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ISBN 92-9014-587-0
First published 1996
SOCIAL EXCLUSION
AND
ANTI-POVERTY STRATEGY
RESEARCH PROJECT ON THE PATTERNS AND CAUSES OF SOCIAL EXCLUSION AND THE DESIGN OF POLICIES TO PROMOTE INTEGRATION:
A SYNTHESIS OF FINDINGS |
| SOCIAL EXCLUSION AND ANTI-POVERTY STRATEGY |
 Introduction
Chapter I. The Conceptual Issues
Chapter II. The Patterns and Causes of Social Exclusion
Chapter III. The Policy Implications
Chapter IV. Conclusion
This volume represents the final report of a research project undertaken by the International Institute for Labour Studies of the ILO, with the financial support of the United Nations Development Programme. Preliminary findings were presented to the World Summit for Social Development in March 1995. The aim of the project was to conduct experimental research on policies aimed at poverty eradication and social integration.
This publication synthesizes the outcomes from the conceptual work; the empirical evidence of case studies; and an initial identification of the policy implications for social inclusion.
The notion of social exclusion entered mainstream discourse as long-term unemployment and "new poverty" became common features of the industrialized world. It has since become part of larger debates such as the social effects of globalization; and the implications of fiscal crisis for the future of the welfare state in the North, and the developmentalist state in the South.
This report addresses two basic issues.
The first question is the contribution made by the concept of social exclusion to the current understanding of poverty. The findings of the project suggest that the concept of social exclusion has certain advantages. It provides an integrated and dynamic analytical perspective which reveals the processes; agency; and multi-dimensionality of disadvantage. It provides a framework for analysing the relationship between livelihood, well-being and rights. And by relating social and economic status to the notion of citizenship, it generates a collective moral responsibility for social integration.
The second question is the operational relevance of the concept to anti-poverty strategies, particularly in developing countries and countries in transition. Primary research was carried out by local multi-disciplinary teams, and six monographs were published presenting the details of empirical studies on social exclusion in India, Peru, Russia, Tanzania, Thailand, and Yemen. Other countries studied include Brazil, Cameroon, Mexico, Tunisia, and Venezuela. These studies, together with regional literature reviews on poverty, deprivation and social exclusion in Latin America, the Arab States, Africa and Asia, show the relevance of the concept to different countries at different stages of development, with varying economic and social characteristics.
The findings of this project have been used by the Institute to promote a wider debate within the international community and within developing countries. Regional and national conferences were organized in Bangkok, Lima and Santiago. Global meetings were held in New York and Roskilde, and a further meeting is planned in Geneva.
The report was prepared by my colleagues Charles Gore and José B. Figueiredo who, together with Gerry Rodgers, were the coordinators of the project as a whole. I also wish to record our appreciation to UNDP for their financial support and active encouragement. It is our hope that this work will be the point of departure for a series of wider and more detailed studies to address the major challenge of our time: the creation of civil societies everywhere which are free,prosperous and equitable.
Padmanabha Gopinath
Director
International Institute for Labour Studies
| Chapter I: The Conceptual Issues |
As an analytical concept, the term social exclusion was originally coined in France in 1974 to refer to various categories of people -labelled "social problems" and who were unprotected by social insurance. Social exclusion in this context referred to a process of social disintegration, in the sense of a progressive rupture of the relationships between the individual and society. But, since the late 1980s, the term "social exclusion" has also been propagated by the European Commission, which was increasingly concerned with the problems of long-term unemployment and of unskilled workers and immigrants. Whilst the use and power of the notion of social exclusion was well established in Western Europe and also to some extent in the USA with the label of the "underclass", it was largely absent from the social development debate in the non-industrialized world. And it was precisely one of the objectives of the IILS/UNDP project to test its relevance and value there.
As a first step, this project concentrated on regional literature reviews, revisiting the literature on poverty from a social exclusion perspective. Three main views are expressed in these reviews. The first is sceptical of the idea of deploying concepts formulated in Western Europe in developing countries. This was because such an exporting of ideas might simply relabel long-standing locally developed approaches to social problems and obscure other more important causes of poverty than exclusion, such as structural heterogeneity, or terms on which people participate in the economy and society. In contrast, the second view indicated that the concept was useful in that it allowed the integration of various loosely connected notions of social disadvantage, as well as the broadening of the notion of deprivation by directing more attention to poverty as a process which involves agents and institutions and makes explicit the interplay between its material and non-material dimensions. Finally, there was consensus that this theory overlaps and is broader than most, if not all, of the literature on and approaches to poverty and, as such it could be used as the basis for building a framework for the analysis of poverty.
1. Social Exclusion in Different Models of Society
In parallel to these reviews, the theoretical work carried out indicated, as a major feature, that the notion of social exclusion is highly variable in meaning, notably because it is largely dependent on the different paradigms or modes of thinking about society. The three most pertinent paradigms to the analysis of social exclusion would be `solidarity', `specialization' and `monopoly'. These three paradigms are in reality theories of society, and exclusion has different causes and meanings in each: "Each paradigm attributes exclusion to a different cause, and is grounded in a different political philosophy: republicanism, liberalism and social democracy. Each provides an explanation of multiple forms of social disadvantage - economic, social, political and cultural - and thus encompasses theories of poverty and long-term unemployment, racial-ethnic inequality and citizenship" (Silver H., in Rodgers et al, 1995).
The first paradigm, solidarity, sees exclusion as a breaking of the social tie, a failure of the relationship between the society and the individual. Implicitly there is a core of shared values and rights, a `moral community', around which the social order is constructed; a variety of institutions provide the mechanisms for integrating individuals in society, and exclusion reflects their failure and a possible danger to the social body. This model provides the underpinnings of the Republican notion of the French State; a similar logic is espoused by many nationalist regimes. It is within this model that the present notion of exclusion originated. It is rather obvious why: there is a clear and unitary notion of what it is that individuals and groups are excluded from.
