Persistent Demands: Running after Social Welfare Benefits in Brazil and Argentina

In recent decades, countries across the globe have substantially expanded the nature and scope of government social welfare programs, especially those targeted at the poor. In fact, lower and middle-income democracies today promise more social benefits to more citizens than they have at any time in the past. At the same time, however, effective access to these programs and benefits remains highly variable, even among those who are eligible. What explains why some citizens actually receive the social benefits and programs for which they are eligible while others do not? We argue that individual persistence is crucial in explaining this variation. Drawing on original focus group and survey evidence from Brazil and Argentina, we develop and test a theory of why some individuals engage in state-centric persistence and others do not.

Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Brown University. Her research explores the politics of accountability and the quality of representation and democracy in lower and middle income countries, with a particular focus on Latin America. She received her PhD from Columbia University.

She has published articles in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Politics in Latin America, Studies in Comparative International Development, and elsewhere. Her book, Curbing Clientelism in Argentina: Politics, Poverty, and Social Policy, received the Donna Lee Van Cott Award from the Political Institutions Section of the Latin American Studies Association.

Each semester, the Murphy Center for Public Policy Research and the Tulane Political Science Department invite leading political scientists to campus to share cutting-edge research while engaging with faculty and graduate students. Research presented covers all aspects of contemporary politics science, including comparative politics, international relations, American politics, and normative theory.