The opening of the political system increased the leverage of interest groups and stakeholders, while ‘severe inflation and fiscal constraints had the countervailing effect of strengthening the hands of technocrats’ (Haggard and Kaufman, 2008: 277). Institutions must be understood through the economic context and social policy interests (Haggard and Kauffman, 2008: 281). Thus, social security spending in Latin America is high when compared to that of East Asia and Eastern Europe in the period from 1945-2003 (Haggard and Kaufman: 2008). Struggles for succession and social protests from below have generated welfare concessions, yet these factors did not have an enduring significance (Haggard and Kaufman: 2008). Thus, by ‘situating institutional arguments within the context of broader political realignments and development models’, I will build a stronger understanding of the emergence of welfare and development models in Brazil (Haggard and Kaufman, 2008: …show more content…
This is what I will attribute to ‘social security’ in Figure 1. Revealing the similarities and differences between social security and human capital accumulation, I will show the dominant drivers of and limits to social security. Human capital accumulation (HCA) can be defined as ‘the development of a set of skills leading to [the] increased education, health and productivity of potential workers’ (Galor and Moav, 1999: page #). This which can be represented in the investments in ‘health’ and ‘education’ (Figure 1). Thus, social security is a precondition, whereas HCA is is a central driver of human and economic