The second paradigm, specialization, sees exclusion as resulting from individual behaviours and exchanges. Societies are composed of individuals with diverse interests and capabilities, and the structure of society is built around a division of labour and exchange in both economic and social spheres. Individuals may exclude themselves by their choices, may be excluded because of the patterns of interests or contractual relationships among other actors, or their exclusion may occur as a result of discrimination, of market failures or of unenforced rights. Society can be seen as composed of individuals who (voluntarily) participate in some domains and are excluded from others. Exclusion from one social domain does not imply exclusion from all. Thus exclusion is a much weaker concept here than in the solidarity paradigm.
The third paradigm, monopoly, sees society as hierarchical, with different groups controlling resources. Insiders protect their domains against outsiders by constructing barriers and restricting access - to occupations, to cultural resources, to goods and services. At the same time, they promote solidarity within the group. Membership of society is therefore necessarily unequal. But the picture may be complex, with a hierarchy of inclusions and exclusions rather than a simple dualism as in the solidarity model. The rules determining access to the more privileged groups also determine vulnerability, and determine who is excluded. The identity of the excluded is thus socially constructed. The same mechanisms may exclude immigrants in one situation, the illiterate in another and religious minorities in a third. Exclusion is a central aspect of this paradigm, a mechanism which underpins the existing structure of society.
These three paradigms by no means exhaust the different ways in which social integration can be conceptualized. But they represent the major models and should be interpreted as ideal types as in reality each society is composed of a particular mix of the ideas underlying these paradigms.
2. Working Definitions of Social Exclusion
To complement the theoretical framework, the project has selected a conceptual working definition for social exclusion. It adopted and elaborated a distinction used in the European framework research programme on social exclusion, because it appeared that the level of abstraction of this definition enabled the deployment of the concept in a wide range of countries, at different levels of development and different positions in the world economy. The distinction is between social exclusion as an attribute of individuals, and social exclusion as a property of societies.
(i) Social exclusion as an attribute of individuals focuses directly on the nature of the lives which people are leading. Excluded persons or groups are seen to be in a situation of disadvantage, just as those with low incomes are seen to be disadvantaged. But using the notion of social exclusion goes beyond a narrow definition of poverty as lack of income or material possessions. To describe persons as "socially excluded" (rather than to describe them as "poor") is to suggest that they are socially isolated in some sense, that they "have" or experience weak social relatedness. The socially excluded may lack social ties to the family, local community, voluntary associations, trade unions, or even the nation. They also may be disadvantaged in terms of the extent of their legal rights or in their ability effectively to realize them. This perspective also sees individual disadvantage as a multidimensional situation, and in contrast to traditional notions of the living standard and poverty, it brings together both consumption-related and work-related aspects of disadvantage. Finally, it focuses on the dynamics of cumulative causation, describing the positive feedback effects which reinforce disadvantage and may make it irreversible, and also the factors which can short-circuit processes of marginalization and "social disaffiliation". This way of describing disadvantage thus directs attention to the ability of persons to change their position within an income distribution and social hierarchy, as well as the form of the income distribution and hierarchy itself. It raises questions about the adequacy of welfare policies based on the insurance against risks and cyclical fluctuations in economic activity, to address emerging patterns of disadvantage.
(ii) Social exclusion as a property of societies can be defined in various ways. But a useful approach is an institutional perspective in which social exclusion is a property of the basic institutional framework and on-going institutional arrangements within which individuals and groups "make choices and go about their daily business of making a living". The focus of social exclusion in this sense is not persons, but rather the institutions, the rules, formal and informal, explicit and tacit, which enable and constrain human interaction. Social exclusion is present as a structural property of a socio-economic system when: (a) A society is divided segmentally and "the various segments of society organize around different rules, processes and institutions that produce different systems of incentives and disincentives to which individuals respond"; and, (b) the rules which enable and constrain access and entitlement to goods, services, activities and resources are unjust in the sense that certain categories of people are denied opportunities which are open to other persons who are comparable. Social exclusion is a property of society if racial, sexual and other forms of discrimination are present, if the markets through which people earn a livelihood are segmented, or if public goods, which in theory should be available to everyone, are "semi-public".
In the project, and mainly through the work of the national teams, it was shown that different interpretations of such definitions existed. The concept of social exclusion was defined in a way which was "appropriate in the particular country situation". For example, in the case of the study on Peru, social exclusion is the inability to participate in economic, cultural and political life. In the case of Thailand, social exclusion is a process through which citizenship rights on which livelihood and living standards depend are not recognized and respected. In Russia, it is a situation of multiple deprivation and both an objective and subjective feature of people's lives.
But these diverse definitions have a number of common ingredients. Social exclusion is always seen as a state of ill-being and disablement (disempowerment,inability) which individuals and groups experience. As a description of individual disadvantage, social exclusion encompasses both welfare - as conventionally understood in economic analyses of poverty - and agency issues - an inability of persons to find employment, to make a livelihood or claims through which rights are realized. As a feature of the structure of societies, social exclusion is manifest in recurrent patterns of social relationships in which individuals and groups are denied access to the goods, services, activities and resources which are associated with citizenship. Finally, the studies have also shown that social exclusion can be analyzed both as a state and a process. In both cases, this entails going beyond resource allocation mechanisms to power relations, culture and social identity.
3. Contrasting Poverty and Social Exclusion: General Considerations
At one extreme, social exclusion can be seen as an element within a narrow definition of poverty in terms of the minimum standard of living below which one is absolutely poor. For example, this could be implemented by having a consumption-based poverty line which would include not simply food and other basic material needs but also an amount reflecting the cost of participating in the everyday life of society. At the other extreme, social exclusion can be seen as a replacement for poverty. Between these two positions, it is possible to see social exclusion as a particular broad notion of poverty.
