Throughout the Global South, non-state actors have historically played critical roles in meeting the basic needs of populations. In many parts of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, states are unable to provide extensive social welfare services, but a diversity of non-state actors such as multi-national corporations, ethnic and sectarian organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community-based organizations, and families provide and facilitate access to much of the welfare that exists on the ground. Indeed, since the 1980s, the non-state provision of social welfare in various guises appears to be dramatically on the rise across the Global South. For example, in the past decade, private philanthropists and investors have established a network of schools in South Africa targeting poor and low-income black children in response to the perceived failure of the public school system (Dugger 2010). In Pakistan, very different kinds of non-state actors—Islamist organizations linked to the 2008 Mumbai bombings—have provided relief to families displaced by recent floods (Flintoff 2010; Shah 2010).

Despite their growing visibility and importance, non-state providers (NSPs) are an understudied component of welfare regimes. The vast majority of social science research on welfare regimes focuses on welfare states in the advanced, industrialized countries (Esping-Anderson 1990; Huber and Stephens 2001; Lynch 2006; Manow and van Kersbergen 2009; Mares 2003; Pierson 2001; Skocpol 1995). This body of research, however, is of limited utility for understanding the dynamics of social welfare outside of relatively wealthy and highly consolidated democracies. An emerging scholarship investigating the nature of social welfare provision in the Global South nevertheless remains concentrated on state institutions and state social spending (Brooks 2009; Haggard and Kaufman 2008; Mares and Carnes 2009; McGuire 2010; Rudra 2008). While Gough and Wood (2004) theorize the importance of non-state provision in the Global South where state institutions are weak and rural, informal labor markets predominate, to date, very few studies have analyzed the politics of non-state provision empirically.

Furthermore, the little empirical scholarship that highlights the rise of NSPs tends to focus on the origins of these providers. Perhaps not surprisingly, political scientists point to the decline of the state (Bratton 1989; Tripp 1997; Chazan 1994), while development economists emphasize market failure (Stiglitz 2005; Dercon 2002; Deaton 1992; Alderman and Paxson 1992) as key reasons for the apparent resurgence of NSPs in recent decades. Very few scholars address the consequences of the non-state provision of social welfare.Footnote 1 Moreover, when they do, these scholars focus on a narrow range of consequences, such as the relative efficiency of public versus private service delivery. They also tend to privilege a limited range of NSPs, notably international and domestic NGOs (Brinckerhoff 1999; Brown 1998; Lewis and Kanji 2009) and foreign governments (Peters 2009). Hence, the existing scholarship explores neither the full range of political consequences of non-state provision nor the diversity of possible NSPs.

This special issue of Studies in Comparative International Development concentrates exclusively on the political consequences of the non-state provision of social welfare. Based on original research in diverse regions of the Global South, we aim to construct a framework for analyzing the potential effects of non-state welfare on polities and citizens in the Global South and to examine these effects in-depth in a few cases in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Collectively, the papers in this special issue point to several arenas in which NSPs can shape the polities and welfare experiences of ordinary citizens. Moving beyond the efficiency of social service delivery, we focus more broadly on three different types of political consequences: (1) the effects on state capacity to provide and regulate social welfare, (2) the consequences for the equity of access to social services, and (3) the results for experiences of citizenship.

It is particularly urgent to explore the political consequences of non-state provision in the contemporary period. In much of the Global South, the welfare state either was never institutionalized to a significant extent, or was at least partially dismantled in the course of neoliberal state retrenchment since the 1980s. In this context, NSPs are all the more critical in facilitating access to social welfare. But what are the political implications for states and citizens when social services and benefits are received through the direct provision or intermediation of NSPs? Our conceptual framework combined with the empirical analyses conducted by the contributors to this special issue begins to answer this question and highlights areas for further research on this essential topic.

All of the states treated in the issue—China, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, India, and Lebanon—are relatively weak in terms of state provision and regulation of social welfare. But these countries still exhibit distinct political ramifications and citizen experiences of non-state provision of social welfare. All of the contributors highlight the vital importance of non-state actors in welfare regimes and underscore the diversity of non-state actors on the ground in various contexts of state weakness within the Global South. The five articles collectively point to the critical roles of private firms and philanthropists (pre-revolutionary China), village temples and village community groups (contemporary China), informal brokers (India), sectarian parties and religious charities (Lebanon), and families (Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire). Within each of the country cases, more than one kind of non-state actor may exist, but each article emphasizes the leading role of only one particular type. Where secular NGOs may be the prevailing subject of analysis in development policy studies (Brinckerhoff 1999; Brown 1998; Lewis and Opoku-Mensah 2006), they are clearly not the only players and perhaps less principal players in these particular contexts.

To explore the political consequences of non-state provision, each author focuses intensively on one particular country, or even one region within a country. Using a diversity of qualitative, quantitative, and interpretive methods (often in combination) that range from survey research data, focus group interviews, in-depth interviews, the use of historical archives, and oral histories, the authors attempt to disaggregate the effects of non-state provision on state capacity, equity of access to welfare, and the meaning of citizenship within particular historical and political contexts in the Global South.

