By Lina Arenas
University of Manchester GDI Alumna and Former Deputy Minister of Vulnerable Populations of the Peruvian Government
PhD candidate in Social Policy from The University of Edinburgh, UK
What role does knowledge really play in the making of social protection policies? Is it required more intensively at some stages of the policy-making process? Is more robust evidence or broader types of knowledge more legitimate than others? To what extent does all the time, money, and effort devoted by governments and policy communities actually influence their design, implementation, and ultimately their budget allocation?
These are questions that policymakers ask ourselves all the time. In fact, not only policymakers, but every actor in a policy community, including technocratic bodies, academics, international organizations’ officers, and think tank professionals.
Stemming from discussing what is valid knowledge in social policy and who has it, I embarked on my doctoral research project, aiming to unpack policy communities’ (Haas, 1992; Simmons & Voss, 2018) attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions surrounding knowledge in the different stages of the policy making process of conditional cash transfer policies. Such policies represent a key case of policy transfer, discursive malleability (Heimo, 2023), political inclusion (Barrientos, 2023), and are ultimately shaped by the diverse polity systems in Latin America.
Whether from a cost-effective stance by investing in what works; or from a political stance, to protect policy from clientelism; the design and evaluation of policy through rigorous tools and scientific lenses has become normative. However, do these factors really matter in shaping policy? Is policy shaped mostly by wild political narratives or by evidence-based pragmatic decisions? Are they following any specific model of research-policy relations? (Boswell & Smith, 2017). What are the actual perceptions of the policy communities about how their daily ‘currency’ is used for practical action? (Oliver & Boaz, 2019).
After the height of the neoliberal period of the 1990s, major shifts in social policies (“The Social Investment Paradigm”), and politics (“The Pink Tide”) occurred in Latin America. Along with this critical juncture, a stronger positivist emphasis on policy measurement was incorporated through policy transfer mechanisms. Nevertheless, a technocratic entry point on effective policy assessment was not the only perspective on ‘valid’ knowledge. Alternative “truth claims” emerged, and have remained in tension between technocrats and politicians (Bekkers et al. 2018; Bickerton & Accetti, 2021), permeating also the sphere of social protection.
When it comes to understanding how social assistance policies had been analyzed, Yörük et al. (2023) shed some light on how little they had been studied from ideational accounts, compared to structuralist, institutionalist, or political frameworks. In addition, they found that there is a divide between the global south vs. the global north literature, suggesting an unequal distribution of scholarly attention, potentially stemming from bias towards non-political factors. Precisely contentious politics, and how they could dynamite the precarity of the institutions, are salient factors for analysis in the Latin American region.
Including a debate on the coloniality of knowledge (Quijano, 2000) is also relevant at this point, since the study will be carried out in a region, where presumably the role of international organizations (particularly of International Financial Institutions) might play a strong role in shaping what counts as evidence, considering policy transfer mechanisms and elements of policy emulation. This approach should also allow us to tackle the power dynamics between the North and South knowledge exchange, in a regional context where little funds are allocated to research, and countries struggle to produce ‘local knowledge’.
Drawing mainly from discursive institutionalism (Schmidt, 2008), and ideational power (Béland and Cox, 2011, 2016), the project delves into how policy communities handle knowledge in social protection. Our approach to discussing what is valid knowledge and who has it, belongs in part to a critical debate of ideational power. Carstensen and Schmidt (2016) have elaborated a neat classification through which this concept could operate, with the underlying rationale that ultimately ideas are related to practices of power. Their framework pairs well, in theory, as an analytical element through which potential discourses on the use of knowledge could emerge.
Whilst analysis through critical discourse is deemed the most suitable to carry on with the project, a mixed-methods tool will be introduced (Q-methodology) to cluster a classification of the policy communities’ perceptions through an inverted factorial analysis. Q-methodology has been already tested in studies on perceptions of EBPM from policy communities in Wales (MacKillop and Downe, 2022), and in Scotland and Wales from a comparative stance (Piddington et al., 2024). While unusual, mixed methods constitute a gap in ideational studies in policy, consequently, the contribution to the robustness of ideational perspectives through mixed methodologies is not only welcomed but encouraged (Béland and Cox, 2011:16).
Through comparing cases, and with critical lenses, the project aims to unveil diverse attitudes and perceptions towards knowledge in the policy-making process of conditional cash transfers, and to depict how different polity systems affect the use of knowledge shaping this decision-making. Further reflections stemming from critical theory on the decoloniality of knowledge and the reification of knowledge should accompany the research. This work is in its early stages and fieldwork is aimed to be carried out in Chile, Argentina, and Peru in early 2025.
Note: This article gives the views of the author/academic featured and does not represent the views of the Global Development Institute as a whole.
Please feel free to use this post under the following Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Full information is available here.
Image courtesy of Canva Pro