The work within the project supported this last view in that it allows work on social exclusion to build on, but broaden traditional poverty analysis. With this perspective, social exclusion can be thought of as a multi-dimensional concept of poverty which introduces, in particular, aspects of social participation and rights realization into its conceptualization. Material poverty can be seen as a particular form of social exclusion.
What may be most important about social exclusion as a concept, at the individual level, is that it refers to processes of impoverishment. Focusing on processes - rather than on the poor - enables causal analysis. It directs the focus to the variety of ways in which people become poor, and variety of ways out of poverty. It points particularly to the links between poverty and employment, and the ways in which particular types of citizenship rights enable social and occupational participation.
It may also be suggested that "exclusion models" offer a broad class of explanations of income inequality. Social exclusion is linked to the process of income acquisition as this involves access to assets of various kinds (including conventional factors of production and social capital) and the income streams which can be derived from them.
A critical issue is how important social exclusion is to the growth-poverty relationship and whether it affects the rate of growth itself. Analysis of this issue deserves more attention and might clarify how poverty is affected by the process of globalization of economic relationships, notably through the fragmentation of labour and credit markets, and of other institutions at the national level, induced by this process.
4. Contrasting Poverty and Social Exclusion: Evidence from the Case Studies
The different conceptions of social exclusion in the studies lead to different analyses of the relationships between material poverty and social exclusion. In the studies of Russia and Tanzania, material deprivation in consumption and possessions is one aspect of social exclusion. Social exclusion, in these studies, includes social deprivations of various kinds and can be seen as a multi-dimensional concept of poverty which, in the former study, includes individuals' and groups' sense of self-esteem. In the study of Thailand, in contrast, social exclusion is explicitly regarded as something different from poverty. The study argues that it is possible to have a falling incidence of poverty amongst a population and at the same time recurrent instances of social exclusion. The other three studies identify different relationships between material poverty and social exclusion. The studies of India and Peru view the main direction of causality differently. In the study of India, poverty is identified as an important cause of social exclusion because purchasing power acts as a barrier to the realization of welfare rights. It also shows that it is possible to be incorporated into society - in a system of castes - but in a perpetually subordinate and materially disadvantaged position. More than from exclusion, poverty results from unjust and uneven terms of inclusion. In the study of Peru, in contrast, social exclusion is analyzed as a cause of poverty. The society is stratified and has an large middle group, defined as "social magma", where there is much upward and downward mobility, but not into the exclusive high class networks at the top and into the hard core of exclusion at the bottom. Those at the bottom of this "pyramid" are the poorest in society. Their situation reflects the fact that, for them, economic, political and cultural exclusions are reinforcing rather than offsetting processes. Finally, in the study of Yemen, it is suggested that there are interdependent relationships between poverty and social exclusion.
| Chapter II: The Patterns and Causes of Social Exclusion |
Empirical material was gathered by undertaking a series of case studies on a sample of countries defined so as to provide examples from different regions of the world as well as a wide range of economic situations, such as countries undergoing rapid economic growth and countries facing stagnation or intensive structural adjustment. The final selection included post-socialist economies in transition, newly-industrialized countries and least developed countries. Studies were undertaken in 11 countries, of which 6 were finally retained to constitute the core of the empirical material for assessing the analytical and policy advantages of viewing poverty and inequality from a social exclusion perspective. These were: Peru in Latin America; Tanzania in Africa; India and Thailand in South and South-east Asia; Yemen from the Arab world; and Russia from the former USSR.
The set of country studies focus on the economic, social and cultural processes and institutions which are identified as the causes of social disadvantage and inequality. As the empirical material presented hereafter shows, there is a variety of possible interpretations of the causes and resulting patterns of exclusion but there are also commonalities among the findings, and it is important, in presenting each case study, to highlight some of them.
1. Commonalities in Interpretation
(i) Social exclusion within countries and at the individual level is involuntary and results from policies and institutions.
Whilst the studies recognize the importance of individual attributes in social exclusion, they analyze these attributes as being socially-constructed. They reject the notion that social exclusion can be explained as an outcome of individual choices. The studies of India and Thailand are eloquent on this issue and the study of Tanzania, in a similar vein, underlines the role of agency in the causation and persistence of poverty and inequality.
(ii) The institutions which act to include and exclude are both formal and informal, and encompass the working of the markets; the scope and configuration of citizenship rights; and the patterns of associational life, including discriminatory practices, of civil society.
The associational life and pervasive values in civil society intertwine with the working of markets and states to reinforce, or counteract, social exclusion. In the study of Peru social exclusion is found in economic, political and cultural processes, and there are specific reasons for this in each case. Exclusions from market exchange occurs in the basic markets
(Endnote 1)
of labour, credit and insurance because they do not clear through price adjustment, and quantitative rationing, based on screening devices and selection procedures, occurs. Some of the people who are capable and willing to participate in market exchange are excluded or relegated to segments which are less profitable or more risky. Secondly, exclusions from universal rights and political processes are derived from a number of countervailing tendencies. For example, on the one hand, the elite might be willing to share certain powers and recognize certain rights for the population as a whole. But this might be limited by the development of populist and clientelist politics; by a gap between the formal and genuine enforcement of rights due to discrimination, the precarious legitimacy and instability of political institutions or legal insecurity. Finally, cultural exclusions arise in the sense that certain individuals cannot participate in social networks, which are like clubs. There is a hierarchy of these networks, and ruling classes set restrictive conditions for membership in high class networks in order to preserve privileges.