In the next section, we define key concepts central to the analysis. The third section theorizes the political consequences of non-state provision, focusing on the three dimensions highlighted above—state capacity, equity, and citizenship. We draw on existing scholarship as well as the contributions to this special issue to suggest mechanisms by which NSPs can affect these three aspects of the political consequences of non-state provision. In the conclusion, we specify areas for further research.

Concepts and Definitions: Social Welfare Provision and NSPs

Before proceeding, we must first establish what we mean by social welfare provision and non-state providers. In this special issue, we conceptualize social welfare provision broadly to include the direct delivery or indirect facilitation of services, programs, and infrastructure, which are aimed at promoting the well-being and security of the population.Footnote 2 Basically, this includes health, education, and support for vulnerable populations such as the elderly, disabled, and the poor. In much of the Global South, however, the state’s direct provision of social welfare is limited primarily to health and education services. Indeed, the articles on India, Lebanon, Ghana, and Cote d’Ivoire focus heavily on the consequences of the non-state provision of these types of health and education services. In some countries, states may provide additionally a modest range of pension, retirement, unemployment, and income or anti-poverty programs for vulnerable populations, but this is more the exception than the rule.Footnote 3 Dillon’s paper on twentieth century revolutionary China concentrates on the non-state provision of relief for vulnerable refugee groups during wartime. Krishna’s paper on India reveals how important social welfare services are provided through a surprisingly diverse array of public activities, including credit programs available through rural banks, employment-generating schemes for the rural poor, and the administration of agricultural land ownership.

Notably, we also include in our conceptualization the provision of infrastructure such as roads and buildings that centrally affect the delivery of social services such as health and education. Tsai’s paper on twenty-first century rural China investigates the consequences of the coproduction of roads and other infrastructure. We do not expand this concept of social welfare so broadly, however, as to include the provision of any and all public goods such as electricity, telecommunication, police, military security, etc. Again, all of the articles in this issue focus on the goods and services that promote social welfare.

It is also critical to define the concept of non-state providers. NSPs refer to any actors outside of the public sector that either deliver or facilitate access to social services (Moran and Batley 2004). NSPs should not be confused with non-profit organizations. Some NSPs may operate as charitable organizations, whereas others clearly provide services in exchange for profit. NSPs can be domestic, international, or even transnational networks or organizations and include a wide variety of types. The articles in this special issue reflect this diversity by including for-profit firms, sectarian political parties, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, private philanthropists, families, and individual brokers.

Thus, the key criterion shared by this range of NSPs is that the actor originates outside of the public sector. Of course, even this criterion is often difficult to ascertain. The boundaries between state and non-state providers are frequently blurred. For example, many NSPs receive a high proportion of their financing from states,Footnote 4 and some operate from state-owned offices and buildings or even have staff members who work for both the state and the NSP. Despite these overlaps in the public and non-state spheres, we conceptualize NSPs as having their organizational origins and bases significantly outside of the state.

The Political Consequences of Non-state Provision

We selected three vital aspects of the political consequences of the rise and resurgence of NSPs for in-depth exploration (see Table 1). The first dimension, state capacity, has received the most attention to date in studies of non-state provision, particularly in the literature on NGOs and development. Equity of access to social welfare has received comparatively less attention although, again, some research on NGOs highlights the plusses and minuses of non-state provision for citizen access to social services (Lewis and Kanji 2009; Edwards and Hulme 1996; Salamon and Sokolowski 1999; Bebbington et al. 2008). Given the importance for the lives of millions of ordinary people in the Global South, it is essential to interrogate the implications of non-state provision for inequality and the ability of people to meet their basic needs. Largely neglected in studies of welfare regimes, the final dimension, citizenship, is critical in the contemporary era of globalization. Non-state provision potentially affects the degree to which people obtain the rights and fulfill the duties of citizenship and, perhaps consequently, form and maintain their attachments to political communities.

Table 1 Political consequences of the non-state provision of social welfare
Full size table

State Capacity

We first focus on the effects of the non-state provision of social welfare on state capacity (Brautigam 1996; Grindle 1996; Evans 1995; Migdal 1988). The concept of state capacity is multi-dimensional. In its most basic form, state capacity refers to the ability of the state to control the legitimate means of force within its borders (Weber 1946). Beyond this, coercive power depends on the ability of the state to collect taxes (Brautigam et al. 2008; Levi 1988). A common measure of state capacity is the state’s extractive capabilities, notably the collection of direct taxes on individual incomes and business profits, which require more developed administrative capacity and information gathering agencies than earnings from natural resources (Levi 1988; Moore 2004).

Tax collection permits the establishment of law and order, the policing of borders, and even the supply of public goods and social welfare (Schumpeter 1954; Tilly 1975). Thus, state capacity can also be assessed in terms of the extent to which state institutions are able to reach across the geographic space of the country through border controls, the construction of infrastructure, or supply and/or regulation of basic services (Brass 2010; Herbst 2000). A more abstract yet equally important dimension of state capacity might include legitimacy, or the degree to which citizens regard the state as the appropriate political authority and the extent to which states can elicit citizen compliance without coercion or the threat of force (Boone 2003; Levi 1988, 1997; Tyler 2006).

