From PROGRESA to PROSPERA: understanding change and stability in Mexico's conditional cash transfer programme
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Date
25/11/2021Item status
Restricted AccessEmbargo end date
25/11/2022Author
Zapata Celestino, Kevin
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Abstract
The continuation for over two decades of the conditional cash transfer programme
“PROGRESA – Oportunidades – PROSPERA” (POP) represents an anomaly in Mexican
policy making. Traditionally, policies have tended to be substantially transformed or
discontinued every six years that a new president arrives to power. For this reason, POP’s
continuation throughout four different presidential mandates from 1997 to 2019 is striking.
Moreover, it is intriguing that these successive governments endorsed POP as a successful
policy to address poverty even though the official figures suggest that poverty levels in Mexico
have remained almost the same after three decades. Although there is an abundance of literature
on POP, research about the programme’s policy making has been sparse, and the policy’s
endurance remains poorly understood.
This dissertation aims to understand how POP was able to continue for over four presidential
mandates with relative stability. The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with
Mexican politicians, policy makers, and bureaucrats related to the programme. The main
hypothesis is that a closed group of scholars and policy makers, as advocates of the human
capital paradigm, formed a policy community that monopolised the decision making of POP,
thereby, preventing substantial changes to the core design of the conditional cash transfers.
The study offers insight into how a group of technocrats with specific characteristics and shared
values played a key role in the continuation of the programme after its creation in 1997. This
group eventually expanded and formed a policy community that influenced the decision
making and other relevant processes within key institutions such as the Ministry of Social
Development and the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy. The
actions of this policy community not only prevented major changes to the design of POP during
specific political junctures but also generated an incremental process that allowed the
programme to achieve stability for over two decades. Additionally, this research addresses the
termination of POP in 2019, which is explained by the loss of influence of the mentioned policy
community within the new government. 2022-11-25