deservingness with respect to different categories of kin – i.e. the 'radius' of responsibility for kin – varies less markedly, but with some variation between racial or cultural groups. Deservingness with respect to both public and private support is affected dramatically by the attitude and reciprocity of the claimant, with the important exceptions of mothers who should be supported unconditionally. Public and private support appear to be complements not substitutes for each other, in that people who believe that the state should support people in need are also more likely to believe that kin should do so also.

Bob Deacon's study of the Social Protection Floors initiative, led by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), entailed a pioneering study of the making of global social policy. Just how global is this 'global social policy' in terms of both its making and its subsequent diffusion? African governments were minimally involved in the making of this global social policy. Most seem to have acquiesced in this global policy-making, as they have with other 'global' declarations, in the expectation that it would have little effect on them. Nor, in Southern Africa, is there clear evidence of any significant effect. Even the social protection strategy documents adopted by either the African Union or national governments, typically written by external consultants, have generally avoided direct use of the concept of the social protection floor, while reiterating the commitment to 'comprehensive' (and appropriate) social protection that predated the ILO-led initiative. The trajectory of actual policy reform in Southern African countries does not appear to have changed. There continues to be a disjuncture between 'global social policy' at the global and African levels.

"Welfare Politics in Africa" published on by Oxford University Press.

The 'affordability' of new or expanded social protection programmes depends on more than an assessment of the fiscal costs or the poverty-reducing or developmental benefits. Diverse international organizations have shown that programmes costing less than or about 1 per cent of GDP have substantial benefits, and most low-income countries have the 'fiscal space' for such programmes (including through increased taxation). These international organizations have generally failed to convince national policy-making elites to raise and to allocate scarce domestic resources to social protection programmes. The result is an 'affordability gap' between what is advocated for African countries and what these countries' governments are willing to spend. This paper examines four cases of contestation over the 'affordability' of social protection reforms in Africa: Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, and the semi-autonomous territory of Zanzibar. In all four cases, political elites have resisted or rejected proposals for expensive reforms, and the most expensive reforms adopted cost only 0.4 to 0.5 per cent of GDP. The governments of Zambia and Botswana generally resisted even expenditures of this magnitude. The cost ceiling for reforms is far below the estimates of international organizations, reflecting political, normative and ideological factors.

Botswana's welfare state is both a parsimonious laggard in comparison with some other middle-income countries in Africa (such as Mauritius and South Africa) and extensive (in comparison with its low-income neighbours to the north and east). Coverage is broad but cash transfers are modest. This reflects distinctively conservative features - including, especially, preferences for workfare and for minimal benefits paid in kind (food) rather than cash - combined with parsimonious cash transfers for select categories of deserving poor (the elderly and orphans), administered through the Department of Local Government, not a dedicated welfare department. This is a very different model of welfare state-building - and, more generally, social contract - to those of its neighbours in Southern Africa. It is the result of the specific character of poverty in Botswana and the enduring, but not unchallenged, political dominance of the conservatively paternalist Botswana Democratic Party.

Drought played – and continues to play – a central role in welfare state-building across much of Africa. Botswana was perhaps the first major case of this, with drought in the mid-1960s prompting policy reforms that were to lead to the construction, decades later, of an extensive but conservative welfare state. Drought forced the colonial government and then the government headed by Seretse Khama to address aspects of poverty that might otherwise have been ignored. Emergency food aid was replaced by school and other feeding programmes, food-for-work programmes, and modest food relief for other 'destitutes'. Drought relief in Botswana in the 1960s and 1970s was provided not only on an unprecedented scale but was also institutionalised through programmes administered by a dedicated national and local bureaucracy, independent of the chiefs, and in association with a new international agency, the World Food Programme. Drought also prompted and shaped the development of a normative doctrine of public welfare provision and a new understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the newly independent state to its citizens.

