From PROGRESA to PROSPERA: understanding change and stability in Mexico's conditional cash transfer programme

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