This dissertation starts with the question of what the global resurgence of authoritarianism means for the welfare states affected by it. The inadequacies of the dominant partisan and institutionalist paradigms within the welfare state literature suggest, however, that a new paradigm for understanding welfare state development is necessary to answer such a question. For this reason, this dissertation utilizes an integrative multi-method approach that incorporates multiple sets of Prais-Winston regression and moderation analyses of public social expenditure, social pension benefits and social pension coverage utilizing correlated panel corrected standard errors on Latin American cross-national data from 1980-2013, as well as case study analyses of Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Guatemala and, subsequently, the United States of America, to develop, evaluate and refine a new state-elite-driven model of welfare state development where state elites construct paradigms of social citizenship and implement welfare state reforms that accord with these paradigms in service of their independent interests. The results of these analyses indicate that the social citizenship paradigm and state capacity elements that enable state elites to pursue their interests are stronger and more consistent predictors of welfare state outcomes than the traditional political regime type and partisan strength factors frequently focused on in welfare state studies. Beyond that, the results of these analyses indicate that welfare state outcomes are directly linked to state elite interests in, specifically, strengthening their power and mitigating the social and economic crises that threaten it, that civil conflict weakens state elites’ ability to use the welfare state to pursue their interests, and that democracy plays a secondary role within welfare state development, but one that may have helped encourage state elites across South, Central and North America to converge upon broad-based social citizenship paradigms and an accompanying social investment style of welfare state as a means of minimizing potential crises. The findings of this dissertation suggest, therefore, that the movement toward authoritarianism may bring about a return to more exclusionary social citizenship paradigms, particularistic welfare state reforms, and greater usage of the despotic powers of the state, which constrain the generosity of the welfare state.

Creator

• Johnson, Kory

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-vc9k-c665

Subject

• Sociology

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:15874
• etdadmin_upload_863869

Date created

• 2021-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright