The Oxford Handbook of Governance and Public Management for Social Policy (Oxford Library of International Social Policy) 019091632X, 9780190916329

Citation preview

The Oxford Handbook of Governance and Public Management for Social Policy

OXFORD LIBRARY OF I N T E R N AT I O N A L S O C I A L P O L I C Y

Ed itor s-​i n-​C h ief Douglas J. Besharov and Neil Gilbert In collaboration with the International Network for Social Policy Teaching and Research

The Oxford Handbook of Governance and Public Management for Social Policy Edited by Karen J. Baehler

OXFORD LIBRARY OF I N T E R N AT I O N A L S O C I A L P O L I C Y

The Oxford Handbook of Governance and Public Management for Social Policy Edited by

Karen J. Baehler

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2023 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Control Number: 2022941780 ISBN 978–​0–​19–​091632–​9 DOI: 10.1093/​oxfordhb/​9780190916329.001.0001 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

Senior Editor: Karen J. Baehler American University, USA Senior Advisor: Jeffrey Straussman University at Albany, USA Series Editors: Douglas J. Besharov University of Maryland, USA, and Neil Gilbert University of California Berkeley, USA Co-​Editors: Camila Arza, Centro Interdisciplinario para el Estudio de Políticas Públicas (CIEPP) and National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Argentina Merike Blofield, GIGA Institute for Latin American Studies and University of Hamberg, Germany Jonathan Boston, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand Ewan Ferlie, King’s College London, United Kingdom Fernando Filgueira, School of Social Sciences, University of the Republic, Uruguay Andrea Hetling, Rutgers University, USA Yijia Jing, Fudan University, China Rachel Laforest, Queen’s University, Canada T. J. Lah, Yonsei University, Republic of Korea Edoardo Ongaro, Open University, United Kingdom Viviene Taylor, formerly University of Cape Town and National Planning Commission, South Africa

CONTENTS

List of Contributors  xiii Introduction 1. Introduction to the Handbook  3 Karen J. Baehler Section I  • AFRICA 2. Section Overview: Governance and Management of Social Policy in Africa  23 Viviene Taylor Historical Evolution and Social Trends 3. The Policy Challenges of Africa’s Changing Demography and Social Structures  39 Chance Chagunda 4. Diversity and Transformative Policy within South African Higher Learning Institutions  53 Khosi Kubeka Institutions, Organizations, and Operations 5. Governmental and Non-​Governmental Responses to Vulnerable Children in Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau  71 Tomoko Shibuya 6. Youth Participation in African Social Policy and Governance  89 Tessa Dooms and Pearl Pillay 7. Administering Social Protection in Post-​Conflict Uganda  102 Julius Okello and Viviene Taylor

Finance 8. Financing and Reframing Universal Social Protection in Africa  117 Brenton Van Vrede Innovation and Evaluation 9. New Approaches to Youth Justice in South Africa  133 Thulane Gxubane 10. Transforming Social Protection in South Africa  148 Viviene Taylor 11. Evaluation Trends and Innovation in Africa  167 Jean D. Triegaardt Section II  • ASIA 12. Section Overview: Governance and Management of Social Policy in Asia  183 Yijia Jing and T. J. Lah Historical Evolution and Social Trends 13. Welfare State Administration and the East Asian Welfare Regime  191 Christian Aspalter 14. Aging Asia and Implications for Social Security Programs  207 Joelle H. Fong and Thomas R. Klassen 15. The Developmental State, Export-​Oriented Industrialization, and South Korea’s Social Security System  219 Jae-​jin Yang Institutions, Organizations, and Operations 16. Changing Welfare Mix and Discretion Mix in Social Care Services in South Korea  231 Young Jun Choi and Hye-​jin Choi 17. Corruption and Social Policy  244 Sony Pellissery and Partha Bopaiah Finance 18. Fiscal and Administrative Decentralization and Social Policy in Asia and China  259 Ping Zhang 19. Nonprofit and Government Partnerships in Public Service Delivery in South Korea  278 Hee Soun Jang and Jung Wook Kim

viii

C o n ten ts

Innovation and Evaluation 20. Performance Measurement and Social Policies in China  295 Jie Gao 21. Citizen Participation in China  308 Xiang Gao and Jessica C. Teets Section III  • AUSTRALASIA 22. Section Overview: Governance and Management of Social Policy in Australasia and the South Pacific  325 Jonathan Boston Historical Evolution and Social Trends 23. From Social Protection to Social Investment in Australia and New Zealand  337 Michael Mintrom and Jonathan Boston 24. A Comparative History of Social Provision for Indigenous Australians and Māori  351 Catherine Althaus and Sir Kim Workman 25. Past, Current, and Future Social Transformation in Pacific Island Countries  366 Naren Prasad Institutions, Organizations, and Operations 26. Child Support  387 Michael Fletcher and Kay Cook 27. Social Services Fragmentation  401 Elizabeth Eppel and Barbara Allen 28. Co-​production  415 Michael Macaulay Finance 29. Australia’s National Disability Insurance  429 Gemma Carey, Helen Dickinson, Michael Fletcher, and Daniel Reeders 30. Financing and Delivering: New Zealand’s Accident Compensation Scheme  442 Rt. Hon. Sir Geoffrey Palmer KC Innovation and Evaluation 31. Results Targets in New Zealand  457 Amanda Wolf

Conte nts

ix

32. Improving Social Outcomes through Behavioral Insights  469 Lee McCauley 33. The Promise and Challenge of Social Innovation and Social Enterprise  483 Barbara Allen, Alex Hannant, Brad Jackson, Lochlan Morrissey, and Anne Tiernan Section IV  • CANADA and the UNITED STATES 34. Section Overview: Governance and Management of Social Policy in Canada and the United States  499 Rachel Laforest and Andrea Hetling Historical Evolution and Social Trends 35. Social Policy Administration in the Canadian Federation  513 Peter Graefe 36. Complexity in US Social Welfare Administration  527 Karen J. Baehler and Stephanie Walsh Institutions, Organizations, and Operations 37. Managing Social Welfare Policy  545 Kenneth J. Meier and Austin M. McCrea 38. Canada’s Jagged Record on Social Policy Collaboration between Government and the Voluntary Sector  559 Karine Levasseur 39. Street-​Level Organizational Theory  570 Matthew C. Spitzmueller Finance 40. Contracting for Social Programs  585 Jocelyn M. Johnston and Barbara S. Romzek 41. The Financialization of the Welfare State and Co-​creating Value for Public Services  599 Rachel Laforest Innovation and Evaluation 42. Enabling Social Policy Innovation  615 Stephanie Moulton, Jodi R. Sandfort, and Weston Merrick 43. The Whys and Hows of Impact Measurement Standards  632 Katherine Ruff 44. Front-line Workers and the Creation of Administrative Data  647 Andrea Hetling and Correne Saunders

x

C o n ten ts

Section V  • EUROPE 45. Section Overview: Governance and Management of Social Policy in Europe  659 Ewan Ferlie and Edoardo Ongaro Historical Evolution and Social Trends 46. European Welfare States’ Detour(s) to Social Investment  671 Anton Hemerijck and Stefano Ronchi 47. The UK Welfare State Since 1948  686 Martin Powell 48. Russian Governance Reforms in the Social Sphere  699 Alexey G. Barabashev, Ivan Yu. Ivanov, Isak D. Froumin, Andrey V. Klimenko, Maria A. Nagernyak, Lilia N. Ovcharova, and Sergey V. Shishkin Institutions, Organizations, and Operations 49. The Changed Role and Position of Professionals in the Welfare State Across Europe  725 Nicolette van Gestel 50. Toward a Framework for Comparing Accountability Regimes in Healthcare  737 Karsten Vrangbæk and Haldor Byrkjeflot 51. Organizing Healthcare Transparency  753 Charlotta Levay Finance 52. Evolution, Trends, and Prospects of Social Services for Welfare Systems in Europe  771 Elio Borgonovi, Giovanni Fosti, and Elisabetta Notarnicola Innovation and Evaluation 53. Reform Pathways for Integrating Employment Assistance to Marginalized Groups  787 Chris Rønningstad, Tone Alm Andreassen, Eric Breit, and Renate Minas 54. Co-​innovation in Welfare States Across Europe  805 Jacob Torfing Section VI  • LATIN AMERICA 55. Section Overview: Governance and Management of Social Policy in Latin America  821 Fernando Filgueira, Camila Arza, and Merike Blofield

Conte nts

xi

Historical Evolution and Social Trends 56. The Slow and Reluctant Development of Social Citizenship in Latin America  835 Fernando Filgueira, Camila Arza, and Merike Blofield 57. Pension Policy and the State  851 Camila Arza Institutions, Organizations, and Operations 58. A Collaborative Approach for Building Comprehensive Social Protection  869 Carla Bronzo, Nuria Cunill-​Grau, and Fabián Repetto 59. Building Capacity to Deliver Education as a Social Right in Brazil  880 Michael Touchton, Brian Wampler, and Natasha Borges Sugiyama 60. Social Policy and State Capacity from a Sub-​National Perspective  895 Sara Niedzwiecki and Jennifer Pribble Finance 61. Taxation and State Capacity  915 James E. Mahon Jr. 62. Healthcare and the Public-​Private Mix in Mexico, Chile, and Peru  933 Zoila Ponce de León Innovation and Evaluation 63. Time-​Use Data, Unpaid Work, and Social Well-​Being  951 Lucía Scuro and Iliana Vaca 64. Standardized Educational Assessments  969 Axel Rivas 65. The Hidden Impact of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs on State Capacity  983 Simone Cecchini

Index  999

xii

C o n ten ts

L I S T O F CO N T R I B U TO R S

AFRICA Chance Chagunda

Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Department of Social Development University of Cape Town Cape Town, South Africa (and Malawi) Tessa Dooms

Commissioner National Planning Commission of South Africa Pretoria, South Africa Thulane Gxubane

Associate Professor, Department of Social Development University of Cape Town Cape Town, South Africa Khosi M. Kubeka

Senior Lecturer and Research Coordinator, Department of Social Development University of Cape Town Cape Town, South Africa Julius Okello

PhD graduate University of Cape Town Cape Town, South Africa (and Uganda) Pearl Pillay

Managing Director Youth Lab Johannesburg, South Africa

Tomoko Shibuya

Education and social development expert Maputo, Mozambique Viviene Taylor

Former South African National Planning Commissioner Associate Professor Emeritus and former Head, Department of Social Development University of Cape Town Cape Town, South Africa Jean D. Triegaardt

Visiting Professor, Centre for Social Development in Africa University of Johannesburg Johannesburg, South Africa Brenton Van Vrede

Chief Director, Social Assistance Department of Social Development, National Government of South Africa Pretoria, South Africa (Writing in his personal capacity) ASIA Christian Aspalter

Professor of Social Policy Beijing Normal University-​Hong Kong Baptist University United International College Zhuhai, China

Partha Bopaiah

Research Assistant OsloMet (Oslo Metropolitan University) Oslo, Norway Hye-​jin Choi

Associate Research Fellow Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs Seoul, South Korea Young Jun Choi

Professor, Department of Public Administration Yonsei University Director, Institute for Welfare State Research Seoul, South Korea Joelle H. Fong

Assistant Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy National University of Singapore Singapore Jie Gao

Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science National University of Singapore Singapore Xiang Gao

Professor, School of Public Affairs Zhejiang University Hangzhou, China Hee Soun Jang

Associate Professor, College of Health and Public Service University of North Texas Denton, Texas, USA Yijia Jing

Professor of Public Management, School of International Relations and Public Affairs Dean of the Institute for Global Public Policy Fudan University Shanghai, China

xiv

L i s t of C on tr ibutor s

Jung Wook Kim

Assistant Professor, Department of Urban Administration University of Seoul Seoul, South Korea Thomas R. Klassen

Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration York University Toronto, Canada T. J. Lah

Professor, Department of Public Administration Yonsei University Seoul, South Korea Sony Pellissery

Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy National Law School of India University Bangalore, India Jessica C. Teets

Associate Professor of Political Science Middlebury College Middlebury, Vermont, USA Jae-​jin Yang

Professor, Department of Public Administration Yonsei University Seoul, South Korea Ping Zhang

Associate Professor, School of International Relations and Public Affairs Fudan University Shanghai, China AUSTRALASIA Barbara Allen

Senior Lecturer, School of Government Victoria University of Wellington Wellington, New Zealand

Catherine Althaus

Professor and ANZSOG Chair of Public Sector Leadership and Reform University of New South Wales Canberra and Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) Canberra, Australia Jonathan Boston

Emeritus Professor of Public Policy, School of Government Victoria University of Wellington Wellington, New Zealand Gemma Carey

Professor and Academic Director, Centre for Social Impact University of New South Wales Sydney, Australia Kay Cook

Professor and Research Director, School of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities Swinburne University of Technology Melbourne, Australia Helen Dickinson

Professor of Public Service Research and Director, Public Service Research Group, School of Business University of New South Wales, Canberra Canberra, Australia Elizabeth Eppel

Senior Research Associate, School of Government Victoria University of Wellington Wellington, New Zealand Michael Fletcher

Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Governance and Policy Studies Victoria University of Wellington Wellington, New Zealand

Alex Hannant

Professor of Practice and Co-​Director, The Yunus Centre Griffith University Brisbane, Australia Brad Jackson

Professor of Leadership and Governance and Associate Dean, Strategic Engagement The University of Waikato Hamilton, New Zealand Michael Macaulay

Professor of Public Administration, School of Government Victoria University of Wellington Wellington, New Zealand Lee McCauley

Independent consultant Former Director PricewaterhouseCoopers Wellington, New Zealand Michael Mintrom

Professor of Public Policy Monash University Melbourne, Australia Lochlan Morrissey

Former Research Associate, Policy Innovation Hub Griffith University Brisbane, Australia Rt. Hon. Sir Geoffrey Palmer KC Former Prime Minister of New Zealand Professor and Distinguished Fellow, Faculty of Law Victoria University of Wellington Wellington, New Zealand Naren Prasad

Head of Education and Training, Research Department International Labour Organization Geneva, Switzerland

List of Cont ributors

xv

Daniel Reeders

PhD Researcher, School of Regulation and Global Governance Australian National University Canberra, Australia Anne Tiernan

Adjunct Professor Griffith University Founder and Director, Constellation IA Brisbane, Australia Amanda Wolf

Associate Professor, School of Government Victoria University of Wellington Wellington, New Zealand Sir Kim Workman

Adjunct Research Fellow, Institute of Criminology Victoria University of Wellington Wellington, New Zealand CANADA AND THE USA Karen J. Baehler

Associate Dean of Faculty and Scholar in Residence American University Washington, DC, USA Peter Graefe

Associate Professor of Political Science McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada Andrea Hetling

Professor, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA Jocelyn M. Johnston

Professor, School of Public Affairs American University Washington, DC, USA

xvi

L i s t of C on tr ibutor s

Rachel Laforest

Professor, Department of Political Studies Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada Karine Levasseur

Associate Professor, Department of Political Studies University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Austin M. McCrea

Assistant Professor of Public Administration, Department of Political Science Texas Tech University Lubbock, Texas, USA Kenneth J. Meier

Distinguished Scholar in Residence, School of Public Affairs American University Washington, DC, USA Weston Merrick

Research Manager State of Minnesota St. Paul, Minnesota, USA Stephanie Moulton

Professor and Faculty Director for Research, John Glenn College of Public Affairs The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio, USA Barbara S. Romzek

Professor, School of Public Affairs American University Washington, DC, USA Katherine Ruff

Associate Professor of Accounting, Sprott School of Business Co-​Director, Carleton Centre for Community Innovation Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Jodi R. Sandfort

Dean and Professor, Evans School of Public Policy and Governance University of Washington Seattle, Washington, USA Correne Saunders

Research Associate Abt Associates Seattle, Washington, USA Matthew C. Spitzmueller

Associate Professor, School of Social Work Syracuse University Syracuse, New York, USA Stephanie Walsh

Doctoral Candidate, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA EUROPE Tone Alm Andreassen

Professor and Head of Research OsloMet (Oslo Metropolitan University) Oslo, Norway Alexey G. Barabashev

Professor and Head of Chair, School of Politics and Governance HSE University Moscow, Russia Elio Borgonovi

Professor of Economics and Management of Public Administration President, Centre for Research on Health and Social Care Management Bocconi University Milan, Italy

Eric Breit

Research Professor OsloMet (Oslo Metropolitan University) Oslo, Norway Haldor Byrkjeflot

Professor of Sociology University of Oslo Oslo, Norway Ewan Ferlie

Professor of Public Services Management King’s College London London, England, United Kingdom Giovanni Fosti

Associate Professor of Practice in Welfare and Social Innovation Bocconi University Milan, Italy Isak D. Froumin

Distinguished Professor Academic Supervisor, Institute of Education HSE University Moscow, Russia Anton Hemerijck

Professor of Political Science European University Institute Florence, Italy Ivan Yu. Ivanov

Researcher, Institute of Education HSE University Moscow, Russia Andrey V. Klimenko

Professor and Head of Department, School of Politics and Governance Academic Supervisor, Institute for Public Administration and Governance HSE University Moscow, Russia

List of Cont ributors

xvii

Charlotta Levay

Associate Professor of Organizational Studies Lund University Lund, Sweden Associate Professor Norwegian University of Life Sciences Ås, Norway Renate Minas

Associate Professor of Social Work Stockholm University Stockholm, Sweden Maria A. Nagernyak

Deputy Vice Rector and Chief Expert, Institute for Social Policy HSE University Moscow, Russia Elisabetta Notarnicola

Associate Professor of Practice in Government, Health, and Not for Profits Bocconi University Milan, Italy Edoardo Ongaro

Professor of Public Management The Open University Milton Keynes, England, United Kingdom Lilia N. Ovcharova

Vice Rector, Director, and Professor, Institute for Social Policy HSE University Moscow, Russia Martin Powell

Professor of Health and Social Policy University of Birmingham Birmingham, England, United Kingdom Stefano Ronchi

Postdoctoral Fellow University of Milan Milan, Italy

xviii

L i s t of C on tr ibutor s

Chris Rønningstad

Postdoctoral Fellow OsloMet (Oslo Metropolitan University) Oslo, Norway Sergey V. Shishkin

Professor and Head of Chair, School of Politics and Governance Director, Centre for Health Policy HSE University Moscow, Russia Jacob Torfing

Professor of Politics and Institutions Research Director, Roskilde School of Governance Roskilde University Roskilde, Denmark Nicolette van Gestel

Professor of New Modes of Governance in Social Security and Employment Services, TIAS School for Business and Society Tilburg University Tilburg, Netherlands Karsten Vrangbæk

Professor of Political Science and Public Health Director, Center for Health Economics and Policy University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark LATIN AMERICA Camila Arza

Research Fellow Centro Interdisciplinario para el Estudio de Políticas Públicas and National Scientific and Technical Research Council Buenos Aires, Argentina

Merike Blofield

Director, GIGA Institute for Latin American Studies and Professor, University of Hamburg Hamburg, Germany Carla Bronzo

Professor and Associate Director School of Government Fundação João Pinheiro Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil Simone Cecchini

Director, CELADE Population Division United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Santiago, Chile Nuria Cunill-​Grau

Former Researcher and Professor, Centro de Estudios del Desarrollo Regional y Políticas Públicas (CEDER) Universidad de Los Lagos Osorno, Chile Fernando Filgueira

Professor, School of Social Sciences University of the Republic Montevideo, Uruguay James E. Mahon Jr. Woodrow Wilson Professor of Political Science Williams College Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA Sara Niedzwiecki

Associate Professor of Politics University of California Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, California, USA Zoila Ponce de León

Assistant Professor of Politics Washington and Lee University Lexington, Virginia, USA

Jennifer Pribble

Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Studies University of Richmond Richmond, Virginia, USA Fabián Repetto

Independent Consultant Buenos Aires, Argentina Axel Rivas

Director, School of Education Universidad de San Andrés Buenos Aires, Argentina Lucía Scuro

Social Affairs Officer, Division for Gender Affairs United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Santiago, Chile Natasha Borges Sugiyama

Professor of Political Science University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA Michael Touchton

Associate Professor of Political Science University of Miami Miami, Florida, USA Iliana Vaca

Statistician, Division for Gender Affairs United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Santiago, Chile Brian Wampler

Professor of Political Science Boise State University Boise, Idaho, USA

List of Cont ributors

xix

Introduction

C H A P T E R

1

Introduction to the Handbook

Karen J. Baehler

Abstract This handbook surveys knowledge from all six of the planet’s continuously inhabited continents to understand how governments and related institutions have attempted to advance human development and improve social outcomes over the past several decades. The current state of knowledge about the social welfare sphere is robust, but explorers of its two conceptual hemispheres—​social policy and social administration—​ have too often missed opportunities to share insights and trace connections across cultural, historical, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Each of the 64 chapters commissioned for the handbook seeks to rectify such omissions by applying an administrative lens to an issue of social policy. Authors were carefully chosen by editors based in Africa, Asia, Australasia, Canada and the United States, Europe, and Latin America to capture key developments and challenges in their region’s social welfare spheres during the decades spanning the turn of the millennium. The result is an engaging description of the international state of knowledge at the intersection of social policy and public administration on the eve of the COVID-​19 global pandemic. Adaptations forced by the pandemic and related crises may create momentum for social welfare system change, and even transformation, in some parts of the world. Future researchers will describe and measure such changes relative to benchmarks set in the pre-​pandemic period, including the rich variety of practices, paradigms, and insights collected in The Oxford Handbook of Governance and Management for Social Policy. Key Words: public administration, public management, social administration, social policy, implementation, governance, global

As the third decade of the 21st century opened, every part of the social welfare sector on every continent of the globe was scrambling to respond to COVID-​19 and its social and economic effects. From public health and healthcare to education, child care, elder care, housing, income support, employment support, superannuation, and social services, public officials rushed to adapt to rapidly changing client needs and service delivery constraints. No one can predict in advance how new ways of working induced by the pandemic will evolve and who will be harmed or helped most by their ripple effects. What we do know is that societies rarely if ever replace whole systems all at once, especially in times of crisis.

