Book Project

Book Project Title:

Being Seen By the State: Social Policy and the Politics of Poverty Relief in Pakistan

Under what conditions do states with high levels of inequality and clientelism in the provision of public services, implement programmatic social policies to address poverty and vunerability? What consequences do the design and implementation of these social policies have for previously excluded citizens, particularly women, who face high barriers in participating in politics and accessing the local state. My book manuscript addresses how public policies designed to address poverty and inequality can help reshape politics and create important policy feedback in weak institutional settings, by analyzing the political origins and citizenship consequences of Pakistan’s largest social safety net: The Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), one of the largest cash transfer programs targeted at exclusively at women in the Global South.

BISP was established in 2008, during Pakistan’s most recent and tenuous democratic transition. Over the span of a decade (2008-18), BISP has rapidly expanded social welfare coverage to over 7 million women and their households nationwide, with a goal to cover 20% of the population. The monograph examines the political conditions that enabled the building of a programmatic social safety net targted at women in rural Pakistan. The book also analyses the policy feedback effects on program recipients political participation and engagement with both formal and informal governance institutions in rural Pakistan.

I use a mixed methods research design, combining a variety of data sources collected during eighteen months of field research in four districts in Pakistan. This research includes a original household survey with 2254 respondents, including program recipients and those who narrowly missed eligibility, focus groups with BISP program recipients and fifty semi-structured qualitative interviews with politicians, bureaucrats and donor consultants involved in program design and implementation.

I find that receipt of a BISP cash transfer did not result in any significant increase in vote share for three successive incumbents who claimed credit for the program. Instead, i find evidence that program has helped reduce recipients reliance on traditional rural patronage institutions, such as landlords (zamindars) and informal village governance (panchayats). However, BISP’s top-down centralized implementation has created limited local forums for women's engagement with the local state and claim making.

I conclude the monograph by placing the Pakistani case of social policy expansion in comparative perspective with three other notable welfare programs in new democracies in the Global South: India, Brazil and Mexico. My analysis of the politics of social policy expansion in Pakistan, seeks to make an contribution to the study of the political consequences of programmatic social policy expansion on state-citizen linkages and political inclusion of excluded citizens, particularly women, in new democracies in the Global South.