 Social policy in South Africa: Navigating the route to social developmentSophie Plagerson, Leila Patel, Tessa Hochfeld and Marianne S. Ulriksen World Development, 2019, vol. 113, issue C, 1-9 Abstract: This paper reflects on the trajectory of social policy in South Africa (1994–2017) and on which policy levers present opportunities for cross-country policy transfer, in order to address current social development challenges. The current direction of social policy is described as the result of a compromise between two distinct alternative paradigms whereby the statist transformative and market-oriented residual paradigms are held in tension. On the one hand, a transformative policy perspective draws on human rights and views redistribution as a necessary premise for and means of economic growth. On the other hand in the residual framework, redistribution is envisaged as a secondary function that is dependent on economic growth. Several instances are outlined in which this tension is evident, together with the implications for social policy across the policy cycle: in legislation; in social compact formation; in the selection of social programmes and in their implementation; in gender-mainstreaming and in the engagement of the private sector in social policy. Keywords: Social policy; South Africa; Social protection; Social compacts; Gender; Welfare regimes (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:113:y:2019:i:c:p:1-9 DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.08.019 Access Statistics for this article World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes More articles in World Development from Elsevier |
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