In the mid-​20th century, for example, Britain, France, and Switzerland made sweeping changes to their healthcare systems, but not by design: in those cases and many others, the new health systems emerged from the accumulation of adaptations to earlier arrangements, some in response to World War II, which people then chose to formalize and name (Gawande 2009). In this way, a series of grafts on an old set of institutions, such as those prompted by the COVID-​19 pandemic, may eventually add up to what we call a new system, but with roots in the same soil (i.e., structures, norms, and ways of thinking) that gave rise to the original seedlings. Switching metaphors, political scientists call this phenomenon“path dependence,” a concept akin to stickiness in Economics and a source of frustration for those who seek comprehensive reform of public institutions (Mahoney and Schensul 2009). The reality of path dependence means current and future social welfare arrangements cannot be understood without learning how policies, programs, and organizations have evolved over time. Exploring the roots of institutional continuity and the drivers of social-​welfare-​ sector change during past periods of flux can yield clues about the factors most likely to shape future adaptations and their impacts. Equally important, looking beyond one’s own context for stories of continuity and change in other times and places expands our ability to imagine and prepare for a wider range of possible future scenarios. As it happens, the timing of this handbook’s publication makes it an important source of benchmarks for examining pandemic-​and post-​pandemic-​era changes at the intersection of social policy and public administration. The 64 chapters collected here provide a rich description of the international state of knowledge about social welfare systems on the eve of COVID-​19’s arrival in Africa, Asia, Australasia, Canada/​United States, Europe, and Latin America. Chapter authors were carefully chosen by editors based in each geographic region to share expert insights about the region’s social welfare developments and challenges during the decades spanning the turn of the millennium. Each chapter applies a regionally relevant administrative lens to a selected social policy issue of notable importance to the region in recent decades. Many chapters also place their subjects in a larger cultural and historical context. The result is a diverse and engaging collection of insights about pre-​COVID-​19 social welfare systems around the world and an authoritative reference point for subsequent comparative research. Future handbooks will survey the pandemic and post-​pandemic social-​sector landscape to describe how things have changed, but compared to what? This handbook provides the answer: future changes will be defined in comparison to what we knew about governance and public management for social policy on the eve of the Global Pandemic. For guides to the handbook’s individual chapters, readers are encouraged to consult each section’s overview written by its regionally based editor(s) (Chapters 2, 12, 22, 34, 45, and 55). This introductory chapter sets out the whole handbook’s conceptual framework and its themes of goal pluralism, policy and institutional diversity, and local

4

K a r en J. Baeh ler

initiative. The chapters that follow document a rich variety of governance and public management conceptions and practices within and across the world’s heterogeneous regions. The sum of that variety constitutes not only the benchmark against which future changes will be understood but also the stock of human, cultural, community, and organizational resources from which future advances will be built. Scope Societies establish institutions. Institutions pursue objectives through policies. Policies change institutions and sometimes generate new ones, which in turn produce more policies, which shape society. Social change induces institutional change, and round it goes. Though simple to state, the complexity of this cycle poses enormous challenges to those who want to understand and explain the relationships between social policies and the ministries, departments, agencies, tribal governments, party organizations, nonprofit organizations, state-​owned enterprises, public-​private partnerships, local clubs, kinship structures, joined-​up networks, etc. that create and recreate them. In pursuit of insights into this complexity, the Oxford Handbook of Governance and Management for Social Policy examines macro, meso, and micro dimensions of public administration as they bear on social policy (Roberts 2020). Three words in the title signal the book’s encompassing approach. Governance Governance refers broadly to how power and authority are organized within a sphere of human activity. Understanding governance for social policy requires a macro lens because of the complexity caused by multiple interacting forces. Even in what appear to be the simplest social welfare systems, collective responses to social needs employ a complex and constantly shifting array of official and unofficial institutions that may include multiple levels of government, the commercial sector, and civil society in all its many modes. The study of governance seeks to explain why specific configurations of institutions exist in specific contexts at specific points in time and how those configurations influence not only the delivery of social benefits and services, but also the formulation and adoption of the policies in the first place and their evolution over time. Governance arrangements reflect larger historical, cultural, psychological, political, and economic drivers of institutional change and continuity, as do the policies they shape. Chapters in this book map the many influences at play with help from theoretical frameworks and empirical findings found in public administration, public policy, political science, political economy, policy history, social policy, social development, social history, sociology, budgeting and finance, and other related fields and sub-​fields.

Introduct ion to the Handbook

5

Public Management Management for social policy refers to how officials within relevant government and private-​and civil-​sector organizations acquire and use resources to generate activities, outputs, and outcomes aimed at improving human well-​being (Baehler and Klerman 2017). Much public management research seeks to model individual and organizational behaviors within or among programs or agencies as functions of selected internal and external forces, some of which are easier to observe and measure than others. Many public management researchers also seek to describe and explain the impact of organizational behaviors and management activities on program outcomes. Research on organizational networks, joined-​up government, partnerships of multiple types (public-​public, public-​ private, public-​nonprofit, etc.), and related phenomena capture inter-​institutional complexity. The public management literature is vast and robust. Bright lines between public management and governance scholarship are difficult to draw, but helpful in ensuring all three levels of analysis—​macro, meso, and micro—​are pursued. Social Policy For purposes of this handbook, social policy encompasses the various expansions of the field described by Daniel Béland (2019), including fiscal policy perspectives, development issues of special relevance to the Global South, and “social protection by other means” (Castles 1989). The latter category refers to provision of direct and indirect social support via mechanisms not ordinarily associated with the welfare state, a phenomenon observed in virtually every country around the world but often perceived as more central in developing regions (Seelkopf and Stark 2019). Social policy by other means takes a wide variety of forms at different times and in different locations. These include, among many others, “company welfare benefits” and relative wage equality supplied by the corporate sector in Japan (Peng 2000, 94); provision of housing and other welfare benefits via the socialist “work unit” or danwei in China (Liu and Chai 2013, p. 197); labor market regulation, trade protection, and immigration controls in postwar New Zealand and Australia (Castles 1989); UK-​based proposals to shift public funding from healthcare to social determinants of health to improve health outcomes more effectively and efficiently (Wolff 2020); tax breaks for private spending, including employer-​sponsored health coverage, on a massive scale in the United States (Mandel 2011); trade-​union-​administered unemployment insurance in Nordic countries, known as the Ghent system (Lind 2007); consumer and producer subsidies in developing and middle-​income countries such as Egypt and Jordan (Seelkopf and Starke 2019); agricultural subsidies and access to squatter housing in Turkey (Dorlach 2019); nudges and choice architecture as embraced in many countries (Thaler and Sunstein 2021); and a diverse array of traditional sharing systems tied to kinship and community relationships in many parts of the world, including remittances.

6

K a r en J. Baeh ler

While some of the items in the above list are becoming more scarce over time, others are growing in popularity. Overall reliance on the “other” category shows no signs of diminishing. Adding social policy by other means to more familiar welfare-​state programs generates a huge menu of tools governments can use to supply (or encourage other institutions to supply) social protection goods. New approaches and rediscovery of older approaches will continue to expand the list over time. From Social Programs to Social Transformation How, then, can governments decide which of the many new and existing approaches to embrace? Program evaluation research has illuminated the relative effectiveness of some specific, defined programs for which big data can be harnessed (Rathinem et al. 2021); randomized control trials (RCTs) can be run (Menzies Munthe-​Kaas et al. 2018); or, perhaps ideally, mixed methods research findings are available (Bannerjee and Dufflo 2011). Leaders of the “what works?” movement are to be commended for embracing open access distribution of research results and for making summaries of their results available in nontechnical, plain-​language reports (campbellcollaboration.org). Pursuit of rigorous evidence about what works in education, healthcare, housing, income supplementation, early childhood supports, development initiatives, etc. promises to improve efficiency and effectiveness of social welfare spending. When governments or donor organizations are choosing between two or three well-​tested interventions and applying a social-​investment framework to program choices, such information can help improve the quality of decision-​making. But it is important to recognize limitations to the evidence-​based, social-​investment-​ oriented approach to social protection. These include a set of Western-​oriented assumptions about the programmatic nature of welfare states plus an inherent incrementalism that tends to arise because you cannot change too many different things all at once in a program structured as a controlled experiment. An additional challenge comes from the difficulty of replicating results in settings with other institutional structures, cultures, and norms: measures of the generalizability, or external validity, of program evaluation results are often fuzzier than measures of internal validity. Beyond these familiar concerns, some alternative social-​policy paradigms leapfrog the micro/​meso level of programs altogether, and in so doing make different informational demands. For example, when national governments or regional groups of governments seek to pursue a transformative approach to advancing human well-​being, they need insights into complex processes of community development and renewal in light of macro factors such as the legacy effects of colonialism and postcolonialism (in many countries), geopolitical trends, and ongoing pressures of economic globalization (Taylor 2015). Comprehensive, rights-​based approaches to achieving universal social protection likewise require insights on a different scale from program-​by-​program approaches (Cecchini et al. 2015). Such insights include knowledge about longer-​term forces of institutional

Introduct ion to the Handbook

7

evolution and how existing pathways can be redirected toward more beneficial, people-​ centered trajectories of development. RCTs and big-​data studies may help inform the macro picture but cannot supply most of what is needed. Despite significant differences in strategic scale, the social transformation (Taylor 2002) and social investment (Hemerijck 2018) paradigms may overlap where specific ultimate goals are concerned, such as reducing poverty and inequality. Focusing on these shared ends can help scholars and practitioners move away from narrow definitions of social policy that include only the cash, in-​kind, and social-​insurance-​type interventions or “investments” associated with the welfare state. Viewed from the perspective of ultimate outcomes rather than programmatically, social policy could include even micro practices, such as the administrative burdens imposed by front-​line agencies on clients (Heinrich 2018; Herd and Moynihan 2018), many of which function as “sludge,” or harmful nudges (Thaler 2018). An outcomes-​based approach also encompasses macroeconomic and macro-​social strategies that contribute to the “key objectives we typically associate with traditional social programs” (Béland 2019, 308). Social Policy for What? The outcome-​based definition of social policy invites a renewed discussion of goals: What are the “key objectives we typically associate with traditional social programs” (Béland 2019, 308)? While that single question ultimately motivates and unites all 64 of the essays collected in this handbook, each chapter author probably would give it a slightly different answer. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen (2009, 253) captured both the multiplicity and universality of social policy objectives in his concept of human capabilities, which refers to “a person’s actual ability to do the different things that she values doing.” Capabilities are not themselves achievements, but rather sets of possible, attainable achievements. Put simply, they are the feasible activities and states of existence lying within an individual’s grasp. Sen (1999) calls them beings and doings, always plural. As such, they represent one’s substantive freedom to achieve the kind of life, in all its many dimensions, one has chosen to value. Such freedom depends heavily, but not entirely, on factors that public policy can facilitate or frustrate, including construction of social infrastructure; access to resources, information, and opportunities; and protection from violence and injustice. Capabilities are sometimes categorized into different groups, starting with basic capabilities, which include, for example, the freedom to be safely housed and well-​nourished with access to clean air and water, the freedom to marry or not marry, and others. Once these vital foundations are secured, other capabilities, and the types of resources and enabling conditions they require, tend to vary from place to place and time to time depending on social conventions. A capability such as freedom to access the internet arguably has evolved from supplemental status to basic-​necessity status in just a few decades (Conceição 2019; United Nations 2021). By contrast, the social necessity of owning a

8

K a r en J. Baeh ler

linen shirt in eighteenth-​century England, made famous by Adam Smith in Book V of The Wealth of Nations, has gone the way of all fashion trends. Each basic capability has an essential quality about it that precludes trade-​offs and substitutions between them. While supplemental or enhanced capabilities may substitute for each other at times, all capabilities share the defining quality of irreducibility: they cannot be reduced or converted into any single, uniform measure such as dollars, utility, or happiness. Correspondingly, policy choices that aim to support human capabilities cannot be assessed via cost-​benefit analysis, which requires translation of all values into monetary units. Instead, multi-​criteria methods must be applied, with implications for how government ministries and departments organize their analytical and advisory functions. It should be noted that plural capabilities can be aggregated into various index measures, such as the Multidimensional Poverty Index (Alkire et al. 2020), after each is measured separately in its own natural units. Such aggregate measures provide valuable tools for wide-​angle analysis of well-​being without losing sight of the index’s component parts as separate and distinct centers of value. Although some theorists of the social investment paradigm have linked it normatively to Sen’s capability approach, the point deserves closer scrutiny. The idea of investment typically signals an instrumental relationship: we invest in X to get more of Y, which is what we really want. Justifying investments in human capabilities based on their potential to increase economic productivity and growth may be smart politically, but it diverges from a core insight of the capability approach: that the economy exists to help people achieve the many things they value in their lives, and not the other way around. For Sen, capabilities are what humans everywhere really want. Measuring Progress Against Plural Objectives The concept of basic capabilities forms the core of contemporary global approaches to measuring and advancing human development. The international development community began operationalizing the multidimensional capabilities approach on a global scale in the 1990s. In 2000, the approach coalesced around eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)1 adopted by the United Nations to overcome basic human deprivations worldwide by 2015. An expanded set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)2 took

The eight MDGs are to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/​AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop a global partnership for development. 2 The 17 SDGs are no poverty; zero hunger; good health and well-​being; quality education; gender equality; clean water and sanitation; affordable and clean energy; decent work and economic growth; industry, innovation, and infrastructure; reduced inequality; sustainable cities and communities; responsible consumption and production; climate action; life below water; life on land; peace, justice, and strong institutions; and partnerships for the goals. 1

Introduct ion to the Handbook

9

over where the MDGs left off in 2016, with targets set for 2030. Each program relies on data collected from a wide variety of national and international sources. The MDGs focused largely on meeting the needs of the world’s poorest, most of whom (but not all) live in countries with lower levels of economic development. The expanded SDGs offer more opportunities for comparison with wealthier countries, such as those represented by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In 2010, the OECD began its own program of measuring changes in well-​being and human development defined in capability-​type terms, including innovative measures of “systemic resources that underpin future wellbeing” expressed in terms of stocks and flows of economic, natural, human, and social capital (OECD 2020, 20). A cleverly titled series of reports—​“How’s Life?”—​tracks more than 80 indicators in 15 categories3 for 37 countries representing all continents but Africa. These indicators, like the MDGs and SDGs, rely on multiple data sources to capture many different types of capabilities as the ultimate aims of social policy. How is the quest for improved human well-​being going so far? The answer depends on which statistics one chooses to highlight and at what level of aggregation: there are nearly as many patterns of change and continuity as there are indicators. A few statistical aggregators, like the Gapminder Foundation, have developed a reputation in some quarters for excessive optimism. Although such a judgment seems harsh, it points to the hypothetical potential for cherry-​picking among plural indicators to make a preconceived point. One significant contribution of the MDGs and SDGs has been to delimit the potential for such distortion by identifying a canonical set of indicators and insisting that all of them be tracked and reported individually. Although less commonly cited, the plural indicators that constitute the OECD’s well-​being framework also have potential to become industry standards for assessing well-​being progress in more developed countries. According to the main human development reports of the MDG/​SDG era, the rate of extreme poverty (people living on less than US$1.90 a day) fell by two-​thirds worldwide from 1990 to 2013 (from 35 to 11 percent), thanks in large part to extraordinary income gains in China (Conceição 2019; Jahan 2016). But progress toward the goal of ending extreme poverty slowed even before the COVID-​19 pandemic, and experts now expect the pandemic to generate the first increases in global extreme poverty since 1998, with particularly dire impacts on women and the working poor (United Nations 2021). The worldwide mortality rate for children under five dropped by half from 1990–​2015, with especially notable declines in sub-​Saharan Africa. That indicator continued to decline until 2018, but COVID-​19 and its flow-​on effects pose the threat of very significant 3 The OECD Wellbeing Framework tracks current well-​being (averages, inequalities, and deprivations) in the categories of income and wealth, work and job quality, housing, health, knowledge and skills, environment quality, subjective well-​being, safety, work-​life balance, social connections, and civil engagement. It tracks resources for future well-​being in the form of stocks, flows, risk factors, and resilience of four categories of “capital”: natural, human, economic, and social.

10

K a r en J. Baeh ler

increases in under-​five mortality due to disruptions in food supplies and healthcare access. Progress was made against education goals between 2000 and 2018, with a decline in the worldwide share of children and youth not in school from 26 to 17 percent, but here again, COVID-​19 is causing progress to stall, especially for the 500 million young people worldwide who lack access to distance learning. Even where global indicators showed dramatic progress between 1990 and 2018–​2020, historically large inequalities within and between countries often persisted or grew (Conceição 2019). The scale of remaining challenges is enormous, even in the absence of COVID-​19. On the eve of the pandemic, 1.3 billion people were living in multidimensional poverty, meaning that their scores on three or more of 10 indicators of health, education, and standard of living fell below the threshold associated with deprivation (Alkire et al. 2020). Out of 5.9 billion people living in 107 developing countries tracked by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative team, a staggering 71 percent experienced at least one deprivation and the average number of deprivations was five (Alkire et al. 2020). More than half the world’s 10-​year-​old children cannot read and understand a simple story (Conceição 2019). As of 2016, most of the world’s population (55 percent or approximately 4 billion people) had no access to social protection programs (United Nations, 2021). Looking specifically at unemployment payments, only 3 percent of unemployed workers in sub-​Saharan Africa receive them (United Nations 2021). That last statistic poses a sharp contrast with the 50 percent of unemployed workers who receive unemployment benefits in New Zealand and Australia. Comparing the developing world to the developed world generally, the scale of inequalities in all dimensions is difficult to overstate. Yet both relative and absolute poverty exist in the developed world, too. According to the 2020 “How’s Life?” Report (OECD 2020), in 2018, among OECD countries with available data, 12 percent of households lived in overcrowded conditions (34 percent in Mexico, the worst-​off OECD country on this measure) and 17 percent of households in the bottom two quartiles of the income distribution were overburdened by housing costs, meaning they spent more than 40 percent of their disposable income on housing. More than one-​third of non-​poor people were financially insecure, meaning they could not continue living above the poverty line if they experienced sudden loss of income. And 21 percent of the population reported having difficulty or great difficulty making ends meet (74 percent in Greece, the worst-​off OECD country on this measure). Between 2010 and 2018, income inequality, measured as the ratio of household income enjoyed by the top quartile divided by the bottom quartile, increased in one-​third of OECD countries (OECD 2020). Over the same period, deaths of despair (fatalities from suicide, acute alcohol abuse, and drug overdose) declined in one-​third of OECD countries but increased substantially in the United States, Slovenia, and the Netherlands.

Introduct ion to the Handbook

11

Why and How? Policies and Institutions as Explanatory Variables The complex mix of advances and setbacks described by the MDG, SDG, and OECD frameworks naturally raise questions about why and how key social indicators have been moving as they have over time, both in the aggregate and for different subsets of the populations at regional, national, and sub-​national levels. To what extent can social policies, broadly or narrowly defined, explain these differences? To what extent can governance and management structures and behaviors explain these differences? Attributing causation for trends reported across so many different contexts in the UN and OECD reports poses a daunting analytical challenge. Even where explanatory factors can be identified, some of those factors remain largely outside the immediate control of public policy and public administration, especially in smaller, poorer countries: think, for example, about how natural disasters, climate change, war, demographic shifts, global capital shifts, and epidemics overwhelm the best-​laid plans of policy makers and program operators. Nonetheless, governments can help their people prepare for such shocks by enabling skills and habits associated with resilience and by reducing social marginalization, a powerfully insidious contributor to vulnerability. Many other explanatory variables point more clearly to choices of public policies and institutions as drivers of outcomes. For example, when comparing groups of countries with advanced and emerging economies, redistribution generated by direct taxes and transfers explains nearly all the differences between the two groups in levels of disposable income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient (Conceição 2019). Among OECD countries, those with higher equality scores also demonstrated greater average well-​being (OECD 2020). The role of inequality in capability acquisition, vulnerability, resilience, and sustainable social outcomes of all types deserves further attention in theory, empirical research, and practice. Policy matters, of course, but which policies work best? Recent work on “social policy by other means” concludes that “there are many ways in which governments can protect their citizens from long-​term or cyclical negative effects of market forces” (Seelkopf & Starke 2019, p. 221). Although most of these will never be catalogued in a library of evidence-​based social-​policy interventions, other methodologies may emerge to help social scientists illuminate their successes and failures, including intensive fieldwork and dialogue with policy stakeholders and service deliverers (Botein and Hetling 2016; Cecchini et al. 2015; Mintrom and Luetjens 2017; Ongaro et al. 2021). Adaptations to standard program evaluation methods also can expand their ability to produce genuine insights (Besharov 2009). Ideally, diverse, context-​rich research initiatives will inform governments and other actors about the pluses and minuses of a diverse array of social-​policy-​type approaches without elevating some approaches above less-​familiar alternatives due to lack of evaluation opportunities for the latter. Potential for unintended effects always deserves attention:

12

K a r en J. Baeh ler

the evidence-​based movement should not crowd out home-​grown, rights-​based, or transformative strategies or artificially constrain the diversity of policies. Governance and public management also matter greatly (Puppim De Oliveira et al. 2015). Institutional legacies influence patterns of social needs and public attitudes about appropriate responses to those needs, including everything from seemingly micro decisions about paperwork requirements, which may have large impacts (Heinrich 2018; Herd and Moynihan 2018), to macro decisions about the acceptable mix of private and public services in every sector from health to education to superannuation and beyond. Prior to and during policy formulation and adoption phases, administrators often determine levels and types of public engagement and communication between policy stakeholders, with potentially significant impacts on levels of social conflict (Ha et al. 2009). After policies have been officially adopted, administrative structures and norms shape implementation and processes for measuring and assessing processes and results. They influence how lessons from implementation will be applied (or not) to adjust program operations. Paradigms of public administration also play important roles in mediating the diffusion of new ideas across countries via professional, scholarly, and political networks. Which administrative structures and practices are to be preferred? As the chapters in this handbook illustrate, answers to this question vary from place to place and era to era; they depend heavily on context. Time will tell if rough consensus eventually emerges around the optimal features of governance and public management for supporting the “key objectives we typically associate with traditional social programs” (Béland 2019, 308). But a more important question may be whether such consensus, if possible, is desirable. Past efforts to define universal ideals of public administration and policy offer cautionary tales. The “Washington Consensus”—​a package of structural adjustment policies imposed by international finance institutions on debtor countries as prerequisites for loans—​caused widespread social harm throughout the developing world in the 1980s and provoked sharp criticism in the 1990s and beyond (Lopes 2012). Also starting in the 1980s, multiple variations of the New Public Management (NPM) paradigm of government efficiency and effectiveness diffused internationally, but through voluntary means. Although NPM remains popular in some circles today, it also attracts a vigorous backlash: critics from multiple perspectives often focus on actual and theoretical harms done by NPM enthusiasts to highly valued public service norms and practices (Denhardt and Denhardt 2015). Future efforts to codify universal best practices in governance, public management, and public administration for social policy (or public policy generally) should take heed of these experiences. The Washington Consensus case especially highlights the contradiction of using neoliberal arguments to justify replacing an (albeit messy) diversity and multiplicity of worldwide governance systems with a single, centrally conceived model. Both examples—​the Washington Consensus and NPM—​highlight the problems with ahistorical, context-​free institutional paradigms grounded in ideology.

