Can Conditional Cash Transfers Strengthen Democracy in Latin America?

The implementation of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs has been one of the most salient social policy features for Latin America in recent years. Through these programs, lower-income households receive government resources in exchange for meeting certain conditions, such as periodically visiting a health center or ensuring that their children attend school regularly.

Although these policies’ effects on human development levels have been widely studied, their consequences in terms of political behavior have not received the same attention. Can this type of social program encourage the political participation of its beneficiaries?

So far, academic studies of CCTs political effects have focused on voting turnout, producing mixed results. Professor Gregory Schober’s article in the Latin American Research Review, a product of his doctoral dissertation at Duke University, goes one step further and explores how this type of program shapes its beneficiaries’ political activity more broadly.

In his article, “Conditional cash transfers, resources, and political participation in Latin America,” Schober argues that both cash transfers and their conditionalities encourage recipients’ involvement in political activities. According to the author, although transfers provide their beneficiaries with material resources that facilitate political participation, the factor that could have the most significant impact on increasing the population’s political activity is the conditions that must be met in order to receive those transfers.

The link that Schober uses to explain this phenomenon is that the conditions provide program beneficiaries with the opportunity to develop “civic skills” such as organization and communication. CCT beneficiaries are typically required to attend regular meetings with program officials, checkups at health facilities, and health and educational workshops. According to Schober, beneficiaries are likely to exercise “civil skills” when they attend these events, as well as when they keep track of deadlines and pending requirements and when addressing any problems that may arise in the CCT programs.  To put these skills into practice results in a pool of non-material resources that are critical for people to become politically involved.

To prove this, Schober studies political participation in three Mexican municipalities with high poverty levels using the results of a 2014 survey. The case choice is ideal since, at that time, Mexico had two cash transfer programs with very similar amounts and target populations: one of them was attached to a series of conditionalities (Oportunidades) while the other was not (Programa de Apoyo Alimentario).

Through a multilevel model of random parameters, Schober found that, on average, participation in Conditional Cash Transfer programs increased the probability of contacting a public official by 26 percent, of participating in some form of community activism by 28 percent, and of becoming involved in some civil society organization by 21 percent. In contrast, the study showed that participation in unconditional transfer programs was only associated with one form of political participation: voting.

After analyzing the Mexican case, Schober tests its hypothesis in the regional context, using the 2012 Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) survey. In doing so, he finds that in Latin America, participation in conditional transfer programs is correlated to a series of “costly” modes of political participation, such as campaign activism, protests, and civil society involvement. This correlation was not found for unconditional cash transfer programs.

Although we should take this study’s results with caution, especially at the regional level, Schober’s research is timely today for several reasons. Broadly speaking, it provides a new perspective in the debate on the advantages and disadvantages of conditional and unconditional transfers. This discussion has become even more relevant in context of the COVID-19 pandemic, as governments have widely implemented cash transfers as a form of relief. More specifically, this article also provides a starting point to discuss the changes carried out in Mexico’s social policy under the government of President López Obrador, characterized by a rejection of conditional schemes.

Finally, suppose we understand political participation as a set of activities that go beyond the act of voting. In that case, Schober’s work shows that, through conditionality, governments can provide opportunities for their citizens to develop skills and practices that are fundamental to the strengthening of democracy. This finding will allow us to judge the social programs’ effects not only in terms of efficiency and redistribution, as social policies can also help build a civic culture in our societies.