The ‘Problem Represented To Be’ in the Social Protection Policy Regimes of Ethiopia

Abstract

Abstract Policy analysis needs to go beyond the conventional ‘problem solving’ approach to interrogating ‘problem representations’ within policy documents. Numerous studies on social protection in Ethiopia, and in sub-Saharan Africa at large have been confined to studying the impact of policy interventions. Studies that aimed to scrutinize policy documents for their ‘problematization’ of issues and ‘problem representations’ in the Foucauldian sense are in dearth. This study used document analysis as a method and Bacchi’s (2009a) ‘What is the Problem Represented to be’ (WPR) model as its analytic frame to interrogate the ‘problem representations’ of the Developmental Social Welfare Policy (DSWP) and the present Social Protection Policy of Ethiopia. The findings suggest that though there is improvement from the earlier to the current policy, ‘problem representations’ of both were limited in terms of what they could deliver, for they were framed by targeting theory, having the ‘resource scarcity’ excuse. This was mainly reflected in the policy regimes’ ‘problematization’ of issues and ‘subjectification’ of beneficiaries.