Introduct ion to the Handbook

13

In contrast, Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom (1990, 2005) built her understanding of one type of governance institution from the bottom up by engaging with multiple local examples of self-​organized natural resource management arrangements in a vast array of countries, some of which had been in continuous operation for 1,000 years. From the heterogeneity of these cases, as narrated by researchers in the field and understood in their local contexts, Ostrom extracted shared design principles for commons ​governance without ever attempting to substitute those principles for the judgments of local decision makers. In fact, one of Ostrom’s design principles calls for the people closest to the natural resources to build and lead each organization. Local initiative is a core strength and defining characteristic of these types of institutions. Because the research on “governing the commons” (the title of Ostrom’s 2005 book) has focused mostly on environmental governance, applying its insights to the social policy sector requires careful construction of analogies—​a potentially fruitful project. This handbook captures selected examples of contemporary institutional diversity in the social policy sectors of multiple countries across the six regions. Such diversity includes not only administrative practices and policies themselves, but also ways of thinking about those practices in historical and cultural context. Organization of the Handbook Social policies specify how public resources and authority are meant to be transformed into capabilities for individuals, families, and communities, both now and in the future. Public administration mechanisms contribute to every step of that transformation process, including driving, orchestrating, and operationalizing it, and plugging inevitable gaps in policies as they come to light. Yet, those who debate and design new policies and institutional arrangements, including those advocating for the diffusion of ideas across jurisdictions, sometimes do so without adequately understanding a policy idea’s history and context (Ongaro et al. 2021). For these reasons, a place-​based approach to the public-​administration-​social-​policy nexus warrants its own treatment within The Oxford Library of International Social Policy. Toward that end, the 64 essays that follow this introductory chapter are organized into six regional sections—​Africa, Asia, Australasia, Canada-​United States, Europe, and Latin America—​each with its own overview written by the section’s regionally based editor(s). Readers interested in exploring promising institutional and operational developments and emerging challenges through a regional lens will find background essays in each section that place the region’s social welfare system in historical and cultural context, followed by essays on specific topics of special relevance to the region and specific countries within the region. Together, each of the six geographical sections constitutes its own self-​contained mini-​handbook. Alternatively, or additionally, readers may wish to follow a thematic pathway through the book. Each of the six regional sections is organized into four subsections. Reading a

14

K a r en J. Baeh ler

single thematic subsection across all six geographical sections provides another comparative approach to our subject. Historical Evolution and Social Trends Chapters in this subsection chronicle the evolution of administrative and policy responses to social and economic changes over time within a region, including the central importance of legacy effects associated with multiple forms of colonialism and postcolonialism in several regions. Macro forces, which range from wars and financial crises to demographic transitions and technological disruptions, drive governance and management changes by placing new demands on existing systems and generating new opportunities. These chapters provide important background information for each regional section and help the reader understand the section’s subsequent chapters in the context of important regional facts, trends, and themes. Institutions, Organizations, and Operations Social-​sector organizations of all types belong to larger institutional systems in which time and energy must be spent developing external networks while also focusing on the details of running programs. Chapters in this subsection address roles for market mechanisms, nonprofits, and governmental bodies in social policymaking and delivery as well as intergovernmental and multilevel dimensions of governance, with a focus on distinctive regional approaches. Issues addressed here include welfare regime dynamics, organizational capacity, applications of new technology to service design and delivery, public participation and engagement, traditional and kinship approaches, network approaches, collaborations, and partnerships. Policies nearly always beget institutions, which in turn beget future policies. Handbook authors illustrate the ubiquity of this cycle, and the rich diversity of resulting arrangements, in topic after topic across the regions. Finance Viewed from a macro perspective, the shape of a social provision system reflects a combination of values, ideological preferences, and levels of economic capacity. More narrowly, realities of revenue collection and expenditure budgeting constrain social program design and delivery, and scarcity sometimes generates administrative creativity. Chapters in this subsection examine the intersection of fiscal policy, social policymaking, governance, and management as experienced in each region, including relationships with donor organizations, issues of fiscal austerity, and emerging hybrid forms of financing. Innovation and Evaluation Social policymakers and administrators continually seek fresh, new ways of responding to shifting social needs and gauging progress toward their goals. Alongside new technologies of social provision, new performance and productivity measures have emerged to

Introduct ion to the Handbook

15

assess effectiveness and efficiency. Chapters in this subsection highlight selected innovations and discuss promising practices and emerging challenges associated with conducting social delivery experiments, learning/​borrowing from other jurisdictions, and gathering and using various types of data to measure outputs and outcomes. Conclusion When public policy experts hear “public administration” and “public management,” they often think “implementation”—​that is, everything that happens after policy is made. And they are not wrong: implementation is one large and important component of public administration and management, but it is only one among many. Institutional and organizational structures, processes, norms, and behaviors—​the macro, meso, and micro contents of public administration—​shape every stage of social policymaking and delivery, including outcomes, in every region of the world. The Oxford Handbook of Governance and Management for Social Policy fills a niche for teachers, researchers, practitioners, and students who already appreciate the importance of the social-​policy/​administration interface and want to know more. This handbook also seeks to raise the profile of governance and public management among readers with a base of knowledge about social policy but less familiarity with the full range of its administrative dimensions. In addition, readers from a wide variety of backgrounds may approach the handbook as global explorers in search of wholly new perspectives about how to design institutions and organizations to advance human capability and well-​being. It is also worth mentioning what this book does not do: It does not attempt to codify good practice. Perhaps codification will be possible eventually on an international scale, but not yet. Broad principles of institutional design can be identified, such as universalism, human rights, public engagement, democratic administration, people-​centered design, and local initiative—​ common themes throughout these chapters. An especially important principle deserving of more attention is the need to overcome the widespread “presentist bias” of governments so as to enable “governing for the future” via sustainable social policy and administrative innovations—​an important type of institutional capability (Boston 2017, xxi). Beyond broad principles, however, the international lessons of public administration for social policy are not sufficiently distinct to start developing dashboards of institutional indicators to complement those represented by the MDG, SDG, and OECD well-​being indicators. Indeed, the various social policy and administrative paradigms discussed throughout the handbook—​from Beveridge and Bismarck to new public management, social investment, human-​right models, and social transformation—​imply different goals and different sets of indicators for measuring and comparing governments’ contributions to those goals. Feasibility aside, this introduction raises questions about the desirability of even trying to codify good practice in social policy and administration. Perhaps instead of looking for “what works” internationally, the fields of theory and practice represented here would do well to focus first on understanding policy diversity and institutional diversity

16

K a r en J. Baeh ler

in context, including macro, meso, and micro forces of continuity and change as they vary from era to era and place to place. This means also recognizing broadly transformative agendas as species of social policy, including strategies to support human capability development by reforming taxes, trade, immigration, labor markets, housing markets, and other opportunity structures not typically categorized as levers of social policy and administration. Path dependence—​this chapter’s opening theme—​makes social transformation difficult. Nonetheless, with enough local knowledge, initiative, and innovation, old pathways might be redirected toward universal social goals embodied in the MDG, SDG, and OECD indicators. Adaptations forced by COVID-​19 may create momentum for social welfare system change, and even transformation, in some parts of the world. Future researchers will describe and measure such changes relative to benchmarks set in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. The authors and editors of this handbook hope the chapters that follow have captured the diversity of the pre-​pandemic era’s developments, challenges, and debates at the intersection of social policy and public administration in Africa, Asia, Australasia, Canada/​United States, Europe, and Latin America. The variety chronicled here provides both a reference point for subsequent comparative research and a rich set of conceptual and empirical resources for continuing the struggle against poverty, inequality, marginalization, and the forces that stunt human capabilities everywhere. References Alkire, Sabina, Pedro Conceição, Cecilia Calderón, Jakob Dirksen, Maya Evans, Rolando Gonzales, Jon Hall, Admir Jahic, Usha Kanagaratnam, Maarit Kivilo, Milorad Kovacevic, Fanni Kovesdi, Corinne Mitchell, Ricardo Nogales, Anna Ortubia, Mónica Pinilla-​Roncancio, Natalie Quinn, Carolina Rivera, Sophie Scharlin-​Pettee, and Nicolai Suppa. 2020. Charting Pathways Out of Multidimensional Poverty: Achieving the SDGs. New York and Oxford, UK: United Nations Development Programme and Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative. Baehler, Karen, and Jacob Alex Klerman. 2017. “Measuring and Managing Further Along in the Logic Model.” In Improving Public Services: International Experiences in Using Evaluation Tools to Measure Program Performance, edited by Douglas J. Besharov, Karen J. Baehler, and Jacob Alex Klerman. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 39–​63. Bannerjee, Abhijit, and Esther Dufflo. 2011. Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. New York: Public Affairs. Béland, Daniel 2019. “Varieties of Social Policy by Other Means: Lessons for Comparative Welfare State Research.” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 21(3): 306–​311. DOI: 10.1080/​ 13876988.2019.1574088 Besharov, Douglas J. 2009. “From the Great Society to Continuous Improvement Government: Shifting from ‘Does It Work?’ to ‘What Would Make It Better?’ ” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 28(2): 199–​220. Boston, Jonathan. 2017. Governing for the Future: Designing Democratic Institutions for a Better Tomorrow. Bingley, UK: Emerald. Botein, Hilary, and Andrea Hetling. 2016. Home Safe Home: Housing Solutions for Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Castles, Francis G. 1989. “Social Protection by Other Means: Australia’s Strategy of Coping with External Vulnerability.” In The Comparative History of Public Policy, edited by F.G. Castles, 16–​55. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Introduct ion to the Handbook

17

Cecchini, Simone, Fernando Filgueira, Rodrigo Martínez, and Cecilia Rossel, eds. 2015. Towards Universal Social Protection: Latin American Pathways and Tools. Santiago, Chile: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Conceição, Pedro 2019. “Beyond Income, Beyond Averages, Beyond Today: Inequalities in Human Development in the 21st Century.” Human Development Report 2019. New York: United Nations Development Programme. Denhardt, Janet V., and Robert B. Denhardt. 2015. The New Public Service: Serving, Not Steering, 4th ed. New York: Routledge. Dorlach, Tim. 2019. “Retrenchment of Social Policy by Other Means: A Comparison of Agricultural and Housing Policy in Turkey.” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 21(3): 270–​286. DOI: 10.1080/​13876988.2018.1466856 Gawande, Atul. 2009. Getting There from Here. The New Yorker 84(46): 26–​33. Ha, Yeonseob, Jaehyun Joo, Minah Kang, T.J. Lah, and Jiho Jang. 2009. “Social Conflicts and Policy-​Making in Korea: Interpretation of Policy Failures through a Public Discourse Perspective. International Review of Administrative Sciences 75(4): 649–​664. Heinrich, Carolyn J. 2018. “Presidential Address: ‘A Thousand Petty Fortresses’: Administrative Burden in U.S. Immigration Policies and Its Consequences.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 37: 211–​239. Hemerijck, Anton 2018. “Social Investment as a Policy Paradigm.” Journal of European Public Policy 25(6): 810–​827. Herd, Pamela, and Donald P. Moynihan. 2018. Administrative Burden: Policymaking by other Means. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Jahan, Selim. 2016. “Human Development for Everyone.” Human Development Report 2016. New York: United Nations Development Programme. Lind, Jens. 2007. “A Nordic Saga? The Ghent System and Trade Unions.” International Journal of Employment Studies 15(1): 49–​68. Lopes, Carlos. 2012. “Economic Growth and Inequality: The New Post-​Washington Consensus.” RCCR (Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais) Annual Review 4: 69–​85. Liu, Zhilin, and Yanwei Chai. 2013. “Danwei, Family Ties, and Residential Mobility of Urban Elderly in Beijing.” In Chinese Social Policy in a Time of Transition, edited by Douglas J. Besharov and Karen J. Baehler. New York: Oxford University Press, 196–​222. Mahoney, James, and Daniel Schensul. 2009. “Historical Context and Path Dependence.” In The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, edited by Robert Goodin and Charles Tilley. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 454–471. Mandel, Daniel. 2011. “Tax Expenditures and Social Policy: A Primer.” In Smart Subsidy for Community Devlopment, edited by Anna Steiger, David Black, and Kirsten May, 28–​35. Boston: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute. July. https://​www.boston​fed.org/​publi​cati​ons/​one-​ time-​pubs/​smart-​subs​idy-​for-​commun​ity-​deve​lopm​ent.aspx, acces​sed March 30, 2021. Menzies Munthe-​Kaas, Heather, Rigmor C. Berg, and Nora Blaasvær. 2018. Effectiveness of Interventions to Reduce Homelessness: A Systematic Review and Meta-​Analysis. Campbell Systematic Reviews 14(1): 1–​281. https://​doi.org/​10.4073/​csr.2018.3 OECD. 2020. How’s Life? 2020: Measuring Well Being. Paris: OECD Publishing. Ongaro, Edoardo, Ting Gong, and Yijia Jing. 2021. “Public Administration, Context, and Innovation: A Framework of Analysis.” Public Administration and Development 41(1): 4–​11. Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The AN of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ostrom, Elinor. 2005. Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Peng, Ito. 2000. “A Fresh Look at the Japanese Welfare State.” Social Policy and Administration 34(1): 87–​114. Puppim De Oliveira, Jose A., Yijia Jing, and Paul Collins. 2015. “Public Administration for Development: Trends and the Way Forward.” Public Administration and Development 35(2): 65–​72. Rathinam, Francis, Sayak Khatua, Zeba Siddiqui, Manya Malik, Pallavi Duggal, Samantha Watson, and Xavier Vollenweider. 2021. “Using Big Data for Evaluating Development Outcomes: A Systematic Map.” Campbell Systematic Reviews 17:e1149. DOI: 10.1002/​cl2.1149 Roberts, Alasdair. 2020. “Bridging Levels of Public Administration: How Macro Shapes Meso and Micro.” Administration and Society 52(4): 631–​656.

18

K a r en J. Baeh ler

Seelkopf, Laura, and Peter Starke. 2019. “Social Policy by Other Means: Theorizing Unconventional Forms of Welfare Production.” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 21(3): 219–​234. DOI: 10.1080/​13876988.2019.1574089 Sen, Amartya K. 1999. Commodities and Capabilities. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Sen, Amartya K. 2009. The Idea of Justice. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Smith, Adam. 1976/​1776. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Taylor, Viviene. 2002. “Transforming the Present—​Protecting the Future.” Report prepared for the Department of Social Development by the Committee of Inquiry into a Comprehensive System of Social Security for South Africa. Pretoria, South Africa. Taylor, Viviene. 2015. “Advancing Regionalism and a Social Policy Agenda for Positive Change: From Rhetoric to Action.” Global Social Policy 15(3): 329–​354. Thaler, Richard H. 2018. “Nudge, Not Sludge.” Science 361(6401): 431. DOI: 10.1126/​science.aau9241 Thaler, Richard H., and Cass R. Sunstein. 2021. Nudge: The Final Edition. New York: Penguin Books. United Nations. 2021. Sustainable Development Goals online updates. New York: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Statistics Division. https://​unst​ats.un.org/​sdgs/​rep​ort/​2020/​ Overv​iew/​, accessed March 30, 2021. Wolff, Jonathan. 2020. Ethics and Public Policy: A Philosophical Inquiry, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.

Introduct ion to the Handbook

19

SECTION 

Africa

I

C H A P T E R

2

S ection Overview: Governance and Management of Social Policy in Africa

Viviene Taylor

Abstract Wide variations exist in African perspectives on governance and social administration and how such processes relate to social policy. During various historical periods states used their power and influence to develop and implement social policies through social administrative systems within a very specific, piecemeal, and reactive approach. As a consequence, Africa’s contemporary social policies and programs reveal continuities with the continent’s colonial and post-​colonial history as well as neo-​colonial influences underpinned by a global neoliberal agenda. Critical policy discourses as shown in the chapters in this section reveal such continuities by focusing on structurally based conditions of poverty, inequality, famine, and the burden of disease that derive from historic and contemporary processes of politics and governance. This section of the Handbook reinforces the importance of acknowledging the long shadow of oppressive colonial practices that undermine the possibilities of transformative social policies and human development in Africa and elsewhere. Key Words: colonial, national liberation, post-​colonial and post independent, social crises, poverty, deprivations, governance, social policy, transformation

Africa is not homogeneous, and its political economy is complex and rooted in a long history of conquest and struggles against imperialism. The Balkanization of the continent (the breakup of Africa into territories according to colonial requirements) created regions that remain strongly influenced by economic and political relations with former colonial powers (Taylor 2008, 2013, 2018). Africa’s contemporary social policies and programs exhibit continuities with the continent’s colonial and postcolonial history as well as neocolonial influences underpinned by a global neoliberal agenda. Critical policy discourses reveal such continuities by focusing on structurally based conditions of poverty, inequality, famine, and the burden of disease that derive from historic and contemporary processes of politics and governance. In doing so, critical social policy discourses reinforce the importance of acknowledging the long shadow of oppressive colonial practices that undermine human development in Africa and elsewhere. The chapters in this section take a critical and nuanced approach to understanding how political economy shapes the possibilities of transformative social policy and administration in Africa. Such understanding in turn enables policy makers to understand the limits of, and

potential for, inclusivity, equity, social cohesion, and sustainable development (Taylor 2008, 2013, 2018). Viewing social policies and programs as direct outcomes of political, economic, and social processes accumulated over many decades highlights the pernicious tenacity and permeability of colonial and neocolonial influences underpinned by weak and at times corrupt governance and administrative practices. Yet despite these obstacles, there is increasing recognition that well-​designed social policies and administrative processes can help make human rights a reality for millions of historically disenfranchised people, especially those who live in extreme poverty and are subjected to the worst forms of abuse and exploitation (Taylor 2013). Viewed as a whole, this section of the Handbook demonstrates how a critical approach to theory and analysis reveals not only the limits and flaws in current and past social policies and their administration, but also the possibilities for transforming Africa’s social policies and administration in the future. Historical Evolution and Social Trends Factors that influence Africa’s social policies and institutions are part of a complex matrix of factors underpinned by old and new compacts of power among economic and political elites within countries and between former colonial powers. These compacts of power influence whose needs should be met, under what conditions, and with what outcomes (Taylor 2018a). The challenges that arose under colonialism remain stubborn challenges across time and space in contemporary African societies: they include intense ethnic conflict, single party systems, recurring military coups, political repression, and poor economic development performance (Ake 1976; Bienefeld 1988). Although many of those challenges predate colonialism (Ake 1976), experts strongly agree that colonial and postcolonial powers aggravated and exploited preexisting ethnic and other conflicts in order to “divide and rule”—​ and then used coercive military force to repress public dissatisfaction against their regimes in order to stay in power (Young 1994; Taylor 2018a). The long-​lasting damage from imperialist strategies is a central theme of Chapter 7, in which Julius Okello and Viviene Taylor explain the colonial roots of contemporary conflict in Uganda and the persistent effects of “divide and rule” governance underpinned by ethnic, regional, language, and other factors. Authors throughout the Africa section contribute to the idea of a chain of causality that leads from colonialism’s imprint on broad social and economic institutions, to fundamental changes in social structures at the most basic level of the family, to shifts in demographic and spatial patterns. Chance Chagunda in Chapter 3 analyzes how social structures have changed from precolonial Africa, when most African communities followed a communal way of life characterized as “umunthu,”1 to a more residual policy

1 Umunthu just as in South Africa’s Ubuntu, refers to each individual’s humanity being expressed through his or her relationship with others and theirs in turn through a recognition of the individual’s humanity. Umunthu means that people are people through other people.

