 The Politics of Social Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Configurational Approach to Fee-Free Policies at the High School LevelGabriel Asante SAGE Open, 2023, vol. 13, issue 3, 21582440231184970 Abstract: Governments in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are expanding access to high school education, which is a perpetuation of the previous focus on basic education. This study applies qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) using data from seven countries from 2010 to 2020 to examine the potential conditions of fee-free policies at the high school level. Five potential conditions are analyzed. They include the regime type, electoral competition, ideological lineage, economic conditions, and social context. The findings indicate the significant influence of electoral competition and a high level of lower secondary school enrolment for the adoption of fee-free policies. The absence of electoral competition leads to a lack of fee-free policy. The paper explains how elections, one indicator of representative democracy, motivate political leaders to initiate social policies. Additionally, the study challenges the relevance of two important explanations for expansionary social policy in the literature—the partisan theory of policy outcomes, and the economy. Keywords: social policy; fee-free education; secondary education; electoral competition; QCA; Sub-Saharan Africa (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:sae:sagope:v:13:y:2023:i:3:p:21582440231184970 DOI: 10.1177/21582440231184970 Access Statistics for this article More articles in SAGE Open |
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