As noted above, existing research on welfare regimes tends to neglect NSPs altogether and what exists tends to focus narrowly on the effects of NGOs rather than other forms of providers. Furthermore, debates about the role of NGOs in development and social welfare provision focus most extensively on the implications for state capacity rather than other potential political consequences. Detractors claim that the provision of services by non-state actors can undermine the capacity of the state by hindering the development of internal information gathering and revenue generation abilities (Khan 1999; Obiyan 2005). NGO control over public services may also create a “franchise state” which relies on private subcontractors to meet citizen welfare needs, further deterring or undermining state capacity to supply public goods and social services (Wood 1997). De Walle (Bratton and Walle 1997) offers a particularly scathing critique of NSPs by charging that they allow weak states to persist and engage in politically motivated rather than neutral interventions, which effectively perpetuate human rights abuses.

The opposing perspective emphasizes that states in much of the Global South actually provide very little to citizens, calling for alternative or supplementary sources of social protection. As defenders of NSPs suggest, the claim that NSPs detract from state capacity rests on the assumption that states have the ability to provide public goods and social welfare in the first place, a questionable assumption for many countries. In such contexts, non-state provision enables weak states to continue to function, implying that citizens would otherwise receive few if any “entitlements” and, in the extreme, governments might collapse in the absence of NSPs. Proponents therefore argue that NGOs can either directly or indirectly boost state capacity by freeing up state resources to focus on other pressing areas, utilize niche technical expertise to deliver services more effectively, or forge more productive linkages between communities and public institutions than state are able to establish on their own (Brinckerhoff 1999; Brown 1998).

Ultimately, state and non-state provision are not mutually exclusive. Rather, NSPs may substitute for or complement public welfare functions. The importance of state regulatory, administrative and fiscal capabilities for the overall welfare regime, underscores interdependent relationships between public institutions and NSPs. These dimensions of state capacity are certainly essential for the effective delivery of public services but are equally if not more critical for the operation of welfare regimes with extensive non-state actors. Where non-state providers dominate the welfare landscape, state regulatory capacity is particularly critical in ensuring access to services, mandating and enforcing quality standards, encouraging economies of scale in welfare provision, and avoiding duplication of services and relevant technology. These actions, in turn, require that state agencies possess adequate administrative and fiscal capabilities. For example, in advanced industrialized countries in Europe or the USA, where non-state actors such as churches, non-profits, and other non-governmental organizations deliver a significant proportion of social welfare services, the state still plays a key role in regulating and financing the service delivery (Allard 2009; Powell and Clemens 1998; Salamon 1995).

The contributions in this special issue present a range of perspectives on the effects of non-state provision on state capacity, individually and collectively offering a nuanced set of perspectives on this debate. Dillon’s paper on pre-revolutionary and immediate post-revolutionary China takes weak state capacity as its starting point by examining how the efforts of private philanthropists to finance or supply relief compensated for the relative inability of the state to address the needs of refugee populations in certain periods. Differentiating between the financing and actual delivery of social assistance, Dillon argues that public financing played a larger role in boosting state capacity. Tsai, too, examines the relations between state and non-state actors in supplying public goods in China, albeit over a half century later in the contemporary period. Here the focus is not so much on state capacity to deliver public goods and social welfare but rather on another dimension of state capacity—legitimacy. Tsai finds that cooperation between community groups and local officials can be beneficial to local state authority and capacity by encouraging citizen compliance with state demands. In effect, “coproduction” can increase the legitimacy of local officials in the communities they govern.

While these arguments highlight the positive effects of non-state providers on state capacity under certain conditions, Dillon and, by implication, Tsai caution that not all forms of public–private cooperation can improve state capacity, however defined. Dillon notes that private provision of assistance—rather than financing—merely boosts the capacity of private actors to supply assistance in the future, effectively undercutting an opportunity for the state to improve the logistical, administrative, and regulatory capabilities characteristic of more effective states. In her analysis of contemporary China, Tsai perceives a more positive-sum state–society relationship, particularly when citizens organized in broad-based community groups engaged in coproduction with government officials. But state relations with other types of non-state providers, such as private businesses, may not be as collaborative, perhaps because they have more independent resource bases.

Krishna and Cammett also present a nuanced perspective on the effects of non-state provision of social welfare on state capacity. Although they do not address the question of state capacity directly, Krishna’s empirical arguments have implications for the effects of non-state provision on the state. In particular, the analysis demonstrates the weaknesses of the Indian public welfare system, which does not cover the poor as effectively as more privileged citizens. By arranging access to social benefits, the naya netas, or the “new men” who act as intermediaries between local governments and the poor, have the effect of extending the coverage of the overall system. At the same time, the actions of intermediaries may postpone reform of the social service system, potentially deterring the construction of enhanced public welfare capabilities.

