Being Seen by the State: Social Policy and Changing Citizenship Boundaries in Pakistan

Jamil, Rehan Rafay

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Year:: 2022
Contributor:: Jamil, Rehan Rafay (creator); Weitz-Shapiro, Rebecca (Advisor); Singh, Prerna (Advisor); Testa, Paul (Reader); Heller, Patrick (Reader); Tudor, Maya (Reader); Brown University. Department of Political Science (sponsor)
Genre:: theses
Subject:: Democracy; Social policy; South Asia; Comparative Politics; Pakistan; Political Economy of Development
Extent:: xvii, 189 p.

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Abstract:: Under what conditions do governments in weakly institutionalized new democracies implement programmatic social policies that provide benefits to excluded citizens? Can the successful implementation of these social policies strengthen state-citizen linkages and democratic participation? This dissertation addresses these questions by analyzing the political origins and consequences of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), one of the largest cash transfer programs targeted exclusively at women in the Global South. Since its establishment in 2008, BISP has expanded welfare coverage to over five million women and their families. Programmatic Cash transfer programs such as BISP, which provide rules-based social assistance to poor citizens, have been adopted by a variety of governments in the Global South. However, little attention has been paid to the political conditions that enable the successful implementation of these programmatic policies in settings with weak democratic political institutions and whether they can help strengthen democratic participation. To address these questions, I used a mixed-methods research design that included an original quasi-experimental household survey with 2,254 respondents, 70 qualitative interviews, focus groups, and a process tracing of social policy expansion. This dissertation argues Pakistan’s most recent democratic opening in 2008 and the strengthening of party politics created the incentives for three successive elected governments to move away from patronage-based welfare and expand programmatic social benefits to low-income women in a manner that has undermined traditional patron-client power relations. I highlight the income effect that has increased marginalized women’s economic independence and autonomy from traditional forms of patronage. However, BISP’s centralized design has created limited forums for other forms of citizen-state engagement. The dissertation concludes by comparing the Pakistani case of top-down programmatic social policy expansion in comparative perspective with three notable cases from the Global South: India, Brazil, and Mexico. These comparative cases highlight the importance of domestic political coalitions in shaping social policy design and restructuring state-citizen linkages in new democracies.
Notes:: Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2022

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Jamil, Rehan Rafay, "Being Seen by the State: Social Policy and Changing Citizenship Boundaries in Pakistan" (2022). Political Science Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:z7d52x43/

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Political Science Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the Political Science department.
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