The studies of India and Yemen both identify factors which facilitate and constrain the ability of the state to deliver, to all citizens, basic social rights such as to education, health and social security. Slow growth (or stagnation) limits the amount of financial resources available for social expenditures, whilst at the household level, low incomes limit the ability of the poor to pay for services. Administrative inefficiencies, weak organization, lack of priority setting and of accountability and planning, a wrongly focused structure of expenditure, all compound the problem of lack of resources. But the critical factor which prevents the realization of these rights, which the governments recognize as desirable, is the working of the political system. The Indian study suggests that in the Indian democratic experience, on the one hand, the ruling parties "have increasingly displayed an enduring perception that it is politically ruinous to neglect the problem of poverty and unemployment among the numerically large population groups, as these groups become increasingly aware of their political rights"; and on the other hand, "short-run "pork-barrel politics has fuelled an extensive network of patronage and inter-elite struggle over the share of the national economic pie, at the expense of the welfare claims of the majority". In Yemen, the situation depicted in the study is worse. Newly formed political parties "are strongly influenced by the traditional social order and networks of power" and the poor and disadvantaged are "unaware of how to organize or to utilize political parties to represent their needs and demands".
The study on Russia introduces a wide variety of formal organizations which act as mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. These include: trade unions, courts, Peasant Farm Associations, Employment Centres, the about-to-be privatized state enterprises, and new small firms which have been created since the start of the reform process.
(iii) Institutions are important in processes of social exclusion as they structure the relationship between macro-economic change and the pattern of economic growth on the one hand, and the changing life-circumstances of individuals, households and groups, on the other hand.
Understanding social exclusion involves analysing this macro-micro relationship. The studies identify a range of macro-processes in which social exclusion is embedded. These include: industrialization; modernization; and transition from a socialist to a market economy; and a historical path of change, which includes urbanization, industrialization and ever closer integration into the world economy.
In the study of Russia the central process of change is the transition to a market economy. This transition requires the creation of a labour market and the abandonment of the old socialist employment guarantees. The study argues that the critical institution which interrelates the process of macro-economic change to individual and household outcomes is the labour market. The way in which the labour market is forming reflects the situation of surplus labour and mass poverty.
In the study of Yemen, social exclusion is also understood in relation to processes of change. But in this case what is regarded as important is the transformation of a traditional society to a modern state with a market economy. During this transformation, a dual society has formed. On the one hand, close personal relationships based on traditional norms and values occur at the level of the family, tribe or communal group. On the other hand, an attempt is being made to modernize from above and this includes the adoption of social integration as a national goal, to be pursued through the adoption of rather formal or mechanisms such national development plans. In the study of Thailand the critical process of change is the transformation of the economy from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Rapid growth and industrialization has made areas of land - designated by the government as "forest reserves" - a major source of conflict between business and peasants interests. In urban centres, particularly Bangkok, rapid urban growth is creating tensions. One is on the use of land when for instance long-established communities, living in areas which are designated as "slums", are threatened with eviction, dispersal and loss of livelihood. Another is technological upgrading for sustaining the process of rapid industrialization and competitiveness. This is particularly critical in labour intensive and export-oriented industries such as textiles, where improving efficiency to remain competitive often means threatening workers' jobs. These three rights conflicts are rooted in competition for the control and utilization of natural and human resources in a process of rapid industrialization. They illustrate how conflicts over rights are embedded in a particular development strategy and growth pattern. The study suggests that their form also reflects politico-cultural predispositions which sees women, non-Thai, and non-Bangkok as inferior identities. Actually, those struggling to establish their entitlements to forest land are peasants in the northeast of Thailand; the slum dwellers seeking to preserve their community are Moslems; and, the factory workers threatened with redundancy after technological upgrading are women.
The study of Peru explains how the changing fortunes of individuals can be related to the economic, political and cultural mechanisms of exclusion using the concept of social assets. Social assets are of three types: economic assets - productive resources such as land, physical capital, financial capital, human capital; political assets - including citizenship rights of various kinds; and, cultural assets - including membership of social networks. Inequalities in these assets together define social inequality in Peru. But individual endowments with respect to these assets, at any given moment in time, are not only indicators of inequality but also causally implicated in generating inequality, in the sense that they affect individual mobility from one time period to the next. The development of inequalities of social assets is thus path-dependent.
(iv) Social exclusion within countries cannot be explained without reference to international relationships, as these relationships have important effects on domestic economic, social and political institutions.
Although social exclusion within countries is the result of the way in which their economic, social and political institutions are changing and the nature of domestic policies, the studies make it clear that social exclusion cannot simply be attributed to "internal factors". International relationships are increasingly and ever more deeply implicated in what is happening in countries. This is explicit in the key social ruptures which are shuffling the patterns of individual endowments of social assets in key historical periods. In the studies of Tanzania, India and Russia, a major event shaping social exclusion is the reform programmes which are encouraging economic restructuring and redefining the role of the state in social provision and economic activity. In each case, reforms which seek to open up economies to competition from the rest of the world have been associated with the erosion (or complete breakdown) of old social contracts which were a central means of social integration. In this process, citizenship rights have shrunk. The situation in Yemen is very complicated because of the recent unification of the Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, and conflict after unification. But the country has in the recent past experienced an economic crisis because of it is changing its relationship with the rest of the world. The most striking example being the curtailment of remittances and the return of approximately 1 million migrant workers to Yemen after the Gulf War. For Thailand, social exclusion is related to the process of moving up the economic ladder through technological change, and also to the changing position of agriculture in the development strategy to become more export- and less domestic-market oriented.
2. Diversity in Methodologies and the Identified Patterns of Social Exclusion
These four commonalities in interpretation can be found in the studies even though there is much diversity between them in terms of specific methodologies and the specific patterns of social exclusion identified in particular countries
In terms of methodology, there were three basic analytical approaches adopted in the studies. These may be labelled the group-, the right- and the institutions-focused approaches.