Similar dynamics are at play in the Lebanese welfare regime, in which sectarian political organizations are key actors both within and outside of the state. On the one hand, sectarian organizations distribute much needed social assistance to the needy—assistance that might not otherwise be provided by the state, which has notoriously weak administrative and regulatory capacities. On the other hand, these organizations profit from the vulnerabilities of the poor by acting as gatekeepers to state-sponsored social programs, enabling supporters to gain disproportionate access to what are supposed to be citizen entitlements. To preserve this discretionary power, these organizations wittingly and unwittingly undercut the development of more robust state institutional capacities.

The contributions in this issue also underscore that the effects of non-state provision on state capacity cannot be determined ex ante. Rather, the impact of NSPs is context specific and depends on the particular relationship between the state and NSPs. For example, in her cross-time empirical analysis, Dillon emphasizes that varied patterns of public–private interactions obtained in different historical moments in China have stimulated divergent outcomes for the development of central state capacity. Tsai’s study of contemporary China suggests that local officials believe that different types of non-state actors have different effects on their relationship with citizens and on local state authority and legitimacy.

In short, the contributions to this special issue underscore that the non-state provision is neither universally beneficial nor automatically detrimental for the construction of state capacity. Furthermore, the impact of NSPs on state institutions is ultimately contingent on the type of relationships established between the state and relevant non-state actors. Next, we turn to the effects of non-state social welfare provision on equity of access to social welfare.

Equity of Access to Social Welfare

A second critical dimension of the consequences of non-state provision relates to equity, or the degree to which citizens have relatively equal access to social welfare. In assessing levels of inequality in a given society, standard measures prioritize the distribution of income and asset levels, which are important factors in and of themselves because they shape poverty directly. But access to basic social services is a critical channel by which people improve their well-being and, hence, constitutes an additional dimension to the structure of societal inequality. Even countries with low GDP levels and comparatively high levels of inequality have improved the well-being of their populations by implementing or facilitating the institutionalization of effective basic social welfare services (McGuire 2010). Indeed, efforts to reconceptualize and measure “human development” and “well-being” incorporate indicators of health and educational status to supplement the standard notions of GDP per capita (Gough and Wood 2004: 16–18; Sen 1985).

Access to services is a multi-dimensional concept which cannot be adequately captured by quantitative measures such as immunization rates, school attendance, and other relevant indicators. Our understanding of equitable access to social welfare refers to both the quantity of services received and the qualitative experience of receiving those benefits. To begin, the quantity of services encompasses both the breadth and depth of coverage. The breadth of coverage signifies whether and to what degree an individual or household is entitled to any forms of social service coverage at all. For example, in developing countries with retirement benefits, only formal sector workers may receive income support when they become elderly. Similarly, in many countries, health insurance and related forms of social assistance are only available to formal sector workers and, in some cases, only government employees. Throughout much of the Global South, where formal welfare entitlements are limited to a small subset of national populations, the breadth of coverage is narrow.

The second component of the quantity of coverage, the depth of coverage, refers to the level of benefits that an individual or household actually receives. For example, formal entitlements do not necessarily (and often do not) ensure access, meaning that the depth or level of benefits is in practice quite limited. In some post-socialist countries in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, for example, citizens still enjoy comprehensive de jure health benefits. In practice, however, these benefits have undergone a process of “spontaneous privatization,” by which doctors and other health care workers charge fees before they will deliver medical care or direct patients to their own private clinics (Koulaksazov et al. 2003; Lekhan et al. 2004).

Beyond the breadth and depth or quantity of coverage, we also highlight the qualitative experience of gaining access to social welfare services.Footnote 5 As the policy feedbacks literature emphasizes (Mettler 2005; Mettler and Stonecash 2008; Soss and Schram 2007; Campbell 2003; Soss 2000), there is more to welfare regimes than formal entitlements or even the quantity of actual benefits received. The qualitative experience of accessing benefits also shapes citizen contacts with state and non-state providers. If the experience of social service delivery is perceived as fair and inclusive, then people may view the quality of the actual service more favorably than if it is stigmatizing and exclusionary.

Overall, our understanding of equity of access to social welfare emphasizes the politics of attaining benefits and services. The political dimensions of equitable access to social welfare are largely overlooked in much policy-oriented research, which tends to focus on individual demographic characteristics such as age, gender, class, race, or ethnicity in mediating access to medical care, education, and other aspects of social welfare (Wilkinson and Marmot 2003; Smedley et al. 2003; Lantz et al. 2007, 2010).

How does non-state provision affect access to social welfare? The emphasis on the privatization of social service delivery since the 1980s has generated scholarly and policy accounts of the role of some NSPs in welfare regimes. But, again, most research on non-state actors in welfare regimes focuses on NGOs, highlighting how they may complement or even substitute for incomplete or lacking state social service delivery systems (Brass 2010; Lewis and Kanji 2009). NGOs can also mediate access to state social provision, blurring the boundaries between the state and non-state actors (Brass 2010).

