De la solidaridad a la dignidad: grassroots participation and Bolivia's universal social pension scheme

Introduced by a neoliberal reformist government and expanded by the incumbent developmentalist administration, the uniqueness of Bolivia’s universal social pension scheme goes beyond its domestic political architecture and implementation. This social policy measure challenges the dominant model of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) that has recently prevailed throughout Latin America, in addition to contradicting the recommendations of many international financial and development institutions who have favoured targeted social assistance as a means to address poverty and inequality in middle and low-income countries. This paper seeks to understand what has sustained this controversial social security measure for over a decade. In doing so, it concludes that grassroots pressure and popular participation have played an influential role in the evolution and perpetuation of Bolivia’s universal social pension scheme. This development could have interesting implications for the formulation of future social policy in the region and may possibly provide credence to a more participatory approach to social policy-making as opposed to the traditional top-down and clientelistic models of recent decades.A dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of M.Sc. in Globalisation & Latin American Development, 2008-9.