Changing Global Discourses

All major international organizations had rejected the idea of social cash transfers to the poor until the late 1990s. Why did they adopt the idea by the mid-2000s? It is argued that the 1990s witnessed new discourses among international organizations—on poverty, development, risk, human rights, and universalism—that created an ideational window of opportunity for cash transfers to emerge as a global idea. The new discourses provided new reasons for social security, by raising new global social questions and invoking new social responsibilities of international organizations and states. In particular, the right to social security, laid down in 1948 by the UN, was re-interpreted during the 1990s to require individualized welfare benefits for the poor. Powerful discourse coalitions and discursive practices propelled the new discourses. However, the move towards extending social security was checked by the enduring developmental thinking geared to achieving welfare in the long run by market means and macroeconomic policies.