Proponents of NGOs as providers or brokers of basic services emphasize the benefits of non-state social welfare, contending that citizens gain better access to social welfare as a result (Brinckerhoff 1999; Brown 1998; Klein and Hadjimichael 2003; OECD 1995; World Bank 2004). Similarly, since the early 1980s, international donors and development specialists alike have pushed for increased decentralization of governance, incorporating a larger role for non-state providers at the community level (Crook and Manor 1998; Edwards and Hulme 1996; Robinson 1993).

In general, the development policy literature—including research centered on NGOs and the decentralization of governance—portrays problems related to the provision of welfare as technical dilemmas, rather than political ones and, in so doing, downplays the ways in which politics affect access to social welfare. NGOs and, more broadly, processes of decentralization may create or perpetuate inequalities in access to social welfare. As critiques of decentralization show, certain individuals and groups will be differentially placed in local hierarchies of economic and political power, creating unequal access to social welfare (Agrawal and Gibson 1999; Bardhan 2002; Hyden 2006. The literature on clientelism is instructive: More than most research on welfare and public goods provision, the growing literature on clientelism puts the spotlight on how political behavior and loyalties mediate access to varieties of social benefits, employment opportunities, and material aid (Calvo and Murillo 2004; Cox and McCubbins 1986; Diaz-Cayeros et al., unpublished manuscript; Lindbeck and Weibull 1993; Stokes 2005; Weitz-Shapiro 2006).

Nonetheless, the recent wave of scholarship on clientelism tends to be overly focused on elections and party institutionalization and is most centrally concerned with the quality of democracy rather than the functioning of welfare regimes per se (Diaz-Cayeros et al., unpublished manuscript; Stokes 2005).Footnote 6 With our more expansive understanding of NSPs, we also focus on other types of mediators such as ethnic or sectarian organizations, bureaucratic entrepreneurs, families, and community leaders. All of these types of actors are not formally part of the state apparatus; however, as the contributors to this special issue demonstrate, they play a vital role in providing or mediating access to basic services.Footnote 7 Their actions, then, have direct consequences for equity of access to social benefits and therefore of the well-being of citizens in many parts of the Global South.

The contributions to this special issue highlight how politics shape access to social welfare and touch on some, although not all, of the dimensions of equitable access described above. In some cases, the analyses point to the ways in which states and private actors interact to make services and benefits available to citizens and, in other cases, they explicitly focus on the types of intermediaries with which different segments of the population interface in their efforts to meet their basic needs. All of the authors stress the great variability among individuals, groups and/or communities in their levels of access to social welfare.

What do the contributors find with respect to the quantity of access to social welfare in different regions of the Global South? On net, the contributions suggest that an accentuated role for non-state actors in the provision of social welfare does not necessarily guarantee broad or deep coverage. By concentrating on the micro-dynamics of how people gain access to social welfare, the contributions on sub-Saharan Africa, India, and the Middle East highlight the ways in which NSPs foster or at least perpetuate inequality and exclusion in access to services. Exclusion may be absolute, in the sense of not having any access at all to a social service, or it may be more relative, in terms of being under-served. Cammett, for example, shows that access to social welfare in Lebanon is highly uneven. One factor contributing to this variable access to services is explicitly political: Citizens who are more politically active receive more benefits—and, potentially, more expensive and encompassing benefits—than less active or apolitical citizens. Krishna asserts that a great majority of people in India do not “take the trouble” to use any mediators at all to access state services and so the voices of these “despondent democrats” go unheard. MacLean argues that the informal institutions of social reciprocity in either rural region of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire are not nearly as vibrant and resilient as many policymakers and politicians have historically assumed. She contrasts the “exclusion” of narrower informal social relations in Cote d’Ivoire with the sheer “exhaustion” of broader reciprocity relations in Ghana.

Several of the authors emphasize that levels of access to social welfare among distinct groups have changed over time. Dillon takes the most explicitly historical approach in comparing different types of public–private partnerships for refugee relief in Shanghai, China between 1937 and 1953. She finds that the numbers of refugees served increased as the central state expanded its role in service delivery vis-à-vis private philanthropists. MacLean demonstrates that the level of access afforded by even highly informal institutions of social reciprocity in rural West Africa has changed considerably over a relatively short time period of a couple of decades, challenging many of the myths of the static persistence of the “primordial” African village or “traditional” rural community in any region of the Global South.Footnote 8

Turning to the qualitative experience of equity, all of the authors point to the political processes and relationships that shape access to social welfare. The contributions on China by Dillon and Tsai center on the varied types of relationships that the Chinese state has forged with non-state actors to provide social welfare and public goods, which affect citizen experiences of accessing social welfare. In Dillon’s cross-time study, a different permutation of public–private collaboration emerged in each of four historical moments to provide assistance to displaced populations. As a result, needy individuals and families interfaced with representatives of either the state or of private charities in seeking access to social assistance in different periods, leading to varied patterns of welfare state development over time in China.

