The global career of social cash transfers, non-contributory regular payments to poor individuals and households, is the most remarkable development in global social policy over the last two decades. On this extensive topic, Lutz Leisering has presented a monograph that is comprehensive in every respect and can serve as a guideline for all future research in this field. It provides a precise mapping of social cash transfer programmes (SCT) in all countries of the Global South, analyses the role of international organisations in the global spread of these programmes, and explains this trend as a result of an entitlement revolution towards universal social rights. Building in particular on the work of Armando Barrientos and Bob Deacon, Leisering provides a brilliant, theoretically highly sophisticated and empirically profound study. The analysis of the agendas of international organisations is linked to the comparative analysis of national programmes, databases specially compiled for this purpose are combined with new methods of measurement, and all this is integrated into a theory of social policy as universalization of social citizenship.
The central thesis is, since the end of the last century, a discursive and legal revolution has taken place, which has realised universal social rights in the Global South through quite different programmes, now summarized under the term SCT. The book presents results of the research project FLOOR (financial assistance, land policy, and global social rights), ledby Lutz Leisering and conducted from 2010 to 2017 at the University of Bielefeld (Germany), which examined SCT programmes in 113 countries, most of them introduced after 2002. Individual chapters are co-authored by members of the research team Tobias Böger, Moritz von Gliszcynski and Katrin Weible. A total of eleven chapters provide an overall analysis of the historical development and current status of social cash transfers. Detailed descriptions and typologies are based on FLOORCASH databases, with different units of analysis: in addition to programmes, dataon entitlements (social rights from the citizen's perspective) are collected, as well as the country profile as the totality of all SCT programmes in a country. These investigations are embedded in an integrated north-souththeory of socialassistance and a theory of social policy as the development of universal social rights. Formally, too, this book shows exceptional accuracy: a glossary, a country index and a thematic index complement the study, which is also rich in tables and graphs.
Leisering defines SCT as publicly financed programmes, which are non-contributory, and provide non-repayable and regular benefits in cash, mainly to national citizens, addressing persons considered poor or vulnerable and mostly involving a means test and a self-sufficiency test (p. 85, 402). The detailed description of the individual SCT programmes pays particular attention to the respective target groups: children, older persons and adults with disabilities are at the centre of national legislation, general programmes for poor people are also included, but access is only rarely given to persons of working age. The empirical study starts at the level of international organisations, with special attention being paid to the influence of transnational ideas. Based on a newly compiled database with text documents of international organisations (FLOORCASH-Discourse: 234 documents for the period 1970-2014), the history of the concept SCT as an umbrella term and meta-model is traced in detail. Not until 2000 did poverty become a main global issue, which led to an orientation of development policy towards social policy issues. At the level of international organisations, the emphasis was initially on social pension programmes, but these only applied to people over a certain age. Later, attention was focused on the conditional cash transfer programmes that have been established in Mexico as well as Brazil and were propagated worldwide, particularly by the World Bank. Family allowances and general household assistance received far less support from international organisations, because working age people were also to be given access to these programmes. Concepts of universal basic income neither played a major role in international discourse nor in the design of individual programmes at the national level.
We find that 80 per cent of all programmes implemented in 2012/13 were means-tested, but only 29 percent belonged to the particularly highlighted type of conditional cash transfers. For the analysis of social pensions as a different type of SCT, a newly developed index of social citizenship is used, which captures the functioning of the programmes from the perspective of the beneficiaries and includes the elements scope and inclusion, eligibility, level of benefits, and degree of institutionalisation. This is the most accurate assessment of programme structures to date, and it also links the analysis of social policy programmes to the theory of social citizenship in the most precise way.
Lutz Leisering's sociological theory of social policy follows the tradition of Georg Simmel, T.H. Marshall, John W. Meyer and the Swiss sociologist Franz-Xaver Kaufmann, Leisering's academic teacher. According to them, the state's assumption of responsibility for social welfare and the global unfolding of universal social rights are core processes in the development of social policy. Class structures and political institutions may favour this discourse and the expansion of rights, but the dynamics of normative standards is decisive. The emergence of the SCT is thus an expression of a global shift in discourse. The view on the poor has changed significantly. They are now seen less as passive objects of charity than as potential drivers of economic development and as bearers of individual rights. A rights-based form of basic social citizenship has emerged. The new programmes can be understood within the framework of a “constructivist institutionalism” and an “onion skin model” with four layers: at the core is the collective social responsibility of a state. The other three onion skins address the cognitive and normative construction of the social question, the development of the policy paradigms that determine the political response to social risks, and finally the definition of the welfare institutions that govern social policy programmes. These four layers denote dimensions of a political commitment to the social. Leisering calls this a “recognition approach”, a recognition of the normative obligation to react to certain social risks and needs.
He thus provides a highly impressive reformulation of T.H. Marshall's model of social rights. As with the latter, his approach is also dominated by a thoroughly positive, optimistic picture of the diverse national developments that reflect “the general principles of world culture” (15). All forms of social assistance are undoubtedly problematic, as they are only “a small but basic and necessary component of social security and social citizenship” (335). Even if the level of transfers is often very low, the SCTs have nevertheless achieved a breakthrough in social policy in the Global South.
If there is any critical point in this extremely wealthy work, it could be seen in how Leisering integrates his own explanatory approach to social cash transfers with traditional approaches. The combination of discursive analysis with a quantitative and variable-based explanatory approach and the reference to causal mechanisms (cultural linkages, quantification, theoretisation) can still be elaborated more precisely.
For a more in-depth discussion of fundamental questions in the analysis of social policy, special attention should be paid to Leisering's impulses for a more precise definition of the term universalism. Leisering criticises how means-tested programmes are often devaluated when being contrasted with universalist social policy: “Means-tested benefits can contribute to universalism in the broad sense” (57). He argues that universalism should be understood more generally than the inclusion of all population groups in a single programme and defends social assistance as another form of universalist social policy, which can result from the combination of several programmes: “Universalism may also be multi-tiered, providing population-wide coverage without equal benefits for all – universalism is not the same as egalitarianism” (358). The concluding chapter of this book, which can only be admired for its theoretical elaboration and the wealth of empirical findings, outlines the contours of a future expansion of rights. Today, SCT is just the most ambivalent bottom level in the overall building of social security. Continuing the history of universalizing social rights and achieving higher levels of benefits and more integrated programmes is the challenge of the near future, which will require not only state legislation, but also a “culture of recognition” (377).