24

Vivie n e Taylor

approach during colonial and postcolonial days. According to Chagunda, family and community care systems underwent significant changes because of colonial policy continuities, forced migration, and changing systems of economic production. Nonetheless, throughout these periods of change, the deeply embedded features of patriarchal power relations persisted, as described by Khosi Kubeka in Chapter 4 and Okello and Taylor in Chapter 7. Chagunda (Chapter 3), Kubeka (Chapter 4), and Tessa Dooms and Pearl Pillay (Chapter 6) show that women and youth, who constitute a large proportion of Africa’s population, experience higher rates of deprivations and vulnerabilities than other population groups because they are not included in policy and economic and social processes and do not have access to social protection guarantees. Core institutions of African societies (family, religion, and government) are experiencing increasing difficulties in their efforts to reduce the hardships that most female-​headed families and people in rural areas face. Chagunda and Okello and Taylor’s chapters also show how, in the early independence period (decolonization period), most African countries sought to link their social policy agendas and public administration systems with their pre-​colonial past, basing these policies on indigenous and traditional forms of social protection. Take, for example, Tanzania’s Ujamaa2 approach under the late President Julius Nyerere and Zambia’s Humanism3 approach under President Kenneth Kaunda. Both these presidents were leaders in the independence and liberation movements in their countries and led the resistance against colonial subjugation in Africa. Chagunda’s chapter shows that their philosophies of collective human development sought to place the family, extended family, and community systems at the center of social policy development and implementation. By the end of the 1960s most countries in Africa had gained independence, with the exception of several countries in Southern Africa—​Mozambique, Angola, and Zimbabwe—​that gained independence in the 1970s. According to Chagunda, it was during colonial and postcolonial periods, especially in the second decade of independence, when social policies in most African countries served to undermine family and community care systems because of the imposition of a neoliberal ideology. During the 1970s and 1980s, the effects of fuel crises, famines, increasing impoverishment, exploitative extraction of raw materials and minerals, multiple disease burdens (including the most recent HIV/​AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics), and weak governance opened the gateway for borrowing from International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as

Ujamaa is a Swahili word referring to “family hood”; it was mainly a socioeconomic policy developed for Tanzanians by the former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere focusing on “villagization.” Ujamaa increased the notion of self-​reliance at both an individual, community, and a national level. 3 Humanism denoted a way of life that was modeled along the lines of a mutual-​aid society, which found its basis in the ethnic community in which human need was the supreme criterion of behavior and social harmony was a vital necessity, since every activity was a matter of teamwork (Fortman 1969). 2

S e ct ion Ov e rvi e w

25

the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB). The conditions that accompanied debt financing and repayments included policy prescriptions administered by the IFIs, many of which led African countries to undertake significant macroeconomic and fiscal restructuring and marked the beginning of a devastating period in postcolonial social policy development and administration. Most notably, austerity measures tied to international financing led to a drastic shift away from prioritizing health, education, social welfare, and social infrastructure as well as significant cuts to the public sector wage bill, which usually included layoffs of teachers, health professionals, and other social service providers. It was the end of the era of optimism and hope for transformative and people-​centered alternatives based on Ujaama and Humanism. The human costs of these initiatives became a continuing narrative of this period: they included loss of life, declines in development, and increases in conflict and violence, accompanied by elite capture of limited resources as well as bribery and corruption through transnational and national corporate interests. By the 1980s Economic Structural Adjustment Programs in Africa were the battering rams for processes of neoliberal economic and financial globalization that took off in the 1990s (Taylor 2018a). More than six decades since most African countries attained independence, the conditions on the continent reveal mixed outcomes with limited progress when it comes to eradicating poverty and reducing inequalities. Chagunda attributes such limited progress to a failure of many governments to adapt their social policy responses to emerging demographic trends: with their attention focused on managing a neoliberal economic agenda, they lost sight of the imperative to govern in the interests of human development. As the African population continues to grow—​from 478 million in 1980 to 1.2 billion in 2018 to a projected 1.5 billion by 2025—​Chagunda argues that the greatest and most fundamental test for contemporary leaders is to address the socioeconomic development challenges that such growth poses for the continent. These include providing opportunities for the disproportionately large populations of young people on the continent as well as large rural populations and large numbers of women and young girls who face continuing marginalization and exclusion. He also reflects on the challenges posed by increasing migration flows within and between countries on the continent and further afield as internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees, and migrants risk their lives to escape violence, oppression, and human rights violations. At the heart of such trends are experiences of victimization, exclusion, discrimination, and other injustices. Even limited gains are under threat now from increasing exposure to risks and vulnerabilities experienced especially in female-​headed families due to male migration, population growth without sufficient job growth, and population aging, especially in rural areas. African society in the postcolonial period faces the daunting task of constructing an institutional system of social policies and social protection capable of fulfilling the collective spirit of umunthu. Political independence did not result in economic independence and

26

Vivie n e Taylor

development, as hoped. In many cases, colonial and postcolonial influences continue to undermine social policy development and administration. Chapter 4, by Khosi Kubeka, continues the theme of historical legacies and continuities, with a focus on the higher education sector. She discusses the historical influences that have shaped education policy and administration in South Africa, where the apartheid regime for 50 years undermined the full development of the majority of South Africans using a race-​based and discriminatory ideology. She exposes the brutality of apartheid education policies to explain the necessity for reforms and describes the main changes that occurred post-​apartheid. She tracks historical events that became turning points in education policy, including student resistance against the imposition of Afrikaans language in Black township schools (a form of colonial education) in June 1976. Recent nationwide student protests popularly known as the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall social movements target different component policies—​affordability of higher education and the need for a decolonized curriculum—​while sustaining the same spirit of resistance to policies that thwart equal access to education. Institutions and Operations Social policy transformations depend on institutional capability, especially in complex sectors such as education, social protection, and health, among others. Kubeka’s chapter provides a bridge to the second group of chapters in the Handbook’s Africa section by focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of South African higher learning institutions in the post-​apartheid democratic era. Based on qualitative findings from her surveys of first-​generation students in two institutions of higher education, Kubeka identifies institutional stumbling blocks to achieving transformative shifts in race and gender relations and socioeconomic status. A continuing thread tracing through her analysis is the gap between students’ experiences of the university space as one that excludes them from full and free participation, on one hand, and resistance by policy makers and administrators to addressing diversity and identity, on the other hand. It has taken time for higher education leaders to acknowledge the internal violence that young people experience every day as a result of local program shortfalls intersecting with larger structural factors tied to race, gender, and socioeconomic status. The author employs students’ own voices to explain how those experiences interfere with equal educational access—​a central goal of the post-​apartheid education reforms—​and prevent many students from realizing their full potential. The chapter highlights the importance of aligning policy and administration with students’ experiences so that education in Africa can become a mechanism to address poverty, gender and race inequities, and other disparities. Although Kubeka’s research is South African, she examines rates of investment in education across nations and challenges the widespread assumption that an increase in mass education invariably leads to increased opportunities for individuals to prosper and compete freely in the labor market based on

S e ct ion Ov e rvi e w

27

their skills and educational achievements. Based on her own research findings and those of other scholars, she argues that macro-​structural factors often serve to reproduce embedded inequities and stratifications that keep young Black graduates marginalized or excluded. Thus, even when education systems succeed in graduating more female, Black, and first-​ generation students, those accomplishments do not necessarily translate into more equitable outcomes. These macro-​structural factors originate in sociopolitical ideologies that drive policy designs and administrative choices. South Africa’s current system of educational institutions is an accumulation of elements developed in different eras under both apartheid and post-​apartheid ideologies. Current legislation governing higher education in South Africa embraces the goal of equal access. Achieving that goal will require deep understanding of how macro-​structural, historical, and ideological forces shape education policies and institutions. It will also require careful listening to the voices of students that emerge through the research of Kubeka and others. The theme of diversity, inclusion, and representation in policy decision-​making also resonates with the authors of Chapter 6—​Tessa Dooms and Pearl Pillay—​who examine the potential role of young people in policy and governance reforms beyond the education sector. Dooms and Pillay make a compelling argument that a youth perspective is essential to equitable and effective policymaking and political and institutional processes across the continent. Dooms and Pillay identify the African Union as an important regional policy space for strengthening democracy from below through youth participation. Achieving and sustaining such a normative shift requires capacity building initiatives to enable young people to navigate their own transitions as well as the political, economic, and social environments in which they find themselves. Drawing on continental and national examples, this chapter demonstrates existing and emerging opportunities to utilize governance in policy and practice as drivers of youth development in Africa, including opportunities for youth themselves to directly influence and enact policies and programs. Lessons of experience in Africa highlight how informed young people can hold policymakers and governments to account for nondelivery of services and flawed policies and programs. Using new information technologies and social media, youth advocates have mobilized social action for policy change in critical areas of social policy. Dooms and Pillay provide a critical contribution in Chapter 6 when they argue that governments and political actors at the continental, regional, and national levels of governance in Africa ought to redefine how they understand youth and how they mainstream issues affecting youth in social policy. They suggest applying a more developmental standard to youth definitions, operationalizing those standards in policy and administration, and placing youth in roles as active participants in social policymaking. They link the challenges facing Africa’s youth to the lack of institutional ability to harness the energy, contributions, and values of young people to achieve developmental objectives. In the absence of youth leadership and participation, policy makers and administrators too often

28

Vivie n e Taylor

design systems that do not adequately reflect the developmental needs of youth throughout the life cycle. By bringing issues of policy transformation back onto the regional and national agenda, including the agenda of the African Union, Chapter 6 offers a reminder to policymakers that selective inclusion of youth representatives often reproduces hierarchies of privilege and thereby widens inequalities. Choosing elites over other youth for leadership opportunities in national, regional, and continental policy spaces undervalues the voices of the majority of young Africans, some of whom have emerged as leaders within their local communities. The challenge is to ensure that youth are mobilized in decision-​making at all levels, with equal opportunities for voice at the highest levels. In Chapter 5 Tomoko Shibuya continues the focus on young Africans in need of greater social protection. More than a third of the world’s roughly 140 million child orphans—​49 million—​reside in Sub-​Saharan Africa, the region most affected by the HIV/​AIDS pandemic since the 1990s. The HIV/​AIDS pandemic arrived at a time when the continent was grappling with a multiple disease burden, ongoing conflict and civil wars, chronic poverty, and social and economic disruptions. Shibuya examined social conditions and administrative care arrangements for orphans in Mozambique (Southern Africa) and Guinea-​Bissau (West Africa), including the role of social protection policies, various types of alternative care, and measures to fulfill basic needs. Her field research, which is pioneering in this area, reveals a marked difference in the way basic needs and psychosocial conditions are being addressed in the various alternative care situations in these two Lusophone countries (both former colonies of Portugal). The well-​being of children varied widely among the different types of care centers within each country, with a comparative advantage for those children living in residential centers run by religious congregations rather than governmental, private, or community service providers. In an especially interesting finding, Shibuya reported that policy efforts to support orphans and vulnerable children were more advanced in Mozambique than in Guinea-​Bissau, but this did not always translate into higher overall well-​being for children in that country. Specifically, Mozambique’s more advanced system provides for better referral and targeting of children in the alternative care centers compared to Guinea-​ Bissau, where such government and community frameworks are yet to be developed. Mozambican children report better outcomes in terms of support, financial conditions, and health situations, while children in Guinea-​Bissau report better outcomes in terms of ­community-​and family-​relations, education, and living conditions. In both countries, public administrators are unable to fully provide the required care for the children as stated in policies. Consequently, nongovernmental actors were providing care in place of government in all but one of the 12 care centers that were surveyed. Lack of access to social security protections makes poor families vulnerable and deepens their poverty. It also causes poor health of family members, as well as family fragmentation when households have to break up and disperse to different sites as a survival strategy—​to

S e ct ion Ov e rvi e w

29

reduce expenditures or pursue migrant work. Children in these poor households become more vulnerable without the necessary primary care and social support. Such circumstances help explain why school enrollment rates are much lower for children of poor households than children of richer households in many low-​income, Sub-​Saharan African countries. Shibuya’s findings highlight the importance of strengthening collaboration between governmental and nongovernmental actors to administer essential social supports to the most hard-​to-​reach and most vulnerable populations in low-​income countries in Sub-​Saharan Africa. Both emergency and ongoing support are needed because some crises, like the HIV/​AIDS pandemic, continue for decades, with aftereffects that last many generations. Long-​term effects of the 2020–​2021 COVID-​19 pandemic are yet to be determined but likely to be dramatic and long lasting. Julius Okello and Viviene Taylor in Chapter 7 focus on a different type of crisis and find that the effects of civil wars and conflicts on people in most Sub-​Saharan African (SSA) countries cannot be overstated. They provide a contextual overview of the social and economic situation in some countries in East Africa and then focus in particular on Uganda. In the case of Uganda, two and a half decades of conflict between the Government of Uganda (GoU) and the Lord Resistance Army Rebels (LRA) from 1987 to 2006 displaced thousands of civilians, including women, children, elderly persons, and adults, into protected and restricted areas; many were placed in camps. The indiscriminate killings; loss of lives and property; destruction of infrastructure; and human rights violations including rape, forced abduction, and recruitment, especially of young children and youth as child soldiers, took place mainly in greater northern Uganda. This chapter brings into sharp focus the complex intersections of contending forces for power and control over resources, people, and territory and raises the central question of who is responsible for protecting people in situations of conflict and post-​conflict conditions. Okello and Taylor examine the historical roots of conflicts under colonial regimes and the colonial division of Uganda into “north” and “south,” which is still widely perceived as one of the most destructive and pervasive of the colonial legacies. This division of the country created the basis for mistrust and conflict and undermined national unity; it continues to spur ongoing conflict in Uganda. Social policies and administrative systems, according to the authors, were used to privilege certain areas of the country and contain or repress others in earlier eras. Discriminatory recruitment and education opportunities offered to the northern and southern regions by colonial administrators are seen as one of the primary examples of divide-​and-​rule policy and strategy. People from the West Nile, North, and Eastern Uganda were predominantly trained and recruited into the military, for example, while people from the central South and Western part of the country were incentivized to benefit from formal education to prepare them for civil public service. Drawing on contemporary research, the authors show that post-​independence conflict in Uganda, although it predates colonial occupation, derives largely from a colonial heritage

30

Vivie n e Taylor

characterized by political division, tribal rivalries, resentments, conflicts, and struggles over economic resources and power. Chapter 7 highlights the links among social policies, administrative systems, and the roles of health and education professionals who deliver essential services in conflict areas. Drawing on research and related evidence, Okello and Taylor discuss how households in conflict areas are always confined to internally displaced persons’ camps and left without access to basic social services, with women, children, and the elderly most affected. When health workers and teachers are absent from their duty stations, internally displaced people are either deprived of services or exposed to health care and educational risks and shocks that may result in loss of lives. Over time, these deprivations lead to higher mortality rates, birth rates, and illiteracy rates. In addition, exposure to risks and shocks hampers household production and productivity levels as well as upward social mobility. These and other factors led the government of Uganda to focus on managing risks and anticipated shocks to health and education access jointly with international development partners. Specifically, social protection measures were introduced to reduce rates of absenteeism among health workers and teachers and to channel direct income support to poor and vulnerable households. On the personnel side, staff houses were constructed with electricity and piped water and allowances were granted for working in hard-​to-​reach geographical areas. Institutional arrangements such as these are intended to incentivize professionals to work in conflict and post-​conflict areas so that they can provide essential services to affected populations. Issues associated with personnel capacity and the institutional environments in which health and education professionals are enabled to deliver social policy outcomes are vital, but often neglected links in policy implementation. Ensuring that health workers and teachers are themselves healthy, present, and working is critical in providing social services to those who need them the most, especially in conflict areas. Also critical to effective social policy implementation is an understanding of how gender roles and the division of labor promote household conflict and further exacerbate social and economic inequities and vulnerabilities in conflict settings. Chapter 7 also addresses this important recurring theme. Finance Brenton Van Vrede provides an overview of the critical issues that shape financing arrangements for social policy interventions in Africa in Chapter 8. According to Van Vrede, investments in formal social protection systems would ensure that at least a portion of a country’s economy, and any growth thereof, is utilized to reduce vulnerabilities and protect citizens. Approached from a rights-​based perspective, such systems become more than just technical instruments for poverty reduction. A rights-​based system is, by its nature, universal, because its main concern is the protection of all individuals against

S e ct ion Ov e rvi e w

31

all social risks. A universal-​rights-​based approach seeks to ensure that the most vulnerable enjoy the same social rights as the rest of society, and not a subset of stigmatized rights set aside for the poor and vulnerable. The author shows how far removed many countries are from achieving a rights-​based approach to social policy by illustrating that Africa remains the continent where formal social protection coverage is the lowest in the world. Even the continent’s more developed countries, such as South Africa, do not yet have comprehensive, universal, formal social protection coverage. He makes a compelling argument for shifting policy debates from financial obstacles to the need for social sharing, as this, in his view, highlights deeper issues associated with human rights and the impacts of poverty, inequality, and social dislocation on human development. It also reframes the public administration debate. According to Van Vrede, the question that we should be debating is not whether social transfers are affordable or sustainable—​he argues that governments have the ability to formalize social transfers and share the burdens and benefits across society as a whole through fair and transparent taxing and spending arrangements—​but rather what the role of government should be in promoting social sharing. Van Vrede describes how social sharing occurs constantly in societies where members have agreed to take care of each other formally or informally, in other words, where levels of social solidarity are high. According to his argument, these informal patterns of sharing provide proof of social protection’s affordability and social legitimacy, almost by definition. In Namibia, South Africa, Mauritius, and Botswana, for example, old age pensions are shared among members of the recipient’s household and are not used solely for the elderly. Similar patterns are found in South Africa, where the Child Support Grant funds are often shared within households. Such informal sharing between households within communities further reinforces the centrality of transfers to normal social functioning. Making links between economic insecurity and the lack of formal and informal social protection measures, Van Vrede reflects on the millions of people in Africa who are pushed into exploitative forced labor and work in hazardous conditions. He discusses how governments can mitigate these outcomes using progressive taxes and social transfers as instruments to reduce poverty and exploitative practices. He cautions that it is necessary to review financing and benefit systems to ensure that any misalignment in a system is corrected to improve the efficacy of social policy and administrative linkages. In addition the chapter discusses the need for tax and transfer systems to be transparent so that issues of financing and affordability of social policy provisions are understood by the wider public and governments can be held to account for lack of social delivery. Innovation and Transformation Thulane Gxubane, the author of Chapter 9, finds that formalizing child justice in South Africa provides an enabling legislative context for the practice of restorative justice as well as the diversion of youth offenders to innovative and inclusive processes such as

32

Vivie n e Taylor

home-​based supervision and family group conferencing. He stresses that the efficacy of these innovations depends on capable administration and explores some of the challenges that both governments and non-​governmental organizations face in administering restorative child justice. Tracing policy and legislative processes with regard to children’s rights, Gxubane finds that many African countries have not enacted separate legislation to deal with child and youth offenders. He attributes this to a lack of political will and the difficulties of competing priorities within stringent budgetary and fiscal conditions. Certain structural conditions tend to increase resistance to child justice reforms. These include low levels of economic growth, poverty, lack of infrastructure and resources, high debt burdens, political intolerance, the scourge of HIV and AIDS, high levels of illiteracy, and high unemployment and high crime rates especially amongst youth. Despite these challenges, South Africa succeeded in establishing a separate and formal criminal justice system for children in conflict with the law—​one that has become a yardstick for many other African countries with similar goals. Chapter 9 explains the South African experience with child justice reform and its importance. According to Gxubane, most criminal systems around the world follow a retributive model that moves the process of seeking justice out of the hands of the victims, the youth offenders, their families, and their communities, and into the hands of the state and state-​ sanctioned legal professionals. This approach to justice often leads to great frustration, profound anger, and even helplessness amongst members of the community who feel disempowered throughout the criminal justice procedure, but then are suddenly expected to assist with offender reintegration after sentencing and release. Offenders who complete their prison sentences within a retributive model often feel that they have paid their debt to the victim and community. The victim and the community, by contrast, often find it difficult to accept the offender back since they are unsure as to whether the offender is reformed. The chapter concludes with the need for a new approach to justice if authorities want to restore trust and promote the empowerment of those who have been harmed by the criminal behavior of young persons. Restorative justice, as an approach, recognizes that we are all part of a human family. We are responsible for each other. If any member of the community has been offended by another, everyone needs to be involved in dealing with the aftermath of the crime since both victims and offenders are members of the same community. In Chapter 10 Viviene Taylor provides an analysis of social policy transformation in South Africa’s post-​apartheid, post-​independent era after 1994. According to Taylor’s analysis, both the concept of transformation and the social policies that give effect to transformation remain contested. Taking a critical perspective, Taylor defines transformation as a continuous process of institutional and systemic change that results in policies to promote social and economic inclusion of the majority by meeting the basic needs and

S e ct ion Ov e rvi e w

33

rights of all South Africans. Consequences of such a transformative shift in policy include changes in power relations, gender relations, and structures of ownership and control, as well as the democratization of society. In the South African context such an understanding of social policy transformation reinforces processes that move away from privileging people on the basis of race and class (social and economic status), to eliminating social and economic inequalities based on gender, geography, and class and eradicating discriminatory practices on the basis of religion, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity. South Africa is making significant progress in ameliorating the poverty of those living in absolute destitution. Yet this achievement does not address forms of poverty and inequality arising from the structural conditions embedded in social and economic systems. Social assistance is a step towards transformation, Taylor argues, but it cannot achieve the transformation needed in and of itself. Transformation requires social protection to be part of a comprehensive and fully inclusive social protection system linked with broader policies and governance structures that democratize the economy and lead to a decent standard of life for all. Chapter 10 offers realism as well as aspiration: obstacles to transformation exist at every level of analysis. Even when the democratic state’s policy intentions are transformative, disjunctures in social administration and policy implementation constrain the fulfilment of social and economic rights in the Constitution. And at the trans-​national level, transformative social policy making may be hindered by multiple structures and processes, including the ever-​changing demands of a fluid neoliberal global economic system in which terms of trade and development are predetermined—​an important focus for future research. The trajectory of contemporary social provision in Africa reflects a shift away from a Eurocentric approach to an approach that is responsive to the effects of post-​colonial development, including structural inequities and vulnerabilities. This shift acknowledges distinct historical, political, social, economic, and cultural differences between Africa and Europe and Africa and the US. Such rethinking of social policy and administration has set the basis for a transformative perspective that is more appropriate to context, more relevant and applicable to the lived experiences of people in Africa, and more responsive to the imperatives of protection and empowerment. Some theorists in Africa (Mkandawire 2001; Adesina 2008; Taylor 2018a) refer to transformative social policy being grounded in the norms of equality and social solidarity. According to these theorists, social services and benefits are transformative if they apply to all on a universal basis. This understanding of transformative social welfare policy fits with a normative and developmental commitment to meeting human needs as a right of citizenship (Taylor 2018b). Innovation and Evaluation Jean Triegaardt in Chapter 11 discusses trends and innovation in methods of evaluation on the African continent. The chapter begins by asserting that human rights provide a foundation for comprehensive and integrated social policy analysis and formulation.