In contemporary China, the focus of Tsai’s analysis, the political context of the welfare regime is quite different from the periods examined in Dillon’s contribution. Like Dillon, Tsai focuses on the relationship between the state and non-state actors in providing welfare (in this case, public infrastructure). Yet the relationship between the state and private actors is distinct in contemporary authoritarian China, where the state views some types of non-state providers as potentially threatening to government authority. Even in this context, however, local government officials perceive certain kinds of non-state community-based actors to be desirable partners. Coproduction of public goods between the state and community groups, Tsai argues, creates a kind of “virtuous circle” in which positive experiences of public–private collaboration ultimately may lead to greater citizen compliance with state demands.

Shifting to a more democratic political context, Krishna focuses on the processes by which citizens in India seek various services from their government. Increasingly, naya netas or “new leaders” rather than formal institutional channels serve as intermediaries between the state and poor citizens in facilitating access to public benefits. Thus, processes of accessing social services vary according to socioeconomic status. In quasi-democratic Lebanon, sectarian parties and organizations are powerful actors in the overall political system, and both provide services and mediate access to both public benefits for poor and middle class citizens. Despite relatively generous formal entitlements to some types of health care and education, a combination of state fiscal crisis and clientelist politics permeating state–citizen relations ensure that ordinary people face difficulties in gaining access to social rights. In this context, political activism affects access to social welfare: Citizens who demonstrate greater commitment to a political party and engage in higher levels of political activism enjoy greater access to basic services.

Finally, MacLean’s comparison of two neighboring regions of Ghana and Ivory Coast highlights the role of informal institutions of reciprocity for accessing and financing education and health care. With economic crisis and reform in the 1980s and 1990s, however, familial and other informal social networks have become overtaxed and increasingly exclusionary such that many have little or no access to social support. Distinct national historical legacies of state social policy are the most powerful determinant of the ways in which social networks have been changed and reconstituted, in turn affecting the ability of citizens to obtain services and benefits.

These analyses of processes of accessing social welfare in Asia, the Middle East, and West Africa point to the inequalities of power between providers or mediators and beneficiaries but, at the same time, present nuanced perspectives on the effects of NSPs on access to social welfare. For example, in Lebanon, clientelist linkages are premised on hierarchical relationships of dependence and perpetuate a system in which citizens cannot in practice benefit from public entitlements. At the same time, sectarian and religious providers offer services that might not otherwise be available. Similarly, in India, informal brokers profit from the vulnerabilities of the poor, who cannot gain access to their social rights, yet the services of the naya netas offer ways of obtaining benefits that are generally not available to the poor. In Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, informal networks of social reciprocity are built on relationships of inequality along lines of gender, age, class, political status, and autochtony but also facilitate access to social services. On the macro-political level, Dillon’s analysis of pre- and immediate post-revolutionary China shows that some combinations of public–private collaboration in refugee relief provide more sustainable benefits than others: While mixed partnerships and particularly those dominated by private philanthropists are associated with more sporadic relief efforts, collaborations with a dominant partner—and particularly state-dominated partnerships—offer the most reliable forms of relief.

In sum, the papers in this special issue present a critical evaluation of the political determinants of equitable access, highlighting in many cases more uneven outcomes from non-state provision than is commonly assumed by policymakers. To be sure, NSPs are critical in facilitating access to social welfare in these diverse contexts. However, individuals and groups receive unequal levels of benefits, and their qualitative experiences of obtaining access to social welfare provision differ in significant ways. Furthermore, some of the papers reveal how the relationships between citizens, NSPs, and states are contested and renegotiated over time in much of the Global South. In the next section, we investigate the ways in which non-state provision of social welfare affects citizenship, the third dimension of the political consequences examined in this special issue.

Citizenship

Citizenship has received little, if any, scholarly attention to date in studies of non-state social welfare. Citizenship can be conceptualized alternatively as a political identity (Benhabib 2008; Kymlicka 1996; Isin and Wood 1999), or as a set of political behaviors (Bratton et al. 2005; Bratton 2006; Mettler and Soss 2004). The articles in this special issue are more focused on the former than the latter. Rather than simply analyzing the behavioral effects of NSPs on voting, political contacting, or other forms of political participation, the authors seek to understand the ways that non-state provision affects how people understand and construct their roles as citizens in the political system. In particular, the articles examine how non-state provision may change the experience of reciprocity with the state and, thus, the normative content of both the citizen’s rights and duties.

Few empirical studies have examined directly how non-state provision has influenced the meaning of citizenship, but the broader literature on citizenship offers potential theoretical explanations. A classic concern is that class inequality would diminish the meaning of citizenship for the poor (Marshall and Bottomore 1992; Tucker 1978; Skocpol 2003; Verba et al. 1995). Within each of the countries examined in the case studies, significant economic inequalities exist, raising the question of whether socioeconomic disparities undercut experiences of citizenship among the poor in these societies and even decreases attachments to national polities among the marginalized.