The growing literature on the institutions that set minimum wages points to the importance of institutional design but lacks empirical studies of how and why institutions work in different ways. This paper examines the case of the Employment Conditions Commission (ECC) in South Africa between its establishment in 1999 and 2015. The ECC, comprising members nominated by organised business and labour together with government-appointed experts, set sectoral minima in low-wage sectors without strong collective bargaining. The ECC tended towards caution in setting and raising minima, for at least three reasons: concern over possible job destruction (in an economy with very high unemployment already), low baseline minima inherited from previous or other institutions, and the negotiating styles of labour and business representatives. The ECC raised sectoral minima steadily in real terms, in some cases more than doubling over about a decade. On only one occasion, under intense political pressure from the government, did the ECC recommend a major real increase. Lacking independent research capacity and hence good evidence on the size of employment effects, the ECC was vulnerable to political pressure (from the government) or criticisms (from trade unions, from 2012 onwards).

The South African Child Support Grant (CSG) is an example of a social assistance programme that, despite chronic anxieties about affordability, expanded rapidly through parametric reforms, primarily of the age limit. The initial concern about affordability was rooted in a severe fiscal crisis facing the South African state in the mid-1990s. This resulted in widespread (but not total) political agreement that the initial programme should be modest. The subsequent improvement in public finances meant that affordability concerns became less binding, and affordability was redefined. Political pressures to address the enduring problem of poverty, and to be seen to do so, resulted in the steady expansion of the programme. Governments make choices about programmes such as the CSG, and these choices are ultimately political. But sometimes fiscal conditions frame the choices in ways that are very likely to result in political near-consensus against programmatic expansion. The 'affordability' of social assistance programmes entails a mix of fiscal concerns with political factors.

By the early 2000s Botswana had acquired an extensive but conservative welfare state that combined food aid, workfare for working-age adults and modest cash transfers for the elderly, orphaned children and other 'destitutes'. This paper examines the origins of the corresponding welfare doctrine during the presidency of Seretse Khama between 1966 and 1980. Khama, together with his Vice-President (Quett Masire) and their Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), developed a doctrine that was to provide the normative foundations for a conservative welfare state: The poor were both the responsibility of the community, via the state, and responsible for themselves, through their own labour. The doctrine reflected the congruence of ideas between BDP leaders who were committed to conservative modernisation, expatriate British and South African advisers, and international agencies (notably the World Food Programme). The doctrine resulted from the challenges of drought (in the mid- and late 1960s), political conditions in Botswana in the decade following independence as elected politicians sought to transfer powers and responsibilities from chiefs to new state institutions, and the interaction between indigenous Tswana and British ideas about 'development' and governance.

The 'affordability' of new or expanded social protection programmes depends on more than an assessment of the fiscal costs or the poverty-reducing or developmental benefits. Diverse international organisations have showed that programmes costing less than or about 1 percent of GDP have substantial benefits, and most low-income countries have the 'fiscal space' for such programmes (including through increased taxation). These international organisations have generally failed to convince national policy-making elites to raise and to allocate scarce domestic resources to social protection programmes. The result is an 'affordability gap' between what is advocated for African countries and what those countries' governments are willing to spend. This paper examines four cases of contestation over the 'affordability' of social protection reforms in Africa: Botswana, South Africa, Zambia and the semi- autonomous territory of Zanzibar. In all four cases political elites resisted or rejected proposals for expensive reforms. In practice, the most expensive reforms that were approved were ones costing only 0.4 to 0.5 percent of GDP. The governments of Zambia and Botswana generally resisted even expenditures of this magnitude. The cost ceiling for reforms is far below the estimates of international organisations, reflecting political, normative and ideological factors.

Botswana's welfare state is both a parsimonious laggard in comparison with some other middle-income countries in Africa (such as Mauritius and South Africa) and extensive (in comparison with its low-income neighbours to the north and east). Coverage is broad but cash transfers are modest. This reflects distinctively conservative features – including especially preferences for workfare and for minimal benefits paid in kind (food) rather than cash – combined with parsimonious cash transfers for select categories of deserving poor (the elderly and orphans), administered through the Department of Local Government, not a dedicated welfare department. This is a very different model of welfare-state- building – and, more generally, social contract – to those of its neighbours in Southern Africa. It is the result of the specific character of poverty in Botswana, the enduring but not unchallenged political dominance of the conservatively paternalist Botswana Democratic Party, and the predominant values and beliefs in the society.