Four Worlds of Latin American Welfare States

There are two ways of studying welfare states, and both have been adopted in Latin America. On the one hand, there is a long tradition of studies that try to find a general, universal rule to explain the implementation and expansion of a generous welfare state (Titmuss, Korpi, Haggard and Kaufman, Pribble, Garay, Huber, and Stephens). Other authors (Esping-Andersen, Théret, Sainsbury, Barba, Valencia, Martinez Franzoni, Filgueira) have considered that since in social sciences there are no universal rules and welfare systems evolve in different manners according to no general rule, but to a certain historical process, one should rather trace the trajectory of each protection system.