title: Explaining The Adoption Of Care Policies In Latin America: A Care Streams Approach
Creators: name: Leon-Espinoza, Diana
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: care policies
subject: Care Streams Approach
subject: progressive care policies

description: Care policies can provide women economic independence, increase their participation in the public sphere of society, and reduce class, gender, race, and ethnic inequalities. In recent decades, socioeconomic transformations in women’s status in society, demography, and the structure of families have placed these policies at the centre of academic and political debates around the world. Most of the literature examining these dynamics concentrates on advanced economies, with developed welfare states, and large state and fiscal capacities to respond to changes in labour markets and families. In the developing world, Latin America has been a region that stands out for having experienced rapid socioeconomic and political transformations similar to those in the developed world. Women have been increasingly participating in the labour force, countries are experiencing demographic shifts, and the traditional male breadwinner model has eroded. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, political transformations placed an emphasis on expanding social benefits and entitlements to wider segments of the population. Amongst this expansion, care policies have featured prominently on the agendas of governments. This thesis aims to answer the following question: how do Latin American countries adopt care policies? The literature focuses on four main approaches to explain the adoption of these policies. The economic approach assumes that socioeconomic transformations place pressure on states to adopt care policies. The civil society approach explains that women’s movements or interest groups pressure the state or influence policymakers to adopt these policies. The power resource approach assumes that parties from left/centre-left ideologies and/or high electoral competition contexts are conducive to the adoption of care policies. Finally, the state-centric approach examines the role of women in legislatures, women’s agencies, and bureaucrats/technocrats/femocrats in influencing the adoption processes within the state apparatus. All of these approaches are important to demonstrate the centrality of agents and contexts influencing the adoption of care policies. However, policymaking is a complex and dynamic process in which several agents and contexts interact with each other. Concentrating on one or a combination of approaches assumes that policy processes are static and it leads to limited answers. This thesis adapts the classic ‘Multiple Streams Approach’ from public policy into a ‘Care Streams Approach’. This new approach integrates existing theoretical drivers into a single approach comprised of multiple elements or streams. Drawing on the adoption of two unique care policies in Costa Rica and Uruguay, the thesis applies the Care Streams Approach to key features of the policy processes in order to build theory about the adoption of care policies in Latin America. The thesis uses a qualitative strategy and a multiple-case study research design to analyse the two policy processes. The research relies on two main sources of data. First, the collection of texts/documents from civil society, political parties, and governments. Second, the implementation of semi-structured interviews conducted with thirteen key participants of the policy processes in each country. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data and interpret the policy process according to the multiple care streams. Through the Care Streams Approach, the thesis finds that different configurations of drivers interact with each other in the adoption of care policies in Latin America. By different configurations, I refer to different economic contexts, civil society agents, politics, and state agents. The key to understanding the adoption of policies lies within each care stream and their alignment. Problems can be constructed as a top-down process by a women’s agency with a high-ranking position in government or as a bottom-up process from a feminist Non-Governmental Organisation. Care solutions can be designed in different contexts, for instance, in close-knit policy networks of technocrats/bureaucrats or in open policy networks of bureaucrats/femocrats and civil society organisations. Care policies become prominent items on government agendas in the presence of programmatic political parties and high electoral competition that place these policies at the centre of electoral campaigns to attract or consolidate support from voters. The alignment of problems, solutions, and politics triggers favourable opportunities for the adoption of these policies. The findings from this thesis make a contribution at both theoretical and practical levels. First, by integrating all of the approaches that explain the adoption of care policies, the Care Streams Approach creates powerful explanations. This approach demonstrates that the interplay between agents and contexts is the main feature that explains the adoption of care policies, rather than individual theoretical drivers. Second, the results enhance our understanding of the adoption of these policies in developing countries beyond the geographic limits of the global North. Third, the findings provide information for policymakers, feminist organisations, and agents in political parties about how different settings, contexts, and agents can lead to the adoption of progressive care policies.