IMF and social policy from the Argentinean perspective

Three decades of change, from safety nets to the social protection floor

Abstract

The article develops a political analysis of the evolution of the IMF’s social policy paradigm over the last three decades. We propose that the process of incorporation and change of social policy at the IMF was gradual and far from homogeneous, and reflects a strategic balance of the organization between external agendas, the legitimacy of the economic policies promoted and its institutional conception. Following a qualitative methodological strategy and based on official documents and academic literature, we identify three stages: the emergence of social safety nets, in which social policy was transitory, focused and scarce; a transition in which the concept was broadened towards social protection, yet with a vague definition; and the post-2008 crisis stage that reaches the present day, when the IMF adopted the social protection floor paradigm. This translated into the progressive inclusion of social spending conditionalities in agreements with low and -later- middleincome countries, which recognizes the permanent nature of State intervention in social issues and the targeted and extended (tending towards universality) scope of these measures.