34

Vivie n e Taylor

International conventions set standards on social and economic rights, which in turn create a basis for measures against which policy and program initiatives ought to be evaluated. Innovative evaluation practices emerged in Africa in the 1970s through social movements and progressive organizations that were determined to highlight social injustices and flaws in policies and development practices. Often using methods that required community engagement, these new approaches could be seen as evaluation from below. Many civil society researchers, academics, and progressive religious organizations also engaged in participatory action research to advocate for social policy change. Triegaardt describes how reformers drew on Paulo Freire’s approach of building on praxis to shape development alternatives to promote methods of reflexive thinking and critical consciousness of people within communities. Attempts to move away from colonial and western thinking in evaluation, according to Triegaardt, continue to be influenced by practitioners in community development, adult education, and public health. She reflects on the contemporary policy environment in Africa and the difficulties of assessing programs in a context of poorly designed policies and legislation that does not allow for systematic monitoring and evaluation. Innovation in evaluation ought to create mechanisms for community involvement and thus promote democratic development. Triegaardt states that if citizens are allowed to participate and engage with democratic processes in government, this provides the space and an opportunity for citizens to contribute to solutions and challenges. Triegaardt argues that the history of evaluation in Africa is deficient if one does not acknowledge the role of African researchers, policy analysts, and evaluators in resisting colonial rule and policies. Colonial influences did not end with the independence of African states between 1960 and 1980, but continued in many forms, including provision of technical development assistance and support by former colonial rulers. Triegaardt describes how efforts to develop an African-​ rooted evaluation approach ultimately spawned a multiplicity of practices comprising a uniquely innovative African evaluation approach that includes not only the development of professional credentials for African evaluators but also community input and participation, the building of indigenous evaluation capacity, and sensitivity to the African cultural context. Conclusion The chapters in the Africa section illustrate how social policies and the administrative systems that support and ultimately shape these policies change over time as political and economic regimes change within countries. Most governments in contemporary Africa retain continuities with the colonial past and use a residual, incremental, and piecemeal approach to social protection (Taylor 2008). In this approach social welfare and social development services, including, health, education, and social security, are assumed to be the responsibility of families and communities, with provision available through economic markets and informal care arrangements, and with the state offering public provision as a last resort (Taylor 2018b). Some chapters (5, 8, 10, and 11) reveal how the scope

S e ct ion Ov e rvi e w

35

of social policy in African countries is extremely limited to providing minimal benefits and services because of low revenue earning capacities, high debt levels, high national budget deficits, limited economic growth, and extreme poverty. Such limited provision of services and benefits is consistent with a residual approach to social policy (refer to Chapters 3, 5, 6, 7, and 9) in which most services and benefits are selective, basic, means-​ tested, and responsive to social crises and emergencies rather than comprehensive. South Africa, Mauritius, and Seychelles differ from many countries in Africa by providing more comprehensive social policy and social protection services. Contemporary post-​colonial discourses on African social policy see it as transformative when it serves critical functions in society that include production, protection, reproduction, redistribution, and social cohesion or nation-​building. Transformative social policy in this conceptualization is therefore designed to ensure that all people living in a given country are able to participate in economic activity (production) irrespective of their race, gender, status, geographical location, or disability, and that their human rights are protected. Reproductive functions of social policy are transformative when care is provided to ensure that women are supported and empowered through antenatal and postnatal processes, as well as when the bodily integrity of women and children is protected from violence, abuse, and exploitation and when women have the freedom to make choices about their reproductive health and care. As authors in this section argue, social policy is transformative when it enables the equitable redistribution of benefits and services, including income, to members of society who are the poorest, most vulnerable, and most at risk and those who are discriminated against because of their race, sex, class, religion, and ethnic origin. References Adesina, J.O. 2008. Transformative Social Policy in Africa’s Development (contribution to UNDP’s Human Development Report for Sub-​Saharan Africa 2008). New York: UNDP/​Palgrave Macmillan. Ake, C. 1976. “Explanatory Notes on the Political Economy of Africa.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 14, no. 1 (1976): 1–​23. http://​www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​15964. Bienefeld, M. 1988. “Dependency Theory and the Political Economy of Sub-​Saharan’s Crises.” Review of African Political Economy 15(43): 68-​87. http://​www.tand​fonl​ine.com/​doi/​abs/​10.1080/​030562​4880​8703​791 Fortman, de Gaay, B. 1969. Introduction. In After Mulungushi, edited by B. Fortman, 1–​9. Nairobi: East African Publishing House. Mkandawire, T. 2001. “Social Policy in a Developmental Context.” Social and Development Programme–​Paper Number 7. Geneva: United Nations Institute for Social Development. Taylor, V. 2008. Social Protection in Africa: An Overview of the Challenges. Research Report prepared for the African Union. Addis Ababa: African Union. http://​epri.org.za/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2016/​07/​Taylor200​ 8AUS​ocia​lPro​tect​ionO​verv​iew.pdf Taylor, V. 2013. “Social Justice: Reframing the “Social” in Critical Discourses in Africa.” In African Perspectives on Social Justice, edited by S. Tangen, 12–​25. Kampala: Friedrich-​Ebert-​Stiftung. Taylor, V. 2018a. “Lessons of Experience in Transforming Social Welfare Policy in Africa.” In The Political Economy of Social Welfare Policy in Africa, edited by Viviene Taylor and Jead D. Triegaardt, 294–​310. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Taylor, V. 2018b. “Transforming Social Welfare Policy: Africa and South Africa.” In The Political Economy of Social Welfare Policy in Africa, edited by Viviene Taylor and Jean D. Triegardt, 81–​104. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Young, C. 1994. The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

36

Vivie n e Taylor

Historical Evolution and Social Trends

C H A P T E R

3

 he Policy Challenges of Africa’s T Changing Demography and Social Structures

Chance Chagunda

Abstract Social structures have changed from precolonial Africa, when most African communities followed a communal way of life characterized as umunthu, to colonial days. Although family and community care systems underwent significant transformation over this long history, patriarchal power relations persisted, as evidenced in social indicators that reflect a highly gendered division of labor and social reproduction. Demographic trends reveal significant hardships, especially for women, youth, and rural populations. Core institutions (family, religion, and government) of African societies are experiencing increasing difficulties in their efforts to reduce the hardships that most female-​headed families and people in rural areas face. The chapter explores how governments in the region can use demographic data to improve social policy, program design, and delivery. Such data is needed to better understand how trends in population growth, migration patterns, education levels, age, gender, and other social and economic factors influence household and social structures. Based on that knowledge, governments can respond to trends and build more effective public administrative systems for providing social services to people in need. Key Words: population, migration, Indigenous social policies, poverty, gender patterns and family

Social structures have changed since the early independence period in Africa when most African societies followed a communal way of life characterized as umunthu.1 In the early independence period, or decolonization period, most African countries sought to link their social policy agendas and public administration systems with their traditional past and the Indigenous forms of social protection that had existed for generations. These

Umunthu, just as in South Africa’s Ubuntu, refers to each individual’s humanity being expressed through his or her relationship with others and theirs in turn through a recognition of the individual’s humanity. Umunthu means that people are people through other people (Le Roux 2000; Ministry of Welfare and Population Development 1997). 1

efforts were exemplified in Tanzania’s Ujamaa2 and Zambia’s Humanism,3 two national initiatives that placed extended family systems at the center of social policy development and administration. Most African governments have failed to adapt their social policy responses appropriately to emerging demographic trends because their attention is focused on managing a neoliberal economic agenda. Key trends on the continent with important implications for social policy, program design, and service delivery include large populations of young people; large rural populations; large numbers of marginalized women; and increasing migration flows within African countries, between African countries, and overseas. This chapter discusses how a move away from neoliberal policies in Africa toward a different social policy agenda and more effective public administrative systems could harness the youth dividend and build capacity for rural populations, women, and migrants to contribute to, and benefit from, more robust socioeconomic development. Family, Government, and Indigenous Social Policies Social structures play a vital part in any society where people live, operate, and relate to each other on a regular basis. It is within these structures or institutions, as Merton (1968) argues, that important social functions take place. The most common universal social structure among human beings is the family, which is either male-​or female-​headed, and in tragic circumstances may be headed by an orphaned or abandoned child. The family as the primary institution for socialization and development of community life in our society performs essential social functions that include childrearing as well as production, consumption, and distribution of goods (Gilbert and Specht 1974). Precolonial Indigenous polities and their Indigenous forms of care changed with the arrival of missionaries and colonialists in most of Africa. However, it has remained true that an individual acquires knowledge of umunthu throughout their life, and therefore, education plays a critical role in transferring the African philosophy of life between generations and across communities (Letseka 2000). Even though African culture has evolved as social structures have changed, people will refer to someone as having umunthu by checking characteristics such as “caring, humility, thoughtful, considerate, understanding, wise, generous, hospitable, socially mature, socially sensitive, virtuous, and blessed” (Le Roux 2000, 43). Umunthu is supposed to promote the common good of family and community. An individual in an African culture is not just a social being but a being that is inseparable from the community. Mbiti (1970, 70) supports this inseparableness and 2 Ujamaa is a Swahili word referring to “family hood”; it was mainly a socioeconomic policy developed for Tanzanians by the former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere focusing on “villagization.” Ujamaa increased the notion of self-​reliance at both an individual, community, and national level. 3 Humanism denoted a way of life that was modeled along the lines of a mutual-​aid society, which found its basis in the ethnic community in which human need was the supreme criterion of behavior and social harmony was a vital necessity, since every activity was a matter of teamwork (Fortman 1969).

40

C ha nc e Ch agun da

argues that “what happens to the individual happens to the whole group, and whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual.” It is because of this view that family and extended family are very important on the African continent. For precolonial families, umunthu principles reinforced collective responsibilities for looking after those who could not support themselves (Noyoo 2015). The family institution used to provide support to the elderly, the sick, the disabled, and children, without expectations of reward (Noyoo 2015). The village unit also contributed to social welfare, operating as a sort of family-​like, umunthu-​oriented institution on a larger scale. The precolonial village and family—​the primary institutional caregivers and the first line of defense against people’s deprivation and vulnerability to hunger and orphanhood—​were led by tribal governments according to unwritten protocols (Hinden 1949). These traditional governments, which included headmen/​women, chiefs, group village men/​women, and traditional authority, were expected to organize a range of social services within their jurisdictions. Such precolonial institutions had a positive impact on development (Bolt and Gardner 2014) but were eroded over time. The Early Independence Period To boost socioeconomic development, African countries that received early independence sought to link their social policy agendas and public administration systems with their traditional past where Indigenous forms of social protection existed. In early independence, most African governments worked unwaveringly to rip to pieces the colonial socioeconomic and political structures and replace them with systems that mirrored the history, culture, and needs of the African people (Talton 2011). Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana who was in power from 1937 to 1966, advocated for pan-​ Africanism. In the spirit of umunthu, Kwame Nkrumah believed that Africa could infuse social policies and public administration institutions with extended family processes of pooling resources together in the spirit of solidarity. For Nkrumah social policies had to be contextualized to the African way of life and find an African solution to African problems using African resources. Similarly, Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania from 1964 to 1985, advocated for Indigenous African forms of social policy and administration closely aligned with the communal practices of “traditional” African societies. In contrast with Western models, African social policy and administration emphasized collective responsibility and advancement in place of the individual, a concept known as Ujamaa. Under Julius Nyerere, Tanzania decided to tackle the problem of “underdevelopment” by urging Tanzanian citizens to rely upon their own resources (self-​reliance) (Rist 1999). Zambia, which became independent in 1964, embraced a related approach known as Zambian Humanism, which then President Kenneth Kaunda used to drive social policy and administration. Ujamaa, Humanism, and pan-​Africanism placed the extended family system at the center of social policy development. In the 1960s and 1970s early-​independent

The Policy Challe nge s of Africa

41

countries experienced positive economic growth and substantial amounts of social spending on social welfare for benefits such as free education and healthcare (Noyoo 2015). These early-​independent countries built schools and clinics and provided people with services that fostered a cooperative relationship with the economy (Scarritt 1971). The Second Decade of Independence The second decade of independence witnessed the weakening of extended family support in the face of severe economic hardships and a swift rate of urbanization and internal migration. Many people, including children, the elderly, and the disabled, were left to struggle for survival (Baah 2012). Early African social policies developed during the independence era—​with a focus on the welfare of the family—​almost disappeared during this decade. Despite the breakup of the extended family system and the resulting vacuum in social welfare provisions, governments did not respond with comprehensive social welfare provision. Most African countries expected families to care for struggling family members during this period and beyond, and yet they did not strengthen the Indigenous social protection system or even complement it with a formal social protection system. Instead African governments have adopted a neoliberal ideology in which minimal government provision is seen as the last resort. This ideology was exported from the West and intensified through the World Bank’s and International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). The neoliberal ideology has undermined African demographic dynamics. African Demographic Dynamics Demographic changes continue to shape the African continent’s current and future socioeconomic development agenda. The African population continues to grow—​from 478 million in 1980 to 1.2 billion in 2018 to an expected 1.5 billion by 2025. Perhaps the greatest and most fundamental challenge is to address the socioeconomic development issues that such growth poses for the continent (African Statistical Yearbook 2018; UNECA 2016). Young people aged 0–​14 years are increasing in absolute numbers from 213.5 million in 1980 to 473.7 million in 2015 (African Statistical Yearbook 2018; UNECA 2016). Youth aged 15–​24 years increased from 90.8 million in 1980 to 230 million in 2015 and this number is expected to reach 293 million in 2025 (African Statistical Yearbook 2018; UNECA 2016). In addition to dramatic growth in numbers of young people, Table 3.1 shows that the continent’s population is predominantly rural and impoverished. Although the Indigenous social security system has deteriorated, it is still the most common socioeconomic support in rural areas. There is an urgent need for youth and rural-​based social policies and investments, especially in health and education, to harness the demographic dividend represented by these statistics and its potential for sustaining and accelerating socioeconomic development. With adequate supports, the youth demographic dividend can become a particularly

42

C ha nc e Ch agun da

Table 3.1  Selected Countries in Africa Demonstrating the Extent of Poverty Country

Population below $1.90 (PPP) per day, percentage

Proportion of population living Proportion of employed below the national poverty population below the line (%) international poverty line of US$1.90 per day, by sex and by age (%), 2016

Year

%

Year

Total

Nigeria

2009

53.5

2009

46.0

34.1

52.8

54.9

Ethiopia

2010

33.5

2010

29.6

25.7

30.4

5.9

DR Congo

2012

77.1

2012

63.6

61.6

64.9

75.5

72.0

75.1

Tanzania

2011

46.6

2011

28.2

15.5

33.3

37.2

31.6

34.8

South Africa

2011

16.6

2010

53.8

39.2

77.0

6.6

5.7

6.0

Ghana

2005

25.2

2012

24.2

10.6

37.9

11.5

8.3

9.4

Madagascar

2012

77.8

2010

75.3

51.1

81.5

81.1

76.3

78.6

Côte d’Ivoire

2008

29.0

2015

46.3

35.9

56.8

20.3

16.0

19.1

Cameroon

2014

24.0

2014

37.5

8.9

56.8

15.6

13.9

17.3

Niger

2014

45.7

2011

48.9

18.6

55.2

34.9

31.7

33.1

Burkina Faso

2014

43.7

2014

40.1

13.7

47.5

37.6

34.8

38.6

Malawi

2010

70.9

2010

50.7

17.3

56.6

64.6

61.6

69.1

Mali

2009

49.3

2009

43.6

18.9

50.6

49.8

45.4

48.7

Zambia

2010

64.4

2010

60.5

27.5

77.9

57.3

50.3

54.3

Zimbabwe

2011

21.4

2011

72.3

46.5

84.3

69.0

62.6

66.5

Guinea-​Bissau

2010

67.1

2010

69.3

51.0

75.6

67.3

61.1

64.9

Urban Rural

Youth Men Women 44.3 5.7

42.0 5.3

Source: African Statistical Yearbook, 2018.

powerful catalyst for development aimed at reducing the proportion of Africa’s population living in poverty, as per Table 3.1. The continent has large numbers of economically active people, as shown in Table 3.2—​a substantial proportion of the total population. Yet, many of these people are not involved in the types of productive activities that generate income growth and development. Younger adults between 20 and 35 years migrate more than those older than 35 years (Subakanya, 2015) in search of paid work. Such migrant laborers often send remittances home to improve the well-​being of the relatives left behind while their own working conditions and incomes remain precarious. Although 65–​70 percent of the population resides in rural areas (Canning Raja and Yazbec, 2015), the steady rate of rural-​urban migration is leaving behind a rural population of mainly elderly women for whom the Indigenous social security system fails to deliver because of increasing economic and social shocks and crises and worsening vulnerabilities (Subakanya 2015). Alongside the growth in younger populations described in the previous section, Southern Africa is also experiencing particularly rapid rural aging, with notable increases

The Policy Challe nge s of Africa

43

Table 3.2  Social and Demographic Indicators Country

Populations Population in in thousands percentages

Economically active population

Gross enrollment ratio in primary education 2015–​2017

Urban

Female

Nigeria

190 886

49.4

MF

M

F

49.3

58 959

...

...

...

Ethiopia

104 957

20.4

50.1

51 450

101.94

106.76

97.03

Egypt

97 553

43.3

49.4

31 149

103.62

103.59

103.67

DR Congo

81 340

43.5

50.1

31 644

108.04

108.44

107.64

Tanzania

57 310

33.0

50.6

26 306

108.04

108.44

107.64

South Africa

56 717

65.8

50.9

22 041

...

106.56

98.99

Kenya

49 700

26.5

50.3

19 352

105.31

105.14

105.48

Uganda

42 863

16.8

50.3

15 840

80.74

98.25

101.27

Algeria

41 318

71.9

49.5

12 106

113.65

116.56

110.61

Sudan

40 533

34.2

50.0

11 150

73.59

76.74

70.35

Morocco

35 740

61.2

50.5

12 714

110.26

113.03

107.34

Angola

29 784

45.6

51.0

12 299

...

...

...

Mozambique

29 669

32.8

51.2

12 899

106.32

110.92

101.68

Ghana

28 834

55.3

50.2

13 637

104.78

104.08

105.50

Madagascar

25 571

36.4

50.1

13 054

104.78

104.08

105.50

Côte d’Ivoire

24 295

55.6

49.3

8 016

96.71

102.11

91.30

Cameroon

24 054

66.8

50.2

10 500

112.89

125.33

112.89

Niger

21 477

19.3

49.9

8 439

73.69

79.08

68.08

Burkina Faso

19 193

31.5

50.1

6 995

91.11

92.09

90.09

Malawi

18 622

16.7

50.1

8 030

139.26

137.24

141.31

Mali

18 542

41.4

50.0

6 933

77.08

81.80

72.21

Zambia

17 094

41.8

50.4

7 061

...

...

...

Zimbabwe

16 530

32.2

51.3

8 123

...

...

...

Senegal

15 851

44.4

50.9

5 179

83.09

78.36

87.92

Chad

14 900

22.8

49.9

5 603

88.10

99.02

77.00

Somalia

14 743

40.5

50.2

3 641

...

...

...

Guinea

12 717

38.2

49.9

4 716

...

...

...

South Sudan

12 576

19.3

49.9

5 306

66.59

77.80

55.10

Rwanda

12 208

30.7

51.0

6 296

137.02

137.27

136.78

Tunisia

11 532

67.3

50.6

4 110

99.75

116.17

113.18

Benin

11 176

44.9

50.1

4 542

Burundi

10 864

12.7

50.8

4 713

Togo

7 798

41.0

50.2

3 534

114.71

126.98

120.84

Sierra Leone

7 557

40.7

50.5

2 534

114.84

114.45

115.22

Libya

6 375

79.0

49.6

2 403

...

...

...

44

C ha nc e Ch agun da

Table 3.2  Continued Country

Populations Population in in thousands percentages Urban

Female

Economically active population

Gross enrollment ratio in primary education 2015–​2017 MF

M

F

Congo

5 261

66.2

50.0

2 116

...

...

...

Eritrea

5 069

23.6

49.9

2 401

54.08

58.04

49.95

Liberia

4 732

50.5

49.6

1 533

94.09

98.70

89.28

CA Republic

4 659

40.7

50.1

1 892

105.67

119.98

91.55

Mauritania

4 420

61.0

49.6

1 312

93.86

91.02

96.79

Namibia

2 534

48.6

51.4

990

...

...

...

Botswana

2 292

58.0

50.6

1 130

...

...

...

Gambia

2 101

60.8

50.5

681

97.12

93.27

101.03

Lesotho

2 233

28.4

51.5

959

103.90

105.65

102.13

Gabon

2 025

87.6

48.6

668

...

...

...

Guinea-​Bissau

1 861

50.8

50.8

780

...

...

...

Swaziland

1 367

21.3

51.6

466

107.87

112.76

102.93

E. Guinea

1 268

40.3

44.6

472

61.58

61.81

61.34

Mauritius

1 265

39.5

50.5

606

102.45

101.56

103.38

Djibouti

957

77.5

49.8

389

63.90

67.53

60.18

Comoros

814

28.5

49.6

211

...

...

...

Cabo Verde

546

55.5

50.0

230

96.69

99.94

93.39

Sao T. & Principe

204

66.2

50.2

68

110.23

112.37

108.07

Seychelles

95

54.5

50.7

-​

112.83

113.22

112.43

41.31

50.1

466 428

...

...

...

Total

1,256,268

Source: African Statistical Yearbook, 2018.

in the proportion of farmers over 55 in less than 10 years. In sub-​Saharan Africa broadly, the percentage of farmers over 55 years old is 7.1 percent, compared to 12.1 percent in Asia, 25.3 percent in the Caribbean, and 12.3 percent in Latin America (Heide-​Ottosen et al. 2014), but if current rural aging trends hold, Africa will catch up with these other regions. The average proportion of people over the age of 55 who exercise management control over agricultural holdings and make key decisions around resource use is 26.8 percent in Africa, just below that of Asia (28.5 percent) and Latin America (29.8 percent), but far below the Caribbean (44.7 percent) (Heide-​Ottosen et al. 2014). These trends matter for social policy because agriculture is the biggest job provider in rural areas. In sub-​Saharan Africa, 59 percent of economically active older women cite agriculture as their main source of income (Heide-​Ottosen et al. 2014). Yet current social programs do not provide long-​term social insurance measures for farmers during droughts and other disasters.