A second perspective on citizenship posits that the encounter with colonialism created divergent meanings and practices of belonging to the national political community. For example, Ekeh (1975) and Mamdani (1996) both highlight how the imposition of colonial rule in Africa effectively alienated citizens from the central state in different ways. This issue includes cases with a variety of types and lengths of colonial experiences. In particular, the research design of MacLean’s study highlights the cross-national differences in Francophone versus Anglophone colonial legacies in neighboring Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana.

More recently, scholars argue that globalization is creating a new type of cosmopolitan citizenship (Benhabib 2008; Archibugi and Held 1995), where individuals now imagine themselves as having rights and duties in a larger global community. Other academics contend that neoliberal globalization has quite the opposite effect, pushing the commodification of ethnicity and the greater awareness of subnational ethnic differences (Comaroff and Comaroff 2009). One line of research explicitly connects political and social identities with the provision of public goods. In these studies, ethnic “fractionalization” is associated with the underprovision of public goods as the outcome of interest (Alesina et al. 1999; Lieberman 2009; Habyarimana et al. 2007, 2009). Yet the reverse causal process may obtain, as scholars of welfare state policy in the USA emphasize that the interpretive experience of state provision can have feedback effects by shaping conceptualizations and practices of citizenship (Campbell 2003; Mettler 2005; Mettler and Soss 2004; Soss and Schram 2007; Mettler and Stonecash 2008). In exploring the political consequences of non-state provision, this special issue suggests that non-state provision of social services and public goods may alter the meaning of citizenship, including the sense of attachment to the polity and understandings of the rights and obligations of membership in the national political community.

Several of the articles in this special issue highlight how non-state provision may alter the reciprocal ties between states and citizens in fundamental ways, but the collective analysis suggests that the effects are neither consistently positive nor negative. As a result of contact with non-state providers, citizens may begin to conceptualize or alter their notions of rights and duties in the political system but with varied end results. On the one hand, non-state involvement in the provision of welfare can produce more satisfied citizens. Tsai’s article suggests one mechanism for this outcome. In certain coproduction relationships—in this case, when the Chinese state works with community groups (although not private firms)—productive collaborations can emerge between state officials and citizens. At least from the perspective of state officials, this may produce more engaged citizens who are more willing to comply with state demands and, more broadly, the duties of citizenship in contemporary China. Dillon’s article also suggests that the non-state provision of welfare might generate social capital and stimulate citizen engagement. At the same time, from the perspective of normative democratic theory (Brettschneider 2010; Cordelli 2011), this outcome may not be entirely sanguine. Increased citizen compliance undoubtedly pleases local government officials, but may not be desirable in the context of authoritarian rule.

The articles on India, Lebanon, and sub-Saharan Africa imply more unequivocally negative effects of non-state provision on citizenship. In both India and Lebanon, the basic social rights of citizenship are effectively denied to poorer and/or less politically active members of the national political community. Furthermore, non-state providers of social services and brokers of public entitlements profit from the status quo, providing incentives for the perpetuation of welfare regimes that effectively deny access to specific rights of citizenship. Focusing on informal networks rather than individuals or organizations as non-state providers, MacLean’s contribution on Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire highlights how increasingly exclusionary and fatigued family and social ties effectively deny certain citizens access to health and education services, which has been conceived since independence as a citizen entitlement.

Ultimately, the effects of non-state provision of social welfare on citizenship depend on how NSPs position themselves vis-à-vis the state and the degree to which they provide more universal or more restrictive access to social services and benefits. In collaborative relationships between NSPs and the state, the provision of social welfare may be enhanced and bonds between state officials and citizens may be strengthened, leading to more fulfilling experiences of citizenship. When NSPs profit from and perpetuate the inadequacies of public welfare functions and establish or reinforce axes of inequality, however, non-state provision has more negative effects on citizenship.

Conceivably, social provision can affect social and political attachments. When social rights are upheld, whether by public or private providers, citizens may feel a greater sense of belonging to the national political community. Conversely, when non-state actors—and particularly those with identity-based foundations such as ethnic or religious organizations—meet the basic needs of populations and present themselves as compensating for state failure or neglect, citizens may develop additional and potentially competing attachments, although membership in distinct political communities is rarely mutually exclusive (Wedeen 2009: 10–14).

Conclusion

Welfare regimes in the Global South—and particularly the rise and resurgence of non-state providers and brokers of social welfare—deserve more analytical attention. This special issue highlights the political consequences of non-state provision of social welfare, focusing on the potential implications for state capacity to provide social services or the robustness of public welfare regimes, equity of access to social welfare, and understandings of citizenship.

The contributors to this special issue do not make bold causal arguments with broad scope conditions about the effects of non-state social welfare; rather, their empirical analyses highlight specific mechanisms through which non-state provision of social welfare may affect the three forms of political consequences theorized herein. With respect to state capacity, the contributions collectively emphasize that non-state provision alters the ability of states to construct and maintain effective public welfare functions but does not have ex ante positive or negative effects on this outcome. Ultimately, the impact of NSPs on state institutions depends on the type of relationships established between the state and relevant non-state actors, whether collaborative or conflictual, and the degree to which NSPs substitute for rather than complement or bolster state welfare activities.