The first, the group-focused", consists in the selection of specific categories of person who are defined a priori as experiencing social exclusion. It describes their living conditions in the broad sense of relative deprivation, and then seeks to identify, firstly, the links between the relative deprivation of groups, the working of social institutions, and personal attributes/social identity; and secondly, the relationship of these links to country development paths and strategies. Social exclusion is then understood as an outcome of the rate and pattern of economic growth, the ways in which key social institutions are exclusionary and inclusionary, and the different opportunities for action which different categories of persons - defined for example, by gender, ethnicity, age - face. A key issue in this methodology is the selection of groups. In each of the studies, it is emphasized that the groups selected are not the only excluded groups. The main aim is not to map and catalogue exhaustively excluded groups in each country, but to illustrate forms and processes of exclusion.
With this in view, the selection of the vulnerable groups in the case of Yemen was based on preliminary analysis of categories of persons "who seemed to be the poorest groups in society, suffered from lack of access to the labour market, and did not seem to be in the social mainstream". There was also a double concern to ensure that the groups from both the northern and southern governorates of Yemen, and that groups which exemplified the diversity of processes of exclusion in a dualistic society, were represented. In the case of Russia, the groups were chosen to exemplify two basic models of exclusion. Firstly, the loss of previously acquired rights or social position (the newly excluded in the process of transition); and secondly, those who for decades of Soviet history were treated as second-class citizens and experienced relative deprivation, and whose situation is being exacerbated in the transition period (the hitherto excluded). In the case of Tanzania, occupational status and livelihood was chosen as the basis for identifying groups and those selected as "marginalized groups" were "all those subjected to precarious living as a result of inadequate earnings, insecure jobs, or a complete lack of access to employment or productive resources". There was also a concern to select groups in both rural and urban areas.
(Endnote 2)
The "rights-focused" studies, India and Thailand, examine the factors determining the realization of rights which affect well-being and livelihood. The study of India is particularly concerned with the realization of what Marshall
(Endnote 3)
called social rights - rights "to a modicum of economic welfare and security...to live the life of civilized being according to the standards prevailing in society". The study examines the Indian approach to securing these rights by comparing achievements with respect to key social services for which the government has accepted some responsibility - health, education, social security, and housing. In each case the degree of exclusion, and its pattern with respect to gender, caste and tribe, location, occupational status, and location, are considered. A particular feature of this methodology is the attempt to identify the effects of policy on exclusionary outcomes by comparing inter-state performances. This comparisons highlight significant differences in performance which are attributed to varying institutional arrangements and levels of organization and representation of the assisted. The study of Thailand in contrast examines events in which poor people's rights are threatened. It describes how they resisted and challenged this threat to their livelihood and living standard. The three events are: (i) a resettlement programme which sought to move villagers in northeast Thailand in order to use land for industrial forest plantations: (ii) a "slum" clearance programme which sought to remove a Muslim community from a district of Bangkok in order to build an urban express way; and (iii) the retrenchment of women workers in a textile factory in Bangkok following technological upgrading. In each of these events, the rights being negotiated are important for livelihood and employment. Detailed attention is paid to the unfolding negotiations and factors which led to success or failure.
(Endnote 4)
The study of Peru is within the Latin American intellectual tradition of structuralist analyses. It can be seen as part of a new wave which seeks to get beyond earlier theories of dualism, marginality and structural heterogeneity. A possible way of labelling the approach would be "institution-focused". It is institution-focused not only in the sense that it concentrates on formal organizations, but rather on systems of social relations (regular patterns of social interaction) through which a fragile social order is constituted. It relates the ability of certain categories of persons to participate in social life to the evolving nature of: (i) the economic organization of production and exchange; (ii) the political order which "regulates the exercise of power, lays down standards and duties, and guarantees rights"; and (iii) culture -"codes, values and aspirations by means of which people communicate among themselves, interpret reality and direct practices, and which transmitted through primary relationships, education, religion and the various means of communication".
(Endnote 5)
An important feature of the methodology of the study of Peru, which contrasts with the other studies, is that it does not treat social exclusion as an outcome which the study is seeking to explain, but rather as an analytical category which is deployed to explain inequality. Inequality is very marked in Peru and this is reflected in the questions raised by the study: What is the role of social exclusion in the generation of inequality and, how important are social exclusion and social integration as mechanisms of differentiation and stratification? These questions are addressed by hypothesizing which types of social exclusion are most important for generating inequality, and then empirically testing whether they are. This is done separately for economic, political and cultural dimensions of the social order, and also jointly, to show how these dimensions interact over time.
3. Key Differences with Industrialized Countries
The decision to allow local researchers maximum discretion within a broad common research framework has meant that the set of country studies do not permit a easy comparative generalizations and an elegant synthesis concerning patterns and causes of social exclusion at different levels of development and with different forms of integration into the world economy. in developing countries and countries in transition. Also they do not lead to statements concerning the numbers and attributes of the socially excluded in different countries. They suggest that social exclusion appears to occur within all economies. But it manifests itself in different forms and intensities as a result of the cultural and institutional specificities, and the differences in the perception of which are the most critical processes.
Although it is difficult to generalize - on the basis of the empirical material from the project - the precise nature of these variations, a tentative list of differences between already industrialized and non-industrial countries would include the following general aspects.
In industrialized countries social exclusion is particularly related to long term unemployment and the loss of acquired rights, particularly those associated with work. Social exclusion in non-industrialized settings takes different forms which are related to the degree and nature of incorporation into wider society through processes of market formation and the provision of citizenship rights.
Firstly, in agrarian and predominantly peasant societies, access to land and labour, and to other inputs to render them productive, are vital. Complex interactions can arise between access to labour markets (both rural and urban) and access to land, with exclusion from labour markets, and particularly the more remunerative segments, becoming increasingly significant as industrialization and urbanization occur.