The Policy Challe nge s of Africa

45

Demographic change tends to be somewhat predictable, thus giving policy makers the opportunity to adjust social policies and programs to meet changing needs and mitigate impacts on people’s livelihoods specifically, and on human development more generally. Important current trends involve the overall population, urban and rural populations, male and female populations, the economically active population, and those without effective access to education, as in Table 3.2, including large numbers of women whose low educational enrollment and completion rates constrain their capacity to escape poverty and contribute to Africa’s socioeconomic development. This phenomenon reinforces gender imbalances and undermines equity. The trend toward increasing poverty is exacerbating these inequities. Poverty Current poverty trends in Africa illustrate how far removed governments’ social policy responses are from that of umunthu or an adequate alternative. Poverty is the main socioeconomic challenge in Africa, as Table 3.1 shows. Measuring poverty in Africa remains a challenge due to coverage, comparability, and quality of household surveys that monitor African people’s living standards (Beegle et al. 2016), but basic trends can be identified. The poverty rate is lower now than in 1990 while more Africans are poor today than in 1990 due to population growth. The share of Africans who were poor fell from 56 percent in 1990 to 43 percent in 2012 (Beegle et al. 2016); an estimated 58 percent of these poor individuals may be chronically poor (Beegle et al. 2016). As expected, poverty reduction has been slowest in fragile countries such as Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, and Togo; and rural areas remain much poorer. Chronic poverty among women and rural inhabitants is substantial (Beegle et al. 2016). Poverty reduction in countries such as Gambia, which experienced a 32 percent reduction from 1990 to 2010, is notable, while Burkina Faso, Niger, Swaziland, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Malawi lag behind (Beegle et al. 2016). Female-​headed households are poorer than other households in countries such as Madagascar, Mali, Uganda, and Zimbabwe (Beegle et al. 2016). Some female-​headed households that receive remittances from relatives who have migrated may experience higher incomes than male-​headed households. Migration Continued increases in unemployment, including limited opportunities for high-​ quality jobs, combined with worsening rates of poverty even when employed (Table 3.3), contribute to young people’s decisions to migrate permanently from Africa to other continents. The International Labour Organization (ILO 2016) estimates that 38 percent of young people in sub-​Saharan Africa are inclined to migrate. Migratory patterns in Africa have long existed within diverse contexts, driven by political factors, poverty, swift population growth, and the sponginess of international borders (Statistics South Africa 2011). Both men and women migrate to cities and countries seen as having greater

46

C ha nc e Ch agun da

Table 3.3  Gender and Age as Factors in Hunger Percentage of males and female household heads in households that reported hunger by age group, South Africa, 2002–​2008, 2010–​2012 Age

Gender

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2010

2011

2012

18–​34

Male

17.5

19.1

15.1

14.5

10.0

8.4

11.8

10.9

11.0

9.5

Female

24.7

23.5

18.3

19.9

13.7

10.3

14.3

14.5

11.9

13.4

Male

19.6

18.5

15.3

12.9

9.6

9.0

11.6

11.1

11.1

9.5

Female

33.3

30.0

24.8

21.4

15.7

15.8

17.5

18.5

14.9

15.5

21.9

20.5

15.8

14.3

9.4

8.7

10.1

9.9

8.0

7.7

30.8

29.2

24.4

18.3

12.7

12.5

14.0

13.7

11.9

11.2

35–​59

Over 60 Male Female

Year

Source: Statistics South Africa Social Profile of Vulnerable Groups (Report No. 03-​19-​00 (2002–​2012):78).

socioeconomic opportunities than their home countries, but men do so in larger numbers than women (Statistics South Africa 2011). Young men under 35 years migrate more than older men. Rural-​urban migration leaves behind a rural population that is dominated by women who are expected to look after children and livestock and provide food and other necessities for the household mainly through agriculture (Subakanya 2015). The practice of umunthu obligates young adults to look after their elders as they grow older. As more and more young adults migrate to the cities and other countries for better opportunities, the elderly population are left increasingly vulnerable. Some of the elderly are forced to farm their own land, or, if they are still fit and well enough, they get employed at other farms to earn wages to support themselves and their families. The resulting phenomenon of an aging and disproportionately female agricultural labor force creates particular challenges for social policies, programs, and institutions (Anriquez and Bonomi 2008). As the number of elderly and female-​headed households increases, the needs of the expanding dependent population often surpass what can be supplied through umuthu in communities with few able-​bodied young people. At the same time, government social programs are selective, and social assistance provision does not protect all vulnerable groups, particularly the elderly. The trend of young adults leaving rural areas for cities and other countries is likely to continue because of the continued deterioration of socioeconomic situations, as well as wars and instability in most African countries (Subakanya 2015). But all migrants do not make it to the country of destination. The migration crisis in Libya, for example, has involved many young men between the ages of 18 to 35 who try to cross from Libya to Italy but never make it due to tragedies at sea. In addition, not everyone who reaches their destination manages to start a business or get employed. Those migrants who survive the journey and are fortunate enough to find employment or start businesses contribute tremendous developmental benefits to both their country of origin and destination country. In many origin countries, people start small businesses

The Policy Challe nge s of Africa

47

with remittances sent home by migrants. There are also companies that emerge because of migration, such as those that facilitate the process of migration itself and those that send and receive money on behalf of migrants and their families in the home country, as well as companies that employ migrants. In addition to promoting development, migration can also be a central determinant of health for migrants themselves and others, and therefore, appropriate policy and program responses are needed to ensure safe and supportive conditions associated with the migration process. This is critical not only to safeguard the well-​being of migrants and decrease risks to their well-​being, but also to protect people in the destination cities or countries. Although international agencies are involved in humanitarian interventions to assist migrants, host governments are yet to integrate needs and care of migrants into social welfare policies and programs. In countries of origin, development policies that encourage good governance, economic opportunities, and access to health services influence the decisions individuals make about whether to emigrate or remain (Newland 2017). Gender Gender inequalities determine women’s entitlements to resources because of the position women generally hold in society (Taylor 2015). In opposition to general views that men are breadwinners of African families and households, every member of the family tends to expect the woman of the house—​mainly the mother or the eldest sister—​to provide food; yet, many women struggle to feed their households (Taylor and Chagunda, 2015). Gender inequalities are important for understanding access to essential resources such as food because of the practical role women play in society. Although females constitute more than 50 percent of the population in all countries in Africa, they are disproportionately represented among populations who live in poverty or destitution. Revising policies and redesigning institutions to increase the proportion of women who participate in socioeconomic development is a way of addressing their poverty (Ayferam 2015). Such policies might include equal pay for work of equal value, for example. Ethiopian women are producers, procreators, and community builders, and yet the country’s policies do not recognize them as equal to men. They are paid less in wages compared to men for similar work (Ayferam 2015). Similarly, in South African industries such as sport and manufacturing, women get paid less than men for similar work just because they are women (Taylor and Chagunda 2015). Taylor (2007) argues that women thus experience the lack of policy consistency directly in their fight to produce and provide family resources, including food. Across all age cohorts, when age and gender are considered, members of female-​headed households are more vulnerable to hunger than members of male-​headed households. These differentials are at least partially explained by the fact that women experience difficulties in accessing paid work, land, and other vital resources compared to their male counterparts.

48

C ha nc e Ch agun da

Table 3.3 shows the persistence of vulnerability to hunger for female-​headed households throughout the life cycle in South Africa. The variance between men and women’s powerlessness to hunger is largest in the age categories 35 to 59 years and over 60 years. As Table 3.3 shows, there were significant improvements overall between 2002 and 2012 in percentages of all households (headed by both men and women) that reported hunger. Although gender disparities remain, both types of households seem to be experiencing less suffering due to hunger. This is because after 1994, when the apartheid government was replaced by a democratic South Africa, more social grants were extended to many Black Africans and Black African men were employed in sectors previously denied to them. Social Protection Responses African governments have failed to respond appropriately to the emerging demographic trends presented in this chapter, including trends toward large populations of young people in Africa, large and poor rural populations, high marginalized populations of women, and increasing migration flows within and between countries on the continent and overseas. As the population of young people continues to grow and the elderly live longer than before, the demographic makeup of countries in Africa inevitably changes, bringing increased demand for appropriate responses. Demographic change requires that social policies be viewed through a “youth and elderly lens” to ensure that programs and actions meet current and future needs. Many regions in Africa suffer shocks and vulnerabilities that virtually reverse development improvements (UNECA 2015). Only a small proportion of the continent’s total population is being reached by social protection initiatives. Most African states provide minimal assistance and only as a last resort, in keeping with the dominant ideology of economic liberalism, freedom of the market, and competitive individualism, which acts as a counter to family and community care systems (Williams 1989). Africa’s socioeconomic challenges cannot be addressed using the anti-​collectivism approach, however, because struggling families and community organizations do not have sufficient resources to meet needs. One alternative is an institutional approach that advocates for governments to provide social welfare services such as social assistance as a first point of call, rather than as a last resort (Gilbert and Specht 1974). The African Union has called on member states to do more in adopting and implementing institutional social policies that can pave the way for social protection strategies in their respective countries to assist those who cannot support themselves (African Union 2006). According to this approach, African countries should be planning for comprehensive social protection systems supported by labor-​intensive economic growth.

The Policy Challe nge s of Africa

49

Setting the Agenda Surely a different social policy agenda is needed, including effective administrative systems for harnessing the youth dividend, rural populations, the capacities of women, and the promises of migration for socioeconomic development. Such an agenda ought to have a pan-​Africanist scope firmly contextualized to the African continent. In addition, to achieve development within each African nation, it is necessary to engage with each country’s unique set of contextual factors, including demographic, economic, and social dynamics, and their implications for employment creation and growth (Bhorat and Tarp 2016). It is the responsibility of each African state to align and integrate its goals with its social welfare policy, administrative and governance arrangements, and national development agenda, bearing in mind the trajectory of demographic and social and economic trends. Various African governments have legal frameworks in place for the protection of salaried workers in the formal sector but limited social protection for all. It is important for all African governments to have a social protection framework that can incorporate basic rights to food, education, healthcare, shelter, and income support. In Africa, there is an urgent need to prevent further human devastation and social fragmentation of children, women, the elderly, and rural communities as these groups struggle to access healthcare, education, and waged work. Despite some positive reforms, many African governments still rely on contributory social protection systems that serve only those capable of contributing. That approach leaves most vulnerable groups in perpetual poverty. Contemporary African governments lack the collective vision needed to reform social protection systems, including strategic objectives that prioritize the rights of groups who are most at risk of falling into deeper poverty and insecurity. Many African countries have established government departments, such as women’s ministries and ministries of social development and finance, with capability to implement fuller social protection systems. South Africa, for example, has advanced administrative infrastructure compared to many African countries and the most progressive and widespread social protection system in Africa, with more than 17 million beneficiaries of social grants. In order to build similar systems, other African governments will need to create new, dedicated social administration infrastructure, such as social security agencies, and budget for enough professionals to manage programs effectively and equitably and expand their reach. In the spirit of umunthu and the well-​being of Africa’s citizens, informal and formal social protection systems should complement each other and transform administrative agencies to interact with families with a human face. Conclusion African society in the postcolonial period faces the daunting task of constructing an institutional system of social protection capable of fulfilling the collective spirit of

50

C ha nc e Ch agun da

umunthu. Although considerable progress has been made in reducing poverty and hunger, these gains are under threat from long-​term increases in vulnerable female-​headed families due to male migration, population growth without sufficient job growth, and population aging, especially in rural areas. Government responses to these trends to date have been uneven from country to country and largely inadequate to address a rapidly changing social and demographic landscape. Most of the progress that has occurred has been enabled by international aid, rather than government innovation within Africa. Given the centrality of rural agricultural areas to economic and social life in Africa, planners with an eye on demographic and social projections would do well to focus on supporting agriculture as an industry, as an employer of many, and as a pivotal factor in combating vulnerabilities. References African Statistical Yearbook. 2018. African Statistical Yearbook 2018. Addis Ababa: ECA Printing and Publishing Unit. African Union. 2006. “The Livingstone Call for Action,” Intergovernmental Regional Conference on a Transformative Agenda for the 21st Century: Examining the Case for Basic Social Protection in Africa. Livingstone: Republic of Zambia and African Union. Anríquez, Gustavo, and Genny Bonomi. 2008. Long-​Term Farming and Rural Demographic Trends. Washington, DC: World Bank. Ayferam, Gashaw. 2015. “Assessment of the Roles and Constraints of Women in the Economic Development of Ethiopia: The Case of Ambo Town Since 1991.” International Journal of Research 2(2): 25–​41. Baah, Yaw A. 2012. Foreword. In Social Protection Schemes in Africa, edited by T. Kalusopa, R. Dicks, and C. Ose-​Boateng, 3–​4. Accra: Labour Research and Policy Institute of Ghana Trade Union Congress. Beegle, Kathleen, Luc Christiaensen, Andrew Dabalen, and Isis Gaddis. 2016. Poverty in a Rising Africa: Africa Poverty Report. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://​openkn​owle​dge.worldb​ank.org/​han​dle/​10986/​ 22575 Bank License: CC BY 3.0 IGO Bhorat, Haroon, and Finn Tarp. 2016. “The Pursuit of Long Run Economic Growth in Africa: An overview of Key Challenges.” In Africa’s Lions: Growth Traps and Opportunities for Six African Economies, edited by H. Bhorat and F. Tarp, 1–​36. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Bolt, Jutta, and Leigh Gardner. 2014. “De-​ compressing History? Pre-​ colonial Institutions and Local Government Finance in British Colonial Africa.” Paper presented at the African Economic History Network Workshop, London, October 25–​26. Canning, David, Sangeeta Raja, and Abdo S. Yazbeck, Abdo S., eds. 2015. Africa’s Demographic Transition: Dividend or Disaster? Washington, DC: World Bank. Fortman, de Gaay, B. 1969. Introduction. In After Mulungushi, edited by B. Fortman, 1–​9. Nairobi: East African Publishing House. Gilbert, Neil, and Harry Specht. 1974. Dimensions of Social Welfare Policy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-​Hall. Heide-​Ottosen, Sif, Tessa Vorbohle, and Kathryn O’Neill. 2014. The Ageing of Rural Populations: Evidence on Older Farmers in Low-​and Middle-​Income Countries. London: HelpAge International. Hinden, Rita. 1949. Empire and After: A Study of British Imperial Attitudes. London: Essential Books. International Labour Organization (ILO). 2016. World Employment Social Outlook. Geneva: International Labour Office. Le Roux, Johann. 2000. “The Concept of ‘Umunthu’: Africa’s Most Important Contribution to Multicultural Education?” Multicultural Teaching 18(2): 43–​46. Letseka, Moeketsi. 2000. “African Philosophy and Educational Discourse. In African Voices in Education, edited by P. Higgs, N.C.G. Vakalisa, T.V. Mda, and N.T. Assie-​Lumumba, 179–​193. Lansdowne: Juta. Mbiti, John S. 1970. African Religions and Philosophies. New York: Doubleday and Company. McKinney, Jerome B., and Lawrence C. Howard. 1998. Public Administration: Balancing Power and Accountability, 2nd ed., p. 62. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishing.

The Policy Challe nge s of Africa

51

Merton, Robert. 1968. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press. Ministry of Welfare and Population Development.1997. White Paper for Social Welfare. Government Gazette 386 (18166). Pretoria: Government Printer. Newland, Kathleen. 2017. “The Global Compact for Migration: How Does Development Fit In?” https://​ www.migr​atio​npol​icy.org/​resea​rch/​glo​bal-​comp​act-​migrat​ion-​how-​does-​deve​lopm​ent-​fit Noyoo, Ndangwa. 2015. Social Policy and Human Development in Zambia. Pretoria: Kwarts Publishers. Rist, Gilbert. 1999. The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. Cape Town: UCT Press. Scarritt, James R. 1971. “Elite Values, Ideology, and Power in Post-​Independence Zambia.” African Studies Journal 14(1): 31–​54. DOI: 10.2307/​523610. Statistics South Africa. 2011. Census 2011. Pretoria: Stats SA. http:/​www.stat​ssa.gov.za/​publi​cati​ons. Subakanya, Mitelo. 2015. “Changes in the Age and Gender Composition of Agricultural Participation in Zambia: Implications for Economic Policy” (MSc Agric. thesis, Pretoria: University of Pretoria). http://​rep​ osit​ory.up.ac.za/​bitstr​eam/​han​dle/​2263/​53559/​Sub​akan​ya_​C​hang​es_​2​016.pdf?seque​nce=​1&isAllo​wed=​y Talton, Benjamin. 2011. The Challenge of Decolonization in Africa. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. http://​exhi​biti​ons.nypl.org/​afri​cana​age/​essay-​challe​nge-​of-​dec​olon​izat​ion-​afr​ica.html Taylor, Viviene. 2007. “Recasting Power and Transforming Governance: A Feminist Perspective from the South in Development.” International Journal of Society for International Development 50(1): 28–​35. Taylor, Viviene. 2015. Human Rights and Human Security: Feminists Contesting the Terrain. In The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements, edited by Rawwida Baksh and Wendy Harcourt, 346–​366. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, Viviene, and Chance Chagunda. 2015. “The Gender Dimensions of Food Insecurity: Women’s Experiences of Entitlements and Deprivation in South Africa.” In Food Security in South Africa: Human Rights and Entitlement Perspective, edited by Sakiko Fukuda-​Parr and Viviene Taylor, 120–​142. Cape Town: UCT Press. United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). 2015. MDG Report 2015: Assessing Progress in Africa toward the Millennium Development Goals. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Economic Commission for Africa. Williams, Fiona. 1989. Social Policy: A Critical Introduction. Issues of Race, Gender and Class. Cambridge: Polity Press.

52

C ha nc e Ch agun da

C H A P T E R

4

 iversity and Transformative Policy D within South African Higher Learning Institutions

Khosi Kubeka

Abstract This chapter examines the relationship between social policy and public administration within the context of higher learning institutions in South Africa. It outlines the efforts and some of the effects of higher learning institutions in building capabilities and freedoms of first-​generation students in the post-​apartheid era. The challenges of race, gender, and socioeconomic conditions and how they influence access and experiences of students are examined. Findings from an empirical study conducted in two higher learning institutions are presented in order to highlight and offer a critical analysis of the existing institutional stumbling blocks to achieving educational outcomes through transforming race and gender relations. Key Words: higher education, social mobility, first-​generation students, apartheid education, post-​apartheid education, student experiences

Studies of educational expansion in both developed and developing nations highlight the promise of education in improving the lives of people in democratic societies (Hannum and Buchmann 2003). Among the policy objectives that follow from these findings is the assertion that education can enhance individuals’ economic circumstances and enable democratic societies to reduce social inequalities. It is assumed that education equips individuals with skills and knowledge that can be used to increase their productivity, and this thinking is ubiquitous in many developed and developing nations. Although rates of investment in education vary across nations, there appears to be consensus that education is a strong determinant of occupational and social status outcomes. It is also assumed that an increase in mass education invariably leads to increased opportunities for individuals to prosper and compete freely for resources in the labor market based on their skills and educational achievements. In this way, education is strongly associated with economic as well as social mobility. These assumptions have been challenged, however, by scholars who argue that, while education ideally should enable those who come from underprivileged backgrounds to

move up the social ladder, in reality there are macro-​structural factors that have a mediating impact in such processes (Hannum and Buchmann 2003). These macro-​structural factors determine the extent to which education enables democratic societies to achieve equity goals. Such factors serve to limit some individuals while providing opportunities to others. Kerkhoff (1995) explains the complexity of the relationship between social origins and educational attainment, taking into account the role of institutional arrangements in shaping stratification processes in industrialized societies. He demonstrates how differing institutional arrangements influence the relationship between social origins and educational attainment. By institutional arrangements, Kerckhoff refers to education and labor market mechanisms (the sorting machine) that serve to steer people toward positions within stratified systems. Changes in government policies and administrative arrangements, which are based on sociopolitical ideologies, inform changes in educational provision, which in turn have implications for social stratification throughout the country (Kerckhoff 1995). South Africa is no exception in this regard as the institutional arrangements reflecting both the apartheid and post-​apartheid sociopolitical ideologies informed the structure of educational systems in both sociopolitical periods. This was done through social policy and legislation that outlined the nature and implementation of educational provisions while also managing both through public administration. Social policy refers to the legislative frameworks, executive rules, regulations, and initiatives employed by governments to regulate the development and implementation of social programs. Social policies enforce “priority rules concerning the allocation of productive resources, to assure that goods and services which meet the basic needs of the entire population are produced in appropriate quantities and quality” (Gil 1976, 86). Furthermore, social policies enacted in the best interest of the populace are based on a “. . . humanistic, egalitarian, democratic philosophy, according to which all humans are intrinsically of equal worth, are entitled to equal rights in every sphere of life, and may not be exploited or dominated by other humans” (Gil 1976, 86). A further unpacking of social policy comes from Mkandawire (2006), who states that social policy as a state intervention is entrusted with the important task of safeguarding social welfare, social institutions, and social relations. A central function is to ensure a smooth and fair redistribution, production, reproduction, and protection of important societal resources. These include, among others, access to broad-​based education and health services, subsidies and benefits, social security and pensions, labor market interventions, land reform, progressive taxation, and other redistributive mechanisms (Mkandawire 2006, 1). Public administrators are key role players whose administrative practices affect the delivery of services and resources deemed necessary for welfare and development in the areas of healthcare, social security, education, employment, community care, and housing management (Spicker 2014). The social policy-​public administration relationship is

54

K ho si Kubeka

significant in ensuring that public resources are distributed equally in society and in line with the democratic principles that guarantee transparency, access, human rights, and social justice, among others. Therefore, the choices and decisions made by policy makers and implemented by public administrators should be arrived at systematically and carefully in a democratic space. This chapter examines the relationship between social policy and public administration within the context of higher education in South Africa. In particular, the role of higher learning institutions in building capabilities and freedoms of first-​generation students is discussed. Issues of race, class, and gender and how they influence access and experiences of students are examined. This examination comes at a critical time as higher learning institutions in post-​apartheid South Africa continue to grapple with questions of access, transformation, and decolonization of the curriculum. The persistent challenges associated with differentiation continue to make it difficult for students from disadvantaged backgrounds to access higher education in the first instance and then to successfully navigate the university space. These challenges were particularly brought to the fore by the outbreak of recent nationwide student protests popularly known as the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall social movements. Chief among the grievances raised by students are affordability of education and the need for a decolonized curriculum. Both these demands stem from students’ experiences of a university space that, from their perspectives, exclude them from fully and freely participating in the educational project despite the promise of equal access as stipulated in the post-​apartheid higher education policy and legislation. This chapter explores the following questions: How has higher education policy evolved from the apartheid to the post-​apartheid eras? How has this evolution informed the administrative practices in institutions of higher learning in both eras? What challenges do institutions of higher learning, especially universities, in post-​apartheid South Africa face in their efforts to improve access and ensure transformation? Apartheid Sociopolitical Ideology and Higher Education Policy There is no place for him in the European community above certain forms of labor. What is the use of teaching a Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? Education must train and teach people in accordance with their opportunities in life (Verwoerd 1948).

Bantu Education was based on the Afrikaner Nationalism ideology whose intention was to consolidate the dominance of white Afrikaners at the expense of poor Black Africans and other racial minorities in every realm of the country (Zungu 1977). The apartheid system was used to classify people on the basis of race with the intent to deprive Black Africans and other racial minorities of opportunities to compete freely in the country’s market economy. Formal education for the Black population was discouraged

Diver sit y and Transformativ e Policy

55

because (a) it was assumed that equipping Black people with skills would have a negative impact on whites in the labor market, and (b) education would not be useful to Black Africans themselves since it was believed that educating them in European mores would undermine their African beliefs and traditions. Thus, Black Africans were better off uncivilized and confined to agricultural activity, according to the now-​debunked ideology (Zungu 1977). Economic and political changes associated with industrialization eventually forced the government to provide schooling for Blacks. Two factors influenced this decision. First, with industries advancing into manufacturing in the 1930s, there was a demand for cheap labor in the urban areas. Second, Black youth unemployment in the urban areas proved to be problematic for the government since this group was politicized. The government’s response to rising youth activism was to deploy the army into the townships, thus perpetuating violence against the oppressed Black population in these areas. Urban schooling was therefore another way in which the state could keep young people under control (Fataar 1997). The state’s stratification of civil society along racial and ethnic lines translated into educational administrative practices defined by racially based and unequal distribution of educational resources (Reddy 2004). Higher education developed within a segregated landscape in which pedagogical and administrative practices were organized along racial and ethnic lines and supported by deliberate state policy (Wolpe 1994; Nkomo 1990; Badat 1999). The white elite groups and government officials at the time strongly believed that higher education should be exclusively reserved for white people. It was feared that allowing Black people access to higher education would encourage and perpetuate radicalism dominated by anti-​state and anti-​racist views (Ade Ajayi et al. 1996). Even so, access to higher education was granted to Black people, albeit under strategically restrictive conditions. Separate universities were established for “ethnically classified Black groups” and located in the Bantustants (territories reserved for Black citizens). These were designed to “. . . serve as valuable instruments in the over-​arching ‘grand Apartheid’ political project . . . These institutions were expected to legitimate, reproduce, and constitute, especially among the elites, identities and social relations of race and ethnicity. . . .” (Reddy, 2004, 10). The Black majority was divided into several minority groups thereby “. . . weakening both the physical majority and the political, moral argument for democratic majority rule in an undivided South Africa . . .” (Reddy 2004, 11). Racially restrictive admission requirements were imposed upon Black students wishing to enter a university. This enabled the creation and maintenance of racially separate universities for Whites, Africans, Indians, and Coloreds. Segregated universities also meant unequal distribution of funding from the government as well as demographically imbalanced student and staff composition (Badat 1999). This differentiation and inequity in administrative structures

56

K ho si Kubeka

of institutions resulted in different performance levels and capacities across racially segregated institutions (Reddy 2000). Post-​Apartheid Sociopolitical Ideology and Higher Education Policy Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that a son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation . . . Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world (Mandela 2004).

