The Democratic Social Developmental State

Colonial legacies and the structural constraints of global capitalism pose significant obstacles to building welfare states in the Global South. Yet the past three decades have seen significant progress. In contrast to the literature on northern welfare states, the task of typologizing welfare states in the Global South is in its infancy, made all the more difficult by dramatically different conditions from first-generation welfare states and much greater variation. This paper proposes some broad typologies, but then draws from the cases of Brazil, India, and South Africa to examine the specific type of the democratic social development state. Driven by democratization and new state capacities, the focus on social development is rooted in a rights-based framework and made possible by embedding the state in civil society.