The articles in this issue also provide nuanced analyses of the effects of NSPs on equitable access to social welfare. Some of the contributions focus on the impact of non-state provision on the micro-level, or the effects on individual and household access to welfare. For example, in their studies of India and Lebanon, Krishna and Cammett, respectively, highlight the ways in which non-state providers enable marginalized segments of the populations to gain access to social welfare. At the same time, the same non-state actors may profit from and perpetuate welfare regimes that effectively deny citizens access to social rights, thereby making their services seemingly indispensable. On the macro-political level, Dillon’s analysis of efforts to serve the displaced in pre-revolutionary and immediate post-revolutionary China indicates that some combinations of public–private collaboration provide more continuous and reliable benefits than others.

Finally, the articles also generate nuanced findings about the impact of the non-state provision of social welfare on citizenship, including understandings of the rights and obligations of membership in the national political community as well as affective attachments to the polity. Again, the effects are contingent on the relationships of different types of NSPs to the state. Collaborative state-NSP relationships may enhance linkages between officials and citizens and increase the provision of social welfare, inducing greater citizen satisfaction with citizenship and potentially even leading to greater citizen compliance with the state and/or attachments to the national political community. The extent to which non-state provision affords inclusive access to social services and benefits may also shape citizenship experiences and may have positive effects on understandings of national citizenship when NSPs facilitate access to public entitlements. Conversely, if they wittingly or unwittingly expose and exacerbate the inadequacies of public welfare functions, NSPs may have detrimental effects on citizenship.

This special issue on the political consequences of non-state social welfare is a stepping stone to more systematic research on the issues raised herein and points to additional areas for further analysis. First, the various types of public and private actors who mediate access to welfare in the Global South deserve more in-depth analysis. Specifically, further research should explore in more detail the history and origins of non-state providers in diverse parts of the Global South with varied historical legacies of state and non-state social provision. The contributions to this issue have provided snapshots of interactions between the state and non-state actors in welfare regimes but are necessarily restricted in their scope and analysis. More research on the historical emergence of non-state providers and intermediaries in welfare regimes is essential for understanding the contemporary dynamics of welfare regimes in the Global South.

Second, several contributors also raise broader questions about the ways in which processes of accessing welfare shape the quality of political participation and state legitimacy. As Krishna implies in his analysis of India, the presence of greater numbers and types of intermediaries can translate into increased voice and access to the democratic state. Alternatively, Tsai begins to investigate the nature of legitimate state authority and citizen compliance from the perspective of local government officials. Interactions between the state and local communities in supplying social welfare and public infrastructure potentially increase trust among citizens and officials and elicit greater citizen compliance with state policies. Additional research from the viewpoint of citizens themselves would be an important complement to these studies of the politics of access to social welfare. This line of analysis not only opens up new areas for scholarly research on inequality and the nature of distinct forms of democratic or authoritarian rule but also touches on issues of critical importance for the well-being of ordinary citizens.

Third, non-state provision undoubtedly shapes processes of accountability between providers and beneficiaries. NSPs do not have the same obligations that have bound states to citizens, particularly in the post-World War II period—even if these obligations are more operative in theory than in practice. Given the rise of new types of non-state actors delivering or brokering access to social services, do individuals devise and make use of new mechanisms of accountability for providers or has the rise or resurgence of NSPs undercut accountability, as some suggest (Wood 1997)?

Fourth, the consequences of non-state provision for citizenship deserve more in-depth empirical research. This set of contributions does not yet provide complete answers to critical questions: Does the receipt of services from non-state actors alter perceptions of membership in the national political community? Put differently, does the national political community become fractured sub-nationally or reconstituted globally in new ways as a result of engagement with non-state providers? Do people develop additional or alternative loyalties and attachments given the new or renewed salience of non-state actors in their everyday lives?

Finally, future empirical research should address the broader generalizability of the consequences of non-state provision for state capacity, equity of access to social welfare and citizenship. Although the impact of NSPs on these outcomes is at least partly context specific, expanding the range of cases in which we consider these effects may illuminate some systematic effects of different types of NSPs on these and other political outcomes.

The consequences of non-state provision pose crucial political problems in the Global South. States do not provide or no longer provide essential health, education, and other welfare services to their citizens at the turn of the twenty-first century. Instead, a range of distinct non-state providers play increasingly important roles in delivering and/or facilitating access to vital social welfare around the world. Non-state provision is of course not entirely new, but the numbers and types of NSPs have increased dramatically in recent decades in most countries of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. The consequences of non-state provision are not merely technocratic worries about the future capacity of the central or local government bureaucracy. These changes also profoundly affect the everyday lives of citizens. Non-state provision can be both a blessing and a curse: On the one hand, NSPs may offer services that are otherwise not provided by public agencies. On the other hand, with their limited mandates and, in some cases, exclusionary practices, non-state actors and networks may undercut or hinder equitable access to social services and even diminish the experience of membership in national political communities.