Secondly, social exclusion in developing country contexts, many of which are participating in a recent wave of democratization, is not only closely associated to the presence or absence of social rights (which are of critical importance in Western Europe) but also to the enforcement of civil and political rights. In more "fragile" societies, there are major gaps between rights formally held and their exercise.
Thirdly, institutions of civil society - which can both enable collective action to break exclusion or be discriminatory -are particularly important in situations of weak or non-universal enforcement of citizenship rights. These institutions tend to be crucial in societies in which there are not well established social norms and in which social exchanges tend to be unbalanced because of uneven distribution of bargaining power between social agents, and the predominance of personal rather than established (non-arbitrary) procedures in such exchanges. Fourthly, in poorer countries social exclusion can be life-threatening rather than entailing the loss of acquired rights, and as such may be more intimately connected to absolute poverty.
Endnote 1:
These may be defined as those markets which determine the generation of incomes and the reduction of risks. The principal ones are: Labour, credit, land and insurance.
Endnote 2:
All these three studies used survey questionnaires to measure the extent to which the groups pre-identified as socially excluded actually were experiencing multiple deprivations. In designing these surveys, the studies of Russia, Tanzania and Yemen drew upon more or less systematically on the categories which Peter Townsend used to measure multiple deprivation in his study of Greater London in 1985-86, and adapted them to the different country contexts.
Endnote 3:
Marshall T.H. and Bottomore T. 1992. Citizenship and social class. London, Pluto Press.
Endnote 4:
Operationally these two studies measured social exclusion in ways which reflect their respective sectoral and local methodologies, and their orientation to understanding rights realization from above or from below. The study of India draws on measures which have been extensively deployed in studies of basic needs satisfaction such as measures of mortality and morbidity, of nutritional status and access to public nutrition support programmes, of utilization of health services, of literacy;etc. No minimum threshold is identified to define exclusion, but rather variations in these measures between groups defined according to gender, caste/tribe, occupational status, location and income are described. The study of Thailand does not measure social exclusion in quantitative terms but rather examines sequences of key events in popular struggles to realize particular rights on which living standards and livelihoods are based.
Endnote 5:
The Peruvian study uses a diverse range of indicators of exclusion. Specific measures included the proportion of the labour force in wage employment, in unemployment, the concentration of formal credit allocation, measures of school attendance; etc.
| Chapter III: The Policy Implications |
Experience in designing policies against social exclusion, explicitly described as such, is concentrated in Western Europe, especially in France. Labour market interventions have predominated, and especially action against long term unemployment. Social insurance and social assistance programmes constitute another important area of intervention. Linkage between such policies and social integration policies is rare, but there has been one systematic attempt to provide this link in France, with the `revenu minimum d'insertion' (a guaranteed minimum income which is conditional on the recipient signing a contract to pursue some kind of insertion activity). These are policies against social exclusion at the national level. An important innovation in the design of policies against exclusion has been to take a territorial approach, with programmes of action at the local or community level aimed at building up coherent strategies to overcome exclusion. The idea is that particular urban slum areas, or deprived regions, require broad-based action on economic, social and infrastructural fronts. Such policies are easier to set up on a cross-sectoral basis than national policies, and can more readily stimulate collective initiatives. They involve partnership and co-operation between the central government and local administrations, local associations, trade unions, enterprises and various other non-government bodies. An important lesson from these experiences is that policy analysis is not merely a question of the state intervening in the public interest, but a question which implies the involvement a wide range of social actors.
1. Alternative Approaches to Poverty Reduction
Introducing the notion of social exclusion into the formulation and implementation of anti-poverty policies in developing countries and countries in transition needs to be related to the new poverty agenda which has emerged in the international arena in the 1990s. This agenda may be understood in various ways (see, for example, Maxwell and Lipton). But perhaps its most basic and significant thrust is to argue that poverty reduction is best achieved through development policy rather than projects which are directly targeted to help the poor. This is why, in thinking how the notion of social exclusion might be introduced into current debates, it is more important to examine how the concept and approach may be located in debates about development policy formulation and how it affects the design of broad-based anti-poverty strategy. Along this line, three approaches may be distinguished. They are based on the premise that poverty reduction requires goods, people and institutions. They are presented here as alternatives but this does not mean that to take some policy analytical insights of one approach and synthesize them with another is infeasible.
The focus of attention in a "goods-centred" view is command over commodities, seen as a source of welfare or utility. The basic goal of policy is to increase the supply of goods and services, and to increase and secure personal and household incomes. Implicit in this goal is that human beings are seen as human capital for the production process. The goods-centred approach identifies people as being poor when their living standard falls below some minimum norm. This is most basically seen as having income (or expenditure levels) insufficient to obtain a food-intake which maintains physical efficiency. But this may be extended to include a broader range of basic needs, including standards of consumption which are required to participate in society. Broadly, the goods-centred view is welfarist in the sense that it sees command over goods and services as a source of individual utility, happiness and satisfaction.
The "people-centred" approach has been elaborated in particular through Amartya Sen's critique of the evaluational foundations of the goods-centred approach. It is self-identified as "people-centred" in deliberate opposition to the goods-centred approach. Actually all three approaches presented here are people-centred in the sense that they are concerned to improve people's lives. But what distinguishes the self-identified "people-centred" approach is that it is founded on the view that what matters is the nature of the lives which people lead, and in particular their freedom of choice in terms of achieving valued "functioning" such as being well-nourished, healthy, literate. This approach sees poverty as a lack of human development which is reflected in the actual achievements of people, with regard to living long lives, being adequately nourished, etc., and their freedom of choice with regard to these aspects of well-being. Lack of human development is manifested in restricted human choices. The enlargement of choice depends on individual empowerment through human capabilities such as skills, know-how and health, and an enabling framework which ensures full use of these capabilities.
