In the previous chapter we demonstrated the importance of promoting social policies that
deliver universal outputs. Yet this is easier said than done: How can countries in the South
build these policies? Much of the political economy literature answers this question by
focusing on a small number of “star” countries that managed to establish large social states
and accomplished wide levels of social incorporation.1
The literature links these broad
outcomes to the role of democracy (more is better), partisan ideology (the need for strong
left-wing political parties) and the influence of collective actors (unions and other social
movements).
These macro-explanations miss important pieces of the story. On the one hand, they
downplay the diverse ways in which policies favourable to universal outputs have been
pursued and the significant problems that these “star” cases have faced to reach and sustain
universal outputs. On the other hand, even if democracy and political ideology are important
preconditions, they cannot explain why pro-universal policies are shaped in certain ways and
how they evolve over time. Democratic pressures may, for instance, trigger higher spending
in health services for the poor, but do not determine the selection of funding sources and
means to deliver services, nor whether benefits set the poor apart from the non-poor.
In this chapter and the next we focus on the role of policy architectures as an analytic device
to study pro-universal policies in the South. We define policy architectures as the
combination of policy instruments addressing entry, funding, benefits, delivery and “outside”
options of specific social programs. The policy architecture is the blueprint of a program as
defined not just by individual instruments but the interaction between the various instruments
set in place to cope with each of the five defining components.