Changes in South African education can be attributed to the changes in the overall structure of the country that took place in the late 1980s. These changes were triggered by the preceding events of the 1970s, with the turning point being the June 16, 1976, student uprisings that began in Soweto and spread across the country. The students resisted the imposition of colonial education in the form of Afrikaans in Black township schools. It became clear, therefore, that apartheid was no longer advantageous for the National Party; if anything, it was costly. Youth unrest reached its peak, overwhelming the capacity of the police. In addition, condemnation of the apartheid system by international business and political communities resulted in South Africa being sanctioned and thus isolated from the rest of the world. Change in the system of governance was therefore inevitable (Wolpe 1994). A ray of hope signaling this change began to emerge when the National Party and its followers elected F.W. de Klerk for office in 1990. At this point the country was financially bankrupt and had reached a political impasse, and the government was discredited internally and internationally. Given these gloomy socioeconomic circumstances, the president, de Klerk, had no other alternative but to un-​ban and legalize the African National Congress (ANC) and other liberation organizations, release political leaders, and recognize and strengthen civic organizations. The un-​banning of the liberation movements meant that these organizations were now in a position to participate in the decision-​making processes that would create institutional changes that eventually led to a new and more democratic political and economic system for the country. Educational reform was one of the main demands of the ANC during subsequent negotiations with the government. The development of new policies that would ensure the education of all people, regardless of race, class, and gender, and empower them with skills to participate in the economy, became an urgent matter to be addressed as the dawn of a new political administration was approaching (Wolpe 1994). There was a fundamental shift in the policies and administrative practices of the higher education sector as well. The core objective was the transformation of the entire higher education system as a necessary requirement for significant institutional change. This goal

Diver sit y and Transformativ e Policy

57

was to be realized through the strategic reconfiguration and implementation of new policies on funding, academic structure, programs, and quality assurance. Several strategic objectives that speak to this goal were outlined in the white paper on Higher Education published in 1997. Of particular interest for this chapter are the following: • “Increased and broadened participation,” including greater “access for Black, women, disabled, and mature students” and “equity of access and fair chances of success to all . . . while eradicating all forms of unfair discrimination and advancing redress for past inequalities” (DoE 1997, 1.13, 1.14). • “To develop and implement funding mechanisms . . . in support of the goals of the national higher education plan” (DoE 1997, 1.27). In pursuing the defined social purposes and goals, the White Paper clearly and explicitly stated the principles and values that had to be embodied and also promoted by higher education. • To “create an enabling institutional environment and culture that is sensitive to and affirms diversity, promotes reconciliation and respect for human life, protects the dignity of individuals from racial and sexual harassment, and rejects all other forms of violent behavior” (DoE 1997, 1.13). Changes in the higher education policy and legislative framework paved a way for significant achievements that contributed to a reimagined higher education sector. Some of these achievements included, among others, a universal adoption of the transformative agenda by various institutions of higher learning nationwide, with strong emphasis on the promotion of social equity, redress, social justice, democracy, and development. Access to higher education for Black students from previously disadvantaged backgrounds increased from 473,000 in 1993 to approximately 799,000 in 2008. Access was also made possible by the introduction of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme to provide financial assistance to Black students from disadvantaged backgrounds (Badat 2010). These changes in higher education legislation and its implementation clearly show the new democratic government’s genuine commitment to transforming higher education and redressing the vestiges of apartheid. The question that continues to plague the government, however, is this: If the objective was to level the playing field so as to allow students from different socioeconomic, racial, and gender backgrounds to enjoy full access to higher education, then why do differentiation and inequities in admission criteria, resource allocation, provision of academic support, and financial support persist? The National Planning Commission Diagnostic report released in 2011 determined that, despite efforts to increase access to and enrollment of Black students at higher learning institutions, such as universities, there is little improvement in throughput rates. This is attributed to persistent problems in the primary and secondary schooling system that

58

K ho si Kubeka

fails to prepare students for higher education. This is why, despite efforts by higher learning institutions to integrate, redress, and transform poor performance, low graduation rates among Black students persist (NPC 2011). Transition to university for these students has been difficult and is a major contributor to high dropout rates. Bridging programs are not able to narrow the gap between high school and university. Poor quality schooling significantly disadvantages first-​generation Black students as they lack the skills, knowledge, and/​or language proficiency to successfully navigate higher education (Jansen 2009). The NPC diagnostic report cautions that if first-​generation Black students continue to lag behind and drop out of a university, “. . . social mobility and the effectiveness of the education system at creating the equitable skills base that will be essential for overcoming the inequalities of apartheid [will be impossible to achieve]. . . .” (NPC 2011, 16). Following the findings of the diagnostic report, several recommendations for change were outlined in c­ hapter 9 of the National Development Plan 2030. Among others, improving the quality of education at primary and secondary school levels should be prioritized. In particular, secondary schooling should provide a sound basis for studying at higher education institutions and gaining critical and marketable skills. Expansion of university infrastructure is also recommended so as to keep up with a doubling in enrollment numbers since 1994. Expansion of infrastructure will in turn lead to improvement in the quality of teaching and learning, according to projections. The recommendations also call for student funding to be expanded to keep up with the increasing enrollment of members. Finally, extra support should be given to students who enter a university underprepared due to poor schooling and low socioeconomic background. Student Experiences in Higher Education In addition to structural and systemic challenges students face within the university space, individual students’ personal experiences have been highlighted by some scholars. In an assessment of some of the stressful experiences of first-​year students in select universities in South Africa, Bojuwoye (2002) found that complex university administration, academic demands, and fear of failure were highlighted as triggers of stress and anxiety for students. Navigating a complicated university administration system that, in its very nature, makes demands on students to seek, find, and process information on their own, proves to be cumbersome for many students when they enter the university space. This is especially difficult for students who come from authoritarian home and school backgrounds where they were often told what to do. The expectation to seek information independently negatively affects their self-​esteem. They find it difficult to work up the courage to ask for help due to fear of embarrassment and the risk of being perceived as incapable of coping in a university. Academic demands also trigger stress and anxiety and are often linked to experiences of financial insecurity while at a university. The latter makes it difficult for students to fully concentrate on their work. Financial difficulties cause students to register late, setting them back a great deal and making it difficult for them to catch up on

Diver sit y and Transformativ e Policy

59

lectures they have missed. Fear of failure also causes stress wherein students feel they may not be able to live up to their own and other’s expectations and measures of success. This fear is particularly fueled by the student’s lack of belief in their ability to write and express themselves in English, the medium of instruction in most universities (Bojuwoye 2002). The Challenges of Race, Gender, and Socioeconomic Conditions This section presents an analysis of narratives from a sample of first-​generation students from underprivileged backgrounds who participated in a mixed method longitudinal study that examined how race, class, and gender inform identity formation, negotiation, and navigation among university students. It is worth mentioning that the selected narratives presented in this section encapsulate the sentiments and views of most (80 percent) of the respondents in the study. The analyses reveal that the opportunity to enter a university is an enormous achievement for these students and their families. Being in an environment where they are provided with new learning experiences every day as well as being exposed to different people from various backgrounds expands their worldviews in positive ways. Some students mentioned that some of the courses they have enrolled in—​ such as those offered in the social sciences on gender—​have exposed them to new ways of thinking. This has challenged them to revisit some of their beliefs and values based on new information received. It has also made them reflect on their own sense of self and identity as well as their role in the world. The positive impact of higher education on students’ self-​reflection and worldview is well articulated below by Thando: So I learnt more about myself and other people, and like some of the courses that I picked were quite informative. Especially in the gender studies. Like gender I was like wait, what? What is that,? I don’t know what that is. And some of the things that I learned actually made me go back and question what I grew up with. To the point where I started questioning my religion at this stage as well. Because they teach you something, then you get here and they’re like, no, but, think of it this way, and then you just go back and you start changing the way you think. And I think University just opened my mind a lot more to different possibilities and different ideas. And now to switch between University and home it’s like you’ve got this old way of thinking and this new way of thinking and you’re trying to blend the two and you just stuck in the middle trying to figure out where you are . . .how to put yourself, because I’m the first person, or the first grandchild to go to University (Thando, male, age 20).

Linking Class, Access to Education, and Social Capital Formation There is a downside, however, as narrated by another student: while being at university challenges students to focus and work hard on their academics, the university space also triggers mental challenges they have never experienced before.

60

K ho si Kubeka

I mean, I’ve had multiple breakdowns and I suffer from chronic anxiety. Um, and then, also, um, I have periods of severe depression. And it is . . . [short laugh] very funny because before University, mmm, I never had it. I never had it, and I have a theory around it, it’s because now is this place where I’m in, I find it in this space where I have to grow (Chantel, female, age 22).

What Chantel is expressing in this narrative is not unique. In recent years, universities have seen an increase in mental illness among the student population. Symptoms and experiences of moderate to severe depression (12 percent), anxiety (15 percent), and forms of suicide ideation (24,.5 percent) have been reported among 12 percent of students in South African universities (Bantjes et al. 2016). This is also evident in the increasing demands placed on universities’ student wellness services to provide support as more and more students who experience psychosocial challenges seek services. Demands have also been placed on academic departments to provide more than academic guidance and support for students who struggle to cope in general. Institutions of higher learning have been unable to effectively respond to some of these challenges, however, because it has taken time for administrators to acknowledge the intersection between the individual and structural factors that trigger the internal violence that young people experience every day. These experiences make it hard for many students to realize their full potential. Chantel sheds further light on what most first-​generation students in the study (80 percent) from similar backgrounds experience. When she first entered the university, like many students, she was anxious about her ability to handle the academic demands, which in turn made her question her ability to succeed. She even questioned her intelligence and ability to work hard. As she began to settle into her identity and role as a student, she managed to overcome those fears when she realized they were unfounded. However, persistent financial challenges continued to put a strain on her. She describes how having to earn a wage while at the same time juggling schoolwork set her back when compared to her counterparts from privileged backgrounds: Um, uh, financially . . . first year I survived with like R2000 every month, and then I found two jobs. So I’m currently having, I currently have two jobs. Um, and my three courses cause I’m in the general degree and I’m final year student next year hopefully. Um, so this year I’ve been working and studying and volunteering and I get significantly more. Um so financially it’s not really a struggle anymore, but even that in own-​self . . . I had to catch up to where my peers were. And when I caught up with them they were already miles in before me again, So it’s a constant catching up in the finances (Chantel, female, age 22).

From Chantel’s insightful narrative one gauges the contradiction of being in a learning environment wherein a level playing field ostensibly has been created so that students,

Diver sit y and Transformativ e Policy

61

regardless of racial or class backgrounds, can flourish equally in their education. In addition to having to meet their academic requirements, many first-​generation students from low socioeconomic backgrounds still have to grapple with the burden of poor financial conditions. Most respondents in the study, like Chantel, find themselves having to come up with ways to make ends meet. Chantel shares the stress of having to catch up with her white counterparts from privileged backgrounds who can navigate their studies without worrying about meeting their basic needs. This comparative experience of lagging behind, as Chantel explains below, can be alienating because the university is supposed to be a place where young people get an opportunity not just to obtain an education and a degree but also to enter a space where they can discover who they are and realize their full potential. But how are they supposed to do that if they are constantly reminded that they are not good enough as they are? Um, it’s been very alienating because it’s a space where you have to start getting to know yourself. How do you get to know yourself when you’re constantly reminded that . . . um, you’re not straight? When you’re constantly reminded that you’re not white, when you’re constantly reminded that, um, you got here probably because of ‘quota,’ whether or not that’s true. I passed matric with seven distinctions, you know. I worked hard at it. I applied and I wrote an exceptional motivation, that’s how I got in . . . Doesn’t detract from the fact that people still look at you that way . . . (Chantel, female, age 22)

Gender, Patriarchy, Public Institutional Spaces, and Identity The constant reminders that Chantel refers to, and that indirectly impact on psychosocial well-​being, often come up in students’ interactions with peers, lecturers, and administrators. It is often these subtle and unspoken messages—​which students are confronted with just by virtue of being in the university environment—​that feel most foreign to them. The university then becomes a space where they feel they do not belong because (according to the unspoken messages) they were only able to enter, not on merit, but because a favor was bestowed upon them. Desiree, a 21-​year-​old Black female student, articulated that perspective: There is a belief that all the Black people got in because of their race. Or Black people probably got in with lower grades. That the majority of them are poor and on financial aid or come from townships (Desiree, female, age 21).

Access to social and cultural capital also makes it easier for students from privileged backgrounds to navigate the university space smoothly and fulfill their potential. Although being a first-​generation student elicits a sense of pride for students and their families, it also becomes a source of discontent when students realize it also means they lack access to resources that would give them a head start in academic performance.

62

K ho si Kubeka

Senzo unpacks the significance of social and cultural capital in effectively navigating university academics: Advantage here is based on exposure. I feel like we are not exposed to mechatronics system; we are not exposed to electrical engineering. We are quite behind as Black people. We don’t have our uncles owning these things. Even though my uncle would work at an electrical engineering company, he will never invite me because now he will have to first ask his boss for me to come and see. He doesn’t have that freedom to show me (Senzo, male, age 20).

Being a first-​generation student from an underprivileged background also means one has to carry the burden of responsibility to the family. For these students, life at the university is not about fulfilling aspirations, creating a comfortable financial future, and discovering oneself. Rather, there is an unspoken yet ubiquitous expectation to take care of one’s family upon receiving the degree. This can be an overwhelming burden to carry that often has adverse effects on students’ abilities to focus and fulfill their academic requirements. This phenomenon has been dubbed “Black Tax” by Black first-​generation students in South African universities. One student in the study defined it as follows: “Black Tax is coming to make it . . . you need to work so hard just to have a good living due to all the people you left at home. All those people you have to put on. Your families, your cousins and all those people who are still in so much by poverty and everything” (Thato, Black male student, age 20). In other words, it is an obligation that one is culturally expected to fulfill due to the collective history of impoverishment deeply entrenched in the apartheid system of oppression of the past. The unintended consequence of this system is its intergenerational transmission that defines the current educational experiences of first-​generation students. The narratives of the students in this study offer a glimpse into the depth of the impact of Black Tax as articulated by Tsego and Tebogo below: Each and every Black person comes from poverty and we push ourselves so that we can change the situation at home. You want to make a difference. You want to change the way things areYho. It is stressful because it also stresses me sometimes. I think, will I make it or not, you see? Because I know there are certain people who depend on me. I have to change my Mom’s life. The pressure is too high. Now we must work for our families, unlike if we were fortunate—​maybe we wouldn’t care. We would want more power to leave a legacy for our children. We wouldn’t start from scratch. Sometimes it is not guaranteed that we will all make it; then that impacts you because you think, what if I don’t make it? Then you doubt yourself (Tsego, Black female, age 22). When you fail, you are not just failing yourself. You are failing everyone. So even when you are in that tough position, that puts more pressure on you. Now that I am going to back to

Diver sit y and Transformativ e Policy

63

the Township, now I am going to go back to the rural and I am the only one that made it. . . . So it is tiring. That is why you have people who are depressed in varsity. That is why you have people that are suicidal and seeing psychologists because this weight that we have as Black people is so much. It is tiring. It is draining (Tebogo, Black male, age 20).

Whether or not the expectation to provide financial support to extended family members is communicated verbally or nonverbally requires more investigation. Either way, the undeniable fact is the resulting severe stress that most Black first-​generation students experience. Tsego and Tebogo’s narratives highlight the harmful psychosocial impact of having to pay a “Black Tax” In addition to a sense of obligation to fulfill explicit or tacit expectations from extended family members and communities, the “Black Tax” phenomenon also represents an expectation that the motivation for going to a university among first-​generation students will be selfless. As can be gleaned from Tsego’s narrative, being at a university is not just about getting a career and moving up the social ladder. The poor living conditions of their childhoods inspire in them a desire to change the circumstances for their extended families and communities. This causes a lot of stress. There is fear that if they are struggling in their studies, they are failing everyone. It is exhausting and can lead to depression and increased chances of suicide. Race, Class, and Gender Challenges and the Capabilities of Students Amartya Sen’s (1992) capability approach offers a framework for assessing the complex ways in which first-​generation university students from previously disadvantaged backgrounds continue to experience difficulty in navigating the university space, despite efforts to create an environment of access and transformation post 1994. Education plays a crucial role in building, nurturing, and sustaining people’s capabilities. It is essentially a capability in its own right, in the sense that being educated and using one’s education qualify as examples of what Sen calls “beings” and “doings” (or “functionings”) that are crucial to well-​being (Sen 1992). Furthermore, educational provision encompasses more than equipping individuals with knowledge and skills. It also contributes to the promotion of sustainable development of communities and society as a whole (Hoffmann 2006). Central to Sen’s definition of freedom in the context of development is the idea that people should be able to make choices and have access to opportunities that would enable them to achieve tangible and intangible life goals that they value. Once substantive freedom is understood as the end goal of development, Sen argues, policies and administrative strategies that seek to promote development should take as a point of departure people’s capabilities, that is, what individuals are able to do or be and what they perceive to be important for their well-​being. The chief goal of public policy and administration—​including education policy and administration—​then becomes eliminating any hindrances that stand in the way of people realizing their full potential

64

K ho si Kubeka

(Sen 1999). Agency is an essential component that is integral to the whole of the capability approach. The relationship between well-​being and agency is summarized by Robeyns (2005) as follows: The standard of living is “personal well-​being related to one’s own life.” If we add the outcomes resulting from sympathies (i.e. from helping another person and thereby feeling oneself better off), we measure well-​being. If well-​being is supplemented with commitments (i.e. an action that is not beneficial to the agent herself ), then we are focusing on overall agency (102).

In other words, it is vital that an individual has sufficient agency to make decisions and take actions that would lead to them experiencing well-​being, having empathy, and committing to helping others. Where higher education is concerned, empirical evidence derived from students’ experiences strongly indicates that subtle but persistent race, class, and gender inequalities make it difficult for first-​generation university students to fully express their capabilities, especially their sense of future socioeconomic opportunities and aspirations (social opportunities) and sense of security (protective security). In other words, despite having access to higher education, many students continue to feel lack of confidence about the protective security and social opportunities that obtaining education should promise them. One may argue, using Sen, that that their capabilities are being stifled. Conclusion Social policy and administration should be responsive to the challenges mentioned in the students’ narratives because universities are not adequately equipped to provide resources over and above academic support. The national department of higher education and training’s strategic vision to expand student access and success, as reflected in the 2013 white paper, acknowledges that a lot has been achieved in the transformation of the student demographic structure and in expanded support within the higher education system—​both of which respond to the vision set out in 1997 White Paper 3: A Program for the Transformation of Higher Education. However, the more recent white paper also acknowledges that poor graduation and throughput rates continue to affect a significant proportion of students, particularly those who are Black and from poor backgrounds. In order to address these challenges, the white paper outlines areas that need more attention. These include, among others: (1) Improved access to high-​quality schooling for the poor and for those living in townships and rural areas, (2) Increased levels of preparedness for university study among school leavers,

Diver sit y and Transformativ e Policy

65

(3) Development and enhancement of existing early-​warning systems and other methods of recognizing students who need support, and (4) Increased student success by providing sufficient support for both academic and social adjustment to university life. Based on the issues highlighted in this chapter and the evidence presented, it is clear that higher education policy (including legislation) and administration needs to be expanded to incorporate more specific and practical responses to the challenges that first-​generation university students from underprivileged communities face as they navigate the university space. Government in collaboration with higher learning institutional administrators has managed to effectively respond to some of the current challenges but much more needs to be done to address structural barriers that prevent first-​generation university students from realizing their full potential. Addressing goal no. 3, developing and enhancing the existing early-​warning systems to identify students who need more support, should be the first priority. It can be achieved through a coordinated support system between academic departments and the university student wellness centers. The departments need to be empowered with human resources through the hiring of in-​house mental health professionals whose only role is to identify the mental health needs of students within each department in collaboration with academic staff. These mental health professionals can then work closely with the central student wellness centers in managing cases through an effective referral system. For this to succeed, both departments and students’ wellness centers at universities need to be provided with financial and other resources that will enable them to expand their capabilities to offer support to students. In conclusion, the chapter highlights the importance of getting policy and administrative issues addressed so that education in Africa does not only have intrinsic value but also acts as a transmission mechanism to address poverty, gender, and race inequities and other disparities. The lessons of experience of first-​generation university students illustrate the practical program shortfalls and concerns that administrators and policy makers should address to ensure that policy intentions are implemented at the point of delivery within social institutions such as universities. Inclusive social policies require that service provision takes account of the needs, social and economic context, and experiences of all, but especially those who continue to be disadvantaged. References Ade Ajayi, J.F., Lamiek K.H. Goma, and G. Ampah Johnson. 1996. The African Experience with Higher Education. London: James Curry. Badat, S. 1999. Black Student Politics: Higher Education and Apartheid from SASO to SANSCO 1968–​1990. Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council. Badat, S. 2010. The Challenges of Transformation in Higher Education and Training Institutions in South Africa. Johannesburg: Development Bank of South Africa. https://​www.dhet.gov.za/​sum​mit/​Docs/​2010D​ocs/​, accessed May 2022.

