A presentation by Tom Lavers on Social Protection and the Politics of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme

1. Social Protection in an aspiring
‘developmental state’:
The politics of Ethiopia’s PSNP
Tom Lavers
Global Development Institute (GDI), University of Manchester
tom.lavers@manchester.ac.uk
Addis Ababa, 20th June 2017

2. Overview
• Project overview
• The political drivers of the PSNP
• Ethiopia in comparative perspective
• Policy implications from phase 1
• Phase 2: the politics of implementing
social protection

3. Project overview:
The politics of social protection in
Africa

4. Rationale
• Transnational promotion of social protection:
– UN Social Protection Floor Initiative
– African Union Social Policy Framework
– Social assistance: WB, DFID, UNICEF
– Health insurance: USAID, WHO, ILO
• But wide variation at national level:
– Advanced: Ethiopia, Ghana, Rwanda
– Little progress: Burkina Faso, Uganda, Zambia
• Why have some moved rapidly forward while others
are reluctant?

5. An adapted political settlements
approach (Lavers & Hickey 2016)
Formal and
informal
institutions
Paradigmatic
ideas
Existing policy
context
Problem
frames,
policy ideas
Distributional
regime:
- development
strategy
- taxation
- social
services
- social
protection
Domestic and
transnational
factions
Political prioritisation of SP
Ruling coalition’s orientation
to SP (long vs short-term)
Intended and unintended impacts:
- regime legitimation, negotiated compromise
- instability resulting from change in resource
distribution and holding power
Political
settlement
Domestic and
global policy
advocates
Issue-specific
policy coalition
Proposals rejected,
revised or adopted based
on compatibility with PS
Implementation, as
intended or adapted to fit
PS incentives
Resource
distribution
Global factors
Bilateral and
multilateral
donors
Donors,
IOs,
INGOs
Global
economic
factors
Constraints related to
implementation capacity

6. Research design
Country Political settlement Social assistance Health insurance
Ethiopia Dominant coalition Productive Safety Net
Programme (PSNP) – PW
and CTs
Community-Based
Health Insurance
Kenya Competitive
clientelism
Cash transfer schemes
(OVC, elderly, disabled)
Proposed Social
Health Insurance
Scheme
Rwanda Dominant coalition Vision 2020 Umurenge
Programme (VUP) – PW
and CTs
Mutuelles de Santé
Uganda Weak dominant
party
Social Assistance Grants for
Empowerment (SAGE) - CTs
Proposed National
Health Insurance
Scheme
Zambia Competitive
clientelism
Social Cash Transfers Proposed Social
Health Insurance

7. Ethiopia: Social Protection in an
aspiring ‘developmental state’

8. Continuity in ideas – developmentalism
and ‘productivism’
• From early days of the TPLF (1970s) to present
• Development as source of legitimacy
– Delivering tangible benefits as a means of building
support
– Existential challenges leading to urgency
• SP must make a productive contribution / fear
of dependency
– TPLF public works -> EGS -> PSNP
– Community health funds -> CBHI

9. Agricultural Development-Led
Industrialisation (ADLI)
• 1993 / 2002
• Promoting agricultural productivity growth
and production linkages with nascent industry
• BUT also centrally concerned with distribution
• AND political stability
– Population growth the ‘single over-riding
challenge’ facing the regime (1993)
– Migration leading to a ‘social explosion’ (Meles)
• ADLI was to obviate the need for targeted
‘safety nets’ (PRSP1)

10. Drivers of the PSNP
• Donor pressure for reform since mid-1990s
• But little change until a series of
‘Armageddons’:
– 2001 TPLF split
– 2001 urban riots
– 2002/03 food crisis
• Food crisis was a distributional crisis: ‘the
nightmare scenario case’ (Meles)
• Forced the government into a re-think – NCFS
leading to the PSNP in 2005

11. Divergent views of the PSNP
• Donors
– Quickly held up as SP success story (DFID, WB)
– (while ridiculing ADLI)
• Government:
– No mention of ‘social protection’ in policy
documents
– Integrated into the FSS: ‘a subset of ADLI’
– PSNP was a stop-gap to ‘keep things calm’ while
implementing ADLI

12. Evolution of the PSNP
• Evolution of the developmental state model
– Focus on manufacturing, industrial agriculture,
model farmers
– PSNP as the solution for medium-term
• Acknowledgement that mass graduation is
unlikely
• Some softening of dependency concerns
• But still some doubts about commitment to
social protection

13. The politics of social protection in sub-
Saharan Africa:
Comparative findings

14. • Strong similarities with Rwanda
– VUP based on PSNP study tour
– Ruling party split and greater elite cohesion
– Commitment to rapid development (initially
excluding SP)
– Perceived existential crisis prompting turn to SP
• Very different in Kenya, Uganda, Zambia
– Donor driven pilot schemes
– Continuing donor advocacy plus bottom-up
pressures for expansion
Comparative findings on social assistance

15. • Social protection advocacy needs to fit local
context
– Core paradigmatic ideas
– Key political economic interests
• In Ethiopia, need to align policy proposals with:
– Ideas on developmentalism and productivism
– Concerns about urban unemployment, migration,
rural landlessness
• Identification of windows of opportunity
– Oromo protests
– Changing place of social policy within development
strategy
Policy implications

16. Phase 2: the politics of
implementing social protection
2017-19

17. • Phase 1 looked primarily at policy adoption,
but implementation is key
• Clear evidence of variation in implementation
effectiveness between and within countries
• Do variation in state capacity and state-society
relations explain variation in implementation?
• Cases: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda
Rationale

18. • Evident variation in intra-state and state-society
relations within the country
– e.g. Tigray – Oromiya - Afar
• Indications that this affects policy implementation
(PSNP, land registration), but are there clear patterns?
• What are the mechanisms?
– Governance: performance scorecards and quotas, 1-to-5s,
model farmers and kebele
– Legitimacy of party/state actors
– Role of ‘non-state’ actors (elders, clan leaders, Aba Gadaa)
– Variation in local priorities: e.g. land, migration,
infrastructure development
Research focus in Ethiopia

19. All papers on Ethiopia and the other country
studies can be found at:
http://www.effective-states.org/publications/
Thank you!