Divergent trends in Latin American social security: the Argentine, Brazilian and Cuban cases in comparative perspective

Abstract:

This article contributes to explaining divergent trends in the recent evolution of Latin American social security: contraction and expansion. Based on an historical institutionalist analysis of the Argentine, Brazilian and Cuban cases, it argues that these trends are interrelated: they are sequences of reinforcement of the contraction established by systemic reforms and of reaction to the increase in exclusion caused by them. In the Argentine and Brazilian cases, the findings align with the hypothesis, evidencing an association between the level of contraction caused by the reforms, the existence of reactive measures and the mobilization of learning from previous policies in their modeling. However, the specificities of the Cuban case do not allow us to infer that reforms that caused a low level of contraction do not trigger reactive changes.

Keywords:
Latin America; social security systems; institutional change; reactive sequences; systemic reform