66

K ho si Kubeka

Bantjes, J.R., A. Kagee, T. McGowan, and H. Steel. 2016. “Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress, Depression, and Anxiety as Predictors of Suicidal Ideation among South African University Students.” Journal of American College Health 64(6): 429–​437. Bojuwoye, O. 2002. “Stressful Experiences of First Year Students of Selected Universities in South Africa.” Counselling Psychology Quarterly 15(3): 270–​290. Department of Higher Education and Training. 1997. “White Paper for Post-​School Education and Training: Building an Expanded, Effective and Integrated Post-​System.” Pretoria: Department of Higher Education and Training. Fataar, A. 1997. “Access to Schooling in a Post-​Apartheid South Africa: Linking Concepts to Contexts.” International Review of Education 43(4): 331–​348. Gil, D. 1976, “Social Policy Strategies for Social Development.” Community Development Journal 11(2): 86–​94. Hannum, E., and C. Buchmann. 2003. The Consequences of Global Educational Expansion: Social Science Perspectives. Cambridge, MA: The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hoffman, A.M. 2006. “The Capability Approach and Educational Policies and Strategies: Effective Life Skills Education for Sustainable Development.” Fonds pour le Recherche en Ethique Economique. Paris: Agence Française de Développement. http://​ethi​que.neuf.fr/​AFDL​ife%20ski​lls.htm, accessed March 17, 2018. Jansen J. 2009. “Hesa Strategic Framework for The Next 10 Years: Pathways to a Diverse and Effective South African Higher Education System.” Insights: Higher Education South Africa, Issue 1: 18. Kerckhoff, A.C. 1995. “Institutional Arrangements and Stratification Processes in Industrial Societies.” Annual Review of Sociology 13: 232–​247. National Planning Commission. 2011. Building a capable state: National Development Plan Vision for 2030. Pretoria: Republic of South Africa. Mandela, N. 2004. https://​mthas​hana​coll​ege.co.za/​nel​son-​mand​ela-​on-​educat​ion/​. Mkandawire, T. 2006. “Targeting and Universalism in Poverty Reduction.” Social Policy and Development—​ Paper No. 23. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD). Nkomo, M. 1990. Pedagogy of Domination Towards a Democratic Education in South Africa. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press. Reddy, T. 2000. Hegemony and Resistance Contesting Identities in South Africa. London: Ashgate. Reddy, T. 2004. “Higher Education and Social Transformation: South Africa Case Study.” Pretoria: Council on Higher Education. Robeyns, Ingrid. 2005. “The Capability Approach: Theoretical Survey.” Journal of Human Development 6(1): 93–​114. Sen, A.K. 1992. Inequality Re-​Examined. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sen, A.K. 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spicker, P. 2014. Social Policy: Theory and Practice, 3rd edition. Bristol: Policy Press. http://​spic​ker.uk/​soc​ial-​pol​ icy/​soc​pol.htm, accessed October 17, 2017. Verwoerd, H. 1948. http://​www.for​acha​nge.co.uk/​index.php?stoid=​140 Wolpe, Harold. 1994. “Introduction: Context Principals and Issues in Policy Formation for Post-​Secondary Education.” In Draft Policy Proposals for the Reconstruction and Transformation of Post-​Secondary Education in South Africa, Policy Documents Number One, Education Policy Unit. Cape Town: University of the Western Cape. Zungu, Y. 1977. “The Education for Africans in South Africa.” The Journal of Negro Education 3: 202–​218.

Diver sit y and Transformativ e Policy

67

Institutions, Organizations, and Operations

C H A P T E R

5

 overnmental and Non-Governmental G Responses to Vulnerable Children in Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau

Tomoko Shibuya

Abstract Out of 140 million orphans in the world in 2015, over 49 million children were in Sub-​ Saharan Africa, the region affected the most by the HIV/​AIDS pandemic. This chapter discusses the role of social protection policies, various types of alternative care, and measures to fulfill basic needs in ensuring the welfare of orphaned and vulnerable children in Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau. Field research has revealed a marked difference in the way basic needs and psychosocial conditions are being addressed in the various types of alternative care situations in the two countries. Significant associations were found between the overall well-​being of orphans and vulnerable children and their social situation in the community with respect to food, health, and education conditions. Implications for social policy and administration include strengthening the collaboration among governmental and nongovernmental actors to administer the required social support to the most hard-​to-​reach vulnerable populations in low-​income countries in Sub-​Saharan Africa. Key Words: social protection, social policy, orphans and vulnerable children, Mozambique, Guinea-​Bissau

A state usually tackles social issues, such as poverty, unemployment, crime, or domestic abuse, by developing and executing a set of social policies that address such issues. The scope and approach of these policies vary widely depending on the social problem in question and the sociopolitical and economic context of the country. Vulnerable people, including children, are often in need of support through protection, prevention, and empowerment measures. The state has a responsibility to safeguard people from threatening situations, minimize recurrence of such threatening situations, and increase people’s resilience to such situations (Commission on Human Security 2003). Protection involves efforts to develop and enforce national and international norms, processes, and institutions, and measures to address vulnerabilities in a systemic, comprehensive, and preventive manner. Empowerment, on the other hand, supports and encourages people’s potential and capacity to act on their own behalf and eventually on behalf

of others, so that the community at large might be more resilient against possible future shocks (Commission on Human Security 2003). This concept of empowerment, applied to children, for example, could mean that an abused child will know when and how to seek help from authorities in charge of child protection. By 2015, an estimated 140 million children around the world had lost one or both parents due to different causes (UNICEF 2016). In Sub-​Saharan Africa—​the region affected most by the HIV/​AIDS pandemic—​adult HIV-​prevalence is five times higher than the global average; and the resulting increase in the number of orphans has been alarming. In 1990, fewer than one million children under the age of 15 in this region had lost one or both parents to AIDS. By 2015, over 10 million children were estimated to have become orphans due to AIDS, comprising nearly 82 percent of the world’s total children orphaned by AIDS (UNICEF 2016). People often expect governments to be the first institutions to respond to hardship because of their scale and authority. But when the financial and institutional capacity of the state is limited, nongovernmental service providers often step in to deliver at least some of the necessary protection, prevention, and empowerment measures. This chapter looks at how two countries in Africa are responding to the dramatic increase in orphan numbers by examining different types of alternative care provided in Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau and the resulting outcomes for children in a sample of alternative care centers. The countries of Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau were selected because they rank among the least developed countries in the Human Development Index (UNDP 2014). Further, the percentage of children who were orphaned is significant, at 16 percent for Mozambique and 15 percent for Guinea-​Bissau (calculated from UNICEF 2015), although the causes of their parents’ deaths vary between the two countries. The responses to orphans and vulnerable children and Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau are examined within the larger context of competing social protection frameworks. Conceptual and Policy Issues in Social Welfare Provision Policies that have direct impact on people’s welfare can be considered social welfare policies (Gilbert and Specht 1986). The primary function of social welfare is to support individuals whose human needs are insufficiently met through other social institutions such as family, religious, economic, or political entities. These insufficiencies occur for multiple reasons, including sickness, loss of a wage earner, or inadequate functioning of economic institutions. Orphaned children are the recipients of social welfare because their basic needs are frequently not met by primary social institutions such as the family, usually due to loss of one or both of their parents. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), an orphan is defined as a child under 18 years of age who has lost one or both parents to any cause of death. Social welfare providers usually set certain eligibility requirements for beneficiaries, with social services being a last resort in the chain of care; as such they remain a residual

72

To m oko Sh ibuya

activity, serving only as a safety net for the primary institutional structure (Gilbert and Specht 1986). That residual (or safety net) approach to social welfare views hardship as an anomalous condition experienced by a small number of individuals whose needs could not be met by the four mainstream institutions of society as depicted on the left in Figure 5.1 (Gilbert and Specht, 1986). These unmet needs fall within a theoretically small margin of institutional error attributed to the established system. A second, contrasting approach to social welfare recognizes that large numbers of people regularly “fall through the cracks” of mainstream institutions (note the open space at the center of Figure 5.1’s right-​hand panel). In response, the second school of thought—​known as the institutional or mainline approach—​elevates social welfare itself to be included as one of society’s fundamental institutions, as depicted on the right in Figure 5.1. Although most of the literature on social welfare deals with state provisions, there are also informal provisions, philanthropic efforts, professional social work, and commercial social welfare programs conducted to promote human welfare (Midgley 1997), all of which may contribute to social welfare designed either as a residual or mainline system. In many African countries, markets function only for those who have access to formal employment and income, leaving the majority of poor people excluded from the benefits of a market-​based system. This problem of scale is why social welfare needs are increasingly seen as the responsibility of the state in Africa. In emerging economies such as Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau, however, social welfare provision tends to be residual due to lack of financial and institutional capacities to address needs at full scale. These countries have not raised themselves existentially out of rampant poverty, and the social situation calls for exactly the type of institutional approach to social welfare that these governments are unable to produce. Social security policies usually evolve around formal sector employment, aiming to protect against loss of (formal wage) income and/​or protecting workers to enhance productivity at the work place (Taylor 2008; Kaseke 2004). It generally excludes those outside of formal employment or those in informal employment. Because the majority of the population in many African countries fall into the latter category, conventional work-​ based forms of social security provision are often regarded as a luxury reserved for rich countries with high levels of formal employment (Kaseke 2004; Mouton 1975). Typical social security schemes include some form of social insurance and social assistance, both of which require means testing, contributory schemes, or other conditions to limit beneficiary numbers and benefit payments (Taylor 2008). Such limitations often give rise to the need for additional coverage by nongovernmental service providers, as illustrated in Figure 5.2. The lack of access to social security protections makes poor families vulnerable and deepens their poverty. It also causes poor health of family members, as well as family fragmentation when households have to break up and settle in different sites as a survival

Ch ildr en in Mozambi que and Guine a- Bissau

73

Residual (Safety net)

Institutional (Main-line) Family

Family

Religion

Social welfare

Religion

Political

Social welfare

Political

Economic

Economic

Figure 5.1  Conceptions of Social Welfare (Gilbert et al. 1986, 9) 

Social welfare

Public sector

Private sector Religious & CSOs

Social policies Social protection schemes

Families

Social welfare schemes Social security schemes

Companies & private employers

Social insurance

Social assistance

Figure 5.2  Organigram of Social Welfare System 

strategy to reduce expenditure or for migrant work. As a result, children in poor households become more vulnerable, without the necessary primary care and social support. This explains, for instance, why school enrollment rates are much lower for children of poor households than children of richer households in many low-​income Sub-​Saharan African countries. In terms of social protection for children who have been separated from or lost their parents, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) states in Article 20: 1. A child temporarily or permanently deprived of his or her family environment, or in whose own best interests cannot be allowed to remain in that environment, shall be entitled to special protection and assistance provided by the State.

74

To m oko Sh ibuya

2. States’ Parties shall in accordance with their national laws ensure alternative care for such a child. 3. Such care could include: inter alia, foster placement, kafalah of Islamic law, adoption, or if necessary, placement in suitable institutions for the care of children. When considering solutions, due regard shall be paid to the desirability of continuity in a child’s upbringing and to the child’s ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic background (UN, 1989). From the viewpoint that orphaned children have the right to “alternative care,”1 the government is required to ensure such care complies with national laws. Such care could be informal or formal. Informal care is often initiated by the child, his or her parents, or another relevant person, instead of an administrative or judicial authority. Informal care is characterized by private arrangements made in a family environment by relatives or friends to look after the child on an ongoing or indefinite basis (UNICEF-​ESARO 2008). In contrast, formal care is ordered or authorized by a competent administrative body or judicial authority and provided in a family environment or residence, including private facilities, regardless of administrative or judicial measures (UNICEF-​ESARO 2008). Alternative Care Arrangements in Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau There is little academic research available in English on social conditions and administrative care arrangements in Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau, especially the latter where social research of this kind is almost nonexistent. This chapter therefore draws heavily on field research conducted in the two countries from 2010 to 2012 to assess the physical and psychosocial situation of children under various forms of alternative care and whether existing social protection measures were reaching and serving them in the intended manner (Shibuya and Taylor 2013). The study examined two general categories of living and care arrangements that orphaned children experience: community-​based day care and residential care. Community-​based care situations ranged from kinship and non-​relative foster care in which the child is placed in a family setting while receiving support. Residential care centers, defined as children living in a group with care providers, were being run by public and private institutions, in 1 Alternative care situations include the following: (a) kinship care by the child’s extended family or family friends; (b) foster care by a family other than the children’s own, which is selected, qualified, approved, and supervised by competent authority in charge of placing the child in need of such care; (c) residential care provided in a non-​family-​based group setting, with care provided by adults who would not be regarded as traditional caregivers within the wider society, including “children’s homes”; (d) adoption, often considered as permanent care, involving a judicial process to terminate the legal obligations and rights of a child toward the biological parents and create new rights and obligations between the child and the adoptive parents; (e) kafalah, an alternative form of child care under Islamic law, in which a family cares for a child who lives with them on a permanent, legal basis, without entitlement to use the family’s name or to inherit from the family; or (f ) supervised independent living arrangements for children (UN 1989, 2010).

Ch ildr en in Mozambi que and Guine a- Bissau

75

community or individual homes. Seven alternative care centers in Mozambique and five in Guinea-​Bissau participated in the study, resulting in a total of 122 children surveyed between ages 10 and 17. Each center offered different types of alternative care characterized by two dimensions: family-​based or residential, and public, community, or private. In terms of social protection generally, the level and types of provision vary between Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau. Mozambique has social security measures in place for sickness, maternity, old age, invalidity, survivors, and family allowances (ILO 2014). The country also successfully paved the way for comprehensive responses to the needs of orphans and vulnerable children by 2006, with the development of the Multi-​sectorial Plan for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (2006–​2010), the adoption of the Social Protection Law of 2007, and the Children’s Act in 2008. The Social Protection Law in particular effectively organized the country’s social protection system on three levels: basic social security, obligatory social security, and complementary social security (Mausse and Cunha 2011). Following the approval of the Children’s Act in 2008, the National Strategy for Basic Social Security was also approved by the Council of Ministers in April 2010, comprehensively including four programs: basic social subsidy, direct social support, social service, and productive social action. Another major achievement was the approval by the Council of Ministers of regulations for the Basic Social Protection Law, which secures inclusion, for the first time, of a specific provision for social transfers for vulnerable children and child-​headed households. In key social sectors, such as in education and health, there are other initiatives for social protection, such as abolition of user fees and subsidies for vulnerable populations (Hodges and Pellerano 2010). In spite of these gains, state budget funding for social protection remains insufficient, given the extent of the need with 2.1 million orphaned children in 2014 (UNICEF 2015). However, Mozambique is regarded as an example in terms of progress in the social protection area (MMAS 2012). In contrast, Guinea-​Bissau is at the other extreme. It lags behind in the social protection area and has developed no comprehensive social protection policy as of August 2018. The country has social security legislation for old age, employment injury, invalidity, and survivors. However, the national laws and regulations of Guinea-​Bissau are not yet aligned with international standards of the UNCRC. The country drafted and approved the National Strategy on Social Protection for orphans and vulnerable children in 2009, but in terms of implementation, it is still not yet clear and agreed upon, as the action plan for OVC support has not yet been finalized, after nearly three years of an elaborate development process (Guerreiro 2011). Orphans and vulnerable children receive support on a rather ad hoc basis according to need, usually by external organizations responding to specific requests for support. Support is delivered directly to orphans and vulnerable children through in-​kind services, such as food, clothing, and other consumable items, and/​or assistance in accessing basic social services such as education and healthcare. Other than UNICEF’s 2010 pilot

76

To m oko Sh ibuya

involving cash transfers to 50 families of talibes (children who were forced into begging on the street) by the NGO Association Juventude Islamica, no other specific social protection measures were available for OVC. In the education and health sectors, interventions such as removal of school fees; free distribution of textbooks, mosquito nets, and vitamin supplements; as well as free vaccination of children (UNICEF Guinea-​Bissau 2013) reached many children, including orphans and vulnerable children. These were externally supported interventions and have not as yet been integrated into the state social protection system. The OVC Policy and Planning Effort Index (OPPEI)2 can be used for a systematic comparison of the level of effort in responding to OVC needs between Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau. The comparative analysis of the OPPEI results conducted in 2004 and 2007 is summarized in Table 5.1. In Table 5.1, the efforts made by both governments in the areas related to support for orphans and vulnerable children as defined in OPPEI were measured out of a possible score of 100. General improvement in the scores between 2004 and 2007 can be observed in both countries, with Mozambique scoring higher than Guinea-​Bissau in almost all areas except for consultative process, coordination mechanism, and monitoring and evaluation in 2007 (UNICEF 2008). When looking at these scores in light of the OVC situations of these countries, the impact of policy, planning, and administration on the children targeted is depicted in Figure 5.3. OVC policy and planning improved between 2004 and 2007 in each country, as indicated in improvements in the OPPEI total scores. In Mozambique, this contributes to Table 5.1  OPPEI in Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau—​2004/​2007 (UNICEF 2008: 28–​29) OVC Policy and Planning Effort Index (OPPEI)

Mozambique

Guinea-​Bissau

2004

2007

2004

2007

National situation analysis

53

86

20

33

Consultative process

49

60

55

63

Coordination mechanism

64

75

10

80

National action plans

59

77

23

50

4

55

33

25

Legislative review

10

72

0

30

Monitoring and evaluation

43

40

2

47

Resource mobilization

48

60

68

48

OPPEI Total Score

41

65

26

47

Policy

2

Details on OPPEI can be found in: UNICEF (2008).

Ch ildr en in Mozambi que and Guine a- Bissau

77

OPPEI Total Score School attendance rate of orphans Orphans whose household received... Orphans (%) Adult HIV prevalence rate (%, 15–49 years) 0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 60.0 70.0 80.0 GB-2004

GB-2007

MZ-2004

MZ-2007

Figure 5.3  OVC Situation and OPPEI in Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau, 2004/​2007 

Sources: Based on data from UNICEF, 2008; and UNICEF/​UNAIDS/​WHO/​UNFPA, 2009.

four times more households with orphans and vulnerable children receiving support by 2007 than in 2004. As for Guinea-​Bissau, where there is relatively low progress in the arena of policy and administration, the proportion of households with orphans and vulnerable children receiving support remained stagnant, although there was an improvement in school attendance of orphans between 2004 and 2007. Although the two countries stand at similar ranking in terms of the Human Development Index, the levels of political stability and engagement observed in Mozambique since independence translates into notable progress in establishing a policy environment conducive to OVC support. As a result, its current social protection policy level can be considered in the “preventive” stage in the combined model of social protection presented in Figure 5.4. In contrast, the recurrent political instability of Guinea-​Bissau causes an impasse in the development of policies for OVC support. Guinea-​Bissau therefore still stands in the “protective” and emergency response stage in terms of social protection policy. Comparing this policy analysis to the reality in the field, a slightly different picture emerges. Table 5.2 presents the descriptive statistics of the main profile of the children interviewed in each country. The demographic features of children in the two countries show distinctive differences. Fifty percent of Mozambican children were double orphans, compared to 34 percent of those studied in Guinea-​Bissau. The incidence of maternal orphans was also much higher in Mozambique than in Guinea-​Bissau, with 37 percent as opposed to 21 percent. More paternal orphans were in the centers studied in Guinea-​Bissau: 29 percent compared to Mozambique at 7 percent, as can be seen in Figure 5.5. The study finds that 15 percent of Bissau-​Guinean children in the OVC alternative care centers had both parents still alive, but those parents were unable to care for them. In Mozambique, only 6 percent of children had both parents alive. This could indicate that the Mozambican centers have a better system of screening and targeting. It could also be an indication of family fragmentation—​the result of households being split over different sites as a way to spread out household spending or having to migrate for work—​ which is one of the characteristics of poverty defined by the Committee of Inquiry in a

78

To m oko Sh ibuya

Developmental/ Generative

•

Promotive/ Transformative

•

Preventive Protective

•

• • • • •

Risk-management Welfare/Public works Risk-reduction Vocational training Risk-mitigation Cash transfer

Mozambique

Risk-coping Alternative care

Guinea-Bissau

Figure 5.4  Stages of Social Protection 

Source: Based on ideas from Taylor (2008), Guhan (1994), Devereux and Sabates-​Wheeler (2004).

Table 5.2  Descriptive Statistics Disaggregated by Country

Sex Age group (years) Type of care

Mozambique

Guinea-​Bissau

Frequency

Frequency

Male

41

25

Female

33

23

10–​13

42

33

14–​17

32

15

Family/​Day care

24

14

Residential

50

34

1

0

Community

11

10

NGO

34

20

Private

0

7

Public

10

0

Religious

20

11

0–​4

13

28

5–​10

61

20

Urban

33

21

Peri-​Urban

21

7

Rural

21

20

No care Care provider

Grade* Area

*Value “0” indicates that the child was not attending school at the time of interview.

100.0%

80.0%

Count

60.0%

40.0%

20.0%

0.0% Mozambique

Guinea-Bissau Country

Family Mother Siblings

Father Grand parents None Not orphan

Aunt

Uncle

Figure 5.5  Comparison of Family Situation of the Interviewed Children in Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau 

Comprehensive System of Social Security for South Africa in its 2002 report (Republic of South Africa 2002). In terms of health and psychological status, children in Mozambique generally scored better than those in Guinea-​Bissau, including feeling strong and healthy (Figure 5.6). This could be due to better health care coverage for children in Mozambique, especially those affected by HIV/​AIDS, as a part of the country’s social welfare provision. Another possibility is better public and community recognition of alternative care centers in Mozambique compared to Guinea-​Bissau. Training and preparation of the center staff in Mozambique, undertaken by private initiatives, could also be a factor. Children who were not boarding, and who were living with extended families or with their half-​parents, reported being mistreated by their uncles or their stepfathers in Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau. In Guinea-​ Bissau, the support for these children—​which ought to be provided by the families with whom they were staying—​was in some instances actually not reaching them. The study finds remarkable differences in education. Despite the fact that their average ages were not so different, at 13.3 years in Mozambique and 12.9 years in Guinea-​ Bissau, Mozambican children, on average, were already in grade six compared to grade four in Guinea-​Bissau. Many factors could account for these differences, including the levels of development of the two countries’ education sectors: most primary schools in Mozambique were complete with all six grades, whereas only 20 percent of schools 80

To m oko Sh ibuya

Mean Health situation - Mean Psychological state

2.400

2.300

2.200

2.100

2.000

1.500

1.800 Mozambique

Guinea-Bissau Country

Place Gatembe Nampula

Beira Chimoio Bissau Bafata

Chinde Tombali

Chokwe Boane Biombo Cacheu

Figure 5.6  Comparison of health and psychological state per visited center in Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau 

in Guinea-​Bissau had a complete primary education system. It is notable that Bissau-​ Guinean children were three times more likely to have repeated a grade than the children in Mozambique. However, many Bissau-​Guinean children had better access to learning materials and textbooks than Mozambican children as can be seen in Figure 5.7, perhaps due to the distribution of these items by nongovernmental actors, such as international agencies and NGOs in Guinea-​Bissau. Although the children’s shelter and living environments were not vastly different between the two countries, the poverty and livelihood situations in Guinea-​Bissau were relatively worse: 27 percent of the Bissau-​Guinean children indicated that their alternative care centers did not have resources to buy enough food, while 19 percent of Mozambican children shared this view. Similarly, 39 percent of the Bissau-​Guinean children reported that their center or home never received any support to take care of children, compared to 32 percent of Mozambican children. This finding aligns with information provided by the center managers in the two countries. Although Mozambican centers could be receiving slightly more support than the Bissau-​Guinean centers, such support is provided in an incremental manner and is barely sufficient to cover the basic needs of children in these centers. Social welfare services in Guinea-​Bissau are characterized by a residual rather than Ch ildr en in Mozambi que and Guine a- Bissau

81

Mean Education condition - Mean Living condition

3.0

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0 Mozambique

Guinea-Bissau Country

Place Gatembe Nampula

Beira Chimoio Bissau Bafata

Chinde Tombali

Chokwe Boane Biombo Cacheu

Figure 5.7  Comparison of education situation in relation to type of care in the visited centers in Mozambique and Guinea-​Bissau 

institutional approach, confirming the necessity for more comprehensive social protection frameworks, as discussed earlier (Taylor 2008). Overall, when the relationship between the type of care and the overall well-​being of children was tested using a one-​way analysis of variance according to ANOVA, the Fisher statistic was 23.9 with a p-​value