Finally, in an "institution-centred" view, what matters are institutional arrangements, the rules which provide the enabling framework within which individuals and groups make choices and go about their daily business of making a living. The institution-centred approach does not seek to engineer outcome "patterns" in the same way as the people-centred approach. But an important feature of the social exclusion approach - in contrast to a libertarian approach to rights and institutions - is that it does not simply see the presence of institutions, and an environment in which rules are obeyed, as valuable for its own sake. It is also sensitive to consequences of institutions for poverty outcomes. An institution-centred approach founded on a social exclusion perspective has, like the "people-centred" approach a multi-dimensional view of poverty. Poverty is conceived as lack of well-being. But this is not defined in contradistinction to agency (as Sen has done), but as including both welfare and agency aspects. The proximate determinants of an absence of minimum standards of well-being in the institutional approach are various forms of participation of persons in economic, social and political life. These include: productive labour; entrepreneurial activity; political activity; child-bearing and rearing; social movements; claims-making in relation to citizenship rights and obligations; sport, culture and recreation. Some of these activities are more important than others as proximate determinants of poverty, and individual well-being (and ill-being) often entails trade-offs and compromises. Significantly what distinguishes this approach from the other two is that what constitutes poverty or well-being is defined by the citizens of the society in question rather than externally. However, it may be expected that what constitutes well-being below a minimally acceptable standard for citizens should mainly be based on the deficiencies which disable persons as citizens, and this implies that agency aspects, in terms of positive freedom, are particularly valuable.
Making institutions the focus of action to reduce poverty has definite implications for the policy problematique. It implies suggesting new policy issues, and redesigning the way in which traditional goals may be seen. Policy design needs to be founded on the way in which different institutions enable and constrain the access of different types of people to various goods, services and resources; how they structure fields of action for individuals and groups; and the distributional implications of institutions for poor and least powerful members of society in situations of growth, decline or economic transformation. This approach requires the salience of traditional policy variables to be reconfigured.
The overriding goal of an institution-centred approach to poverty reduction based on a social exclusion paradigm is to improve the lives of citizens. Poverty reduction requires the promotion and protection of civil and political rights. This implies that a necessary condition for successful policy formulation and implementation is the existence of democratic governance. However, it should be stressed that democracy should not be equated merely with the establishment of a kind of voting system.
Finally it should be stated that the institutional focus does not imply that direct targeted assistance should be abandoned. It can play a supportive role. This role may be particularly important if institutional change is slow. Directed assistance may be particularly important for those groups suffering from "hard-core" exclusion, ie for whom institutional interactions mutually undermine participation in economic and social life with effects of one institution mutually reinforcing the effects of another. Safety-nets can also play a role in a social exclusion approach. But the stigmatizing effects of targeted benefits are recognized. Hence the advice that a safety-net should increase "the productive capacity of the poor to the greatest possible extent, taking recourse to transfers only when a strategy of adjusting primary claims is not feasible" (Demery and Addison 1987, p.3) would be congenial to an approach oriented to increase occupational participation. But in general there would be a concern to reduce the need for residual safety nets.
2. Meso-Policies as Key Instruments
The main policy arena in an institution-centred approach to poverty reduction are meso-policies. These are policies which seek to influence the relationship between macro-policies and individual outcomes. The basic assumption is that the outcomes of macro-policies and the pattern of growth depend on the social matrix within which policies are introduced and growth occurs. The central policy variable is the institutions through which exclusions in various dimensions of economic and social life occur. The central issue of policy design is how to change institutions so that poverty, in the sense of well-being (welfare, participation and agency) falling below a standard acceptable to members of society, is reduced.
At present, within development policy analysis, questions of the design of meso-policies focus on issues of the sectoral structure of social expenditures. In an institution-centred approach founded on a social exclusion perspective, it is necessary to extend the scope of meso-policy analysis to production sectors. Industrial organization, including for example, relations between small-scale and large scale enterprises, wage-setting institutions, and agrarian institutions, including linked credit and product market contracts, property rights systems), are important elements of a meso-policy.
An important policy question which deserves more attention is the relationship between macro- and meso-level policies. If institutional configurations themselves affect the behaviour of macro-economic aggregates, policy design needs to ensure that meso-policies work synergetically with macro-policies.
3. Key Policy Areas
From this perspective, the project has identified three main policy areas: Market institutions; citizenship rights; and voluntary associations and civic values.
With regard to market institutions, a particular focus of attention is the structure of basic markets. Policy towards these markets should not be founded on either market optimism (and the belief that the best outcomes will stem from the free working of the price mechanism) or market pessimism (which supports the substitution of state administered allocation for the price mechanism), but rather market realism. Instead of replacing or constraining markets, policy may be designed to creating and re-structuring markets. The main policy instruments for effecting change in market institutions which were identified include: incentives, changes in asset distribution so that particular agents have countervailing power, technology and information.
With regard to citizenship rights, it is necessary to consider the proper scope and content of social rights and occupational participation, and also the ways in which the absence of other rights - and associated responsibilities - undermines social rights and occupational participation. This includes not only the existence, but also the effectiveness, of realization of civil rights (liberty of the person, freedom of speech and of association, the right to own property and conclude contracts, the right to justice, etc.) and political rights.
A rights based approach to poverty reduction raises many challenges. One is whether it can be used without imposing specific value-systems. Another is that there can be a tension between globalization and democracy, in that increasing economic interdependence may undermine national efforts to institute citizenship rights.
