Incorporation

This chapter offers an examination of the incorporation effects of social protection in Latin America. The analysis focuses on two intertwined elements: (i) the features of the ‘critical realignments’ shaping the incorporation effects of the emergent institutions; and (ii) the theories that can be brought to bear to explain change. The main findings from the chapter can be summarised as follows. First, developments in social protection in the region are primarily explained by processes of incorporation and disincorporation of wage earners. Second, in Latin America the incorporation and disincorporation effects of social protection institutions confirm that intra-class (wage earners) fragmentation and aggregation is more important than inter-class coalitions for the politics of welfare institutions. Third, identifying and studying critical realignments is essential to explaining changes in social protection institutions and the resulting processes of incorporation and disincorporation. Fourth, it makes sense to seek to develop theoretical frameworks from an understanding of the Latin American context. Fifth, the literature on the politics of social protection appears to have an in-built elite bias. Focusing on the incorporation effects of social protection institutions shifts attention to wage earners, the primary actors of social protection.