Globalization and the Welfare State in Developing Countries

Most of the existing studies of the welfare state have dealt with OECD countries. Moreover, these studies have focused on government partisanship (left versus right), or institutional features under democracy, as primary causal variables. By providing four primary causal mechanisms (the power of popularly based parties, labor strength, democracy, and political instability) that are different from those of OECD countries, I answer the question of whether and why the efficiency or compensation hypothesis holds for developing countries. I show that either the efficiency or compensation thesis can hold for developing countries depending on the type of globalization with which popularly based governments interact.