Within the framework of the project, however, a specific set of priorities were proposed in terms of citizenship rights which could be integrated in poverty reduction programmes and would as such help combating social exclusion. The first was the need to have a reform of the justice system to both increase its efficiency and minimize the incidence of corruption. Many people are discouraged or can not get out of poverty because their judicial claims are not properly examined or their conflicts not resolved. This is particularly critical on issues involving property rights over land and other productive assets as well as on rights associated to work. The second is the need to reinforce democratic institutions. This refers not only to multi-party electoral processes but most importantly to the strengthening of representative, participatory and communicative institutions which act as mechanisms for producing a notion of the public interest and an idea of the public good. Processes like decentralization and improved governance are seen as important components which would induce people to get organized and open or widen a space for them to express their demands.
With regard to civil society, policy should be directed towards encouraging the development of voluntary associations. In developing such associations one general policy issue is whether there are key institutional entities (such as the firm or tripartite structures), or whether, as it is now fashionable to suggest, it is sufficient to increase the institutional density of associational life and the social capital. The notion of social capital suggests that the policy goal should be to expand horizontal networks of civic engagement, as the strengthening of local institutions, supported and facilitated by central government, gives greater voice to people's concerns and over time increases their opportunities for self development. But it may be that some non-governmental organizations are more important than others and the key ones may not necessarily be local. The notion of social exclusion suggests, for example, new roles for traditional tripartite actors - trade unions and employers.
Concrete suggestions made in the framework of the project were that action at this level could include two basic sets of initiatives. First is to equip community organizations with modern tools as a way of not only improving their efficiency but also of giving access to the benefits of technological progress to the most disadvantaged. Second is to diversify and enlarge the scope of strategic alliances between groups in civil society. This could be achieved by creating or developing alliances between domestic and global NGOs on the one hand, and between different sections of civil society, on the other. Most importantly, this would include bodies which can alter the balance of power in favour of the poor, mainly by reinforcing the capacity to influence the formation and implementation of state policies.
Institutions of civil society cannot replace the state but their mutually reinforcing actions can help to break exclusion.
Both the overall and the more immediate and material objectives of the IILS/UNDP project were largely met. The project represents an innovative exploration of how the notion of social exclusion could be applied globally. It has widened the scope of application of the concept in analytical and policy terms to developing and post-socialist countries. It has also deepened its conceptualization in industrialized countries. The latter is evident, in particular, in the work on notions of social exclusion in different models of society. In addition, the perspective of the project, which has sought to examine how social exclusion analysis can enrich anti-poverty policy rather than to substitute social exclusion for poverty, has enabled various insights which can inform policy. It has concluded that examining disadvantage and deprivation from a social exclusion perspective is an useful addition to existing approaches to understanding and combating poverty, because it has the potential to be a tool dealing with poverty issues in a more integrated way. It enables analysis of material and non-material aspects of social disadvantage and directs attention to the variety of processes through which people fall into poverty, and either get stuck in that situation or escape from it. It encompasses both distributional aspects of disadvantage (variations in income, wealth, and consumption) as well as relational aspects (notably patterns of occupational and social participation and rights). As such, the analysis of patterns and causes of social exclusion complements more economistic approaches to disadvantage by analysing causes, rather than merely identifying outcomes.
In terms of policy, the project gathered relevant elements for enlarging the basis for action against poverty and inequality. A major advantage is that social exclusion focuses on agency while it also identifies most needy groups in society. Another major advantage is that it provides a framework for policy assessment and coordination of sectoral interventions.
It is most useful when adopted as a basis for a shift in the emphasis of anti-poverty strategy rather than for alternative or completely new policy prescriptions. The policy implications of the IILS/UNDP analytical work are that anti-poverty strategy should be more focused on the functioning of institutions which enable and constrain participation in social and economic life so as to minimize their exclusionary biases. In practical terms, such a focus requires thinking of anti-poverty strategies in broader terms. For example, in cases where setting legal claims over productive assets ownership (eg land) or over work compensation are costly and time-consuming, measures to facilitate access to, or the efficiency of, the justice system are essential for poverty reduction. They should not only be included in poverty reduction strategies, but also be recognised as equivalent in value and effect in fighting poverty to measures to ensure material security.
The most important institutions for breaking social exclusion and extreme deprivation include: the basic markets of land, labour and credit through which people secure an income; the justice system - including systems of law enforcement; the education system, which not only builds human capital but also socializes individuals as citizens; the media; and, most fundamentally, the participatory and communicative structures, including new forms of social partnership through which a shared sense of the public good is created and debated.
The results of the project suggest that a social exclusion perspective can usefully inform dialogue on the formulation of anti-poverty policy, particularly at the level of national poverty assessments or country strategy notes. The project was not designed to make specific recommendations on how to design projects and programmes of action based on a social exclusion approach. Further work is required for this, which should proceed at four levels. Firstly, there is a need to strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of the approach. In particular, there is a need to consider both efficiency and equity aspects of institutions from an economic perspective. Secondly, it will be important to analyze successful cases in which cycles of social exclusion are broken. This would include the review of existing experiences, carried out at the national and regional level, to derive their strategic ingredients, namely institutional and agency patterns. Ideally this should be done in a more rigorous comparative framework now that the exploratory work is completed. Thirdly, there is a need for work on indicators of social exclusion, which should both review the potential of existing data sources, and consider proposals for new indicators. In the approach developed in the project, policy needs to focus not merely on the poor as such, but on processes of absolute and relative impoverishment. This requires panel data which tracks poverty for individuals and households. The multi-dimensionality of the notion of disadvantage also requires different indicators which include measures of participation. Finally, in terms of more specific issue areas, research work should concentrate on the examination of ways in which a common sense of the public good can be constructed, particularly at a moment when there is much pressure for reforming the social security system as a central component for increased social cohesion. A major theme here would be the representativity of social actors and forms of social dialogue at all levels.
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