Inclusion and Public Policy

Social exclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean continues to evolve in ways that are still poorly understood. This report has examined how newer, more modern forces are interacting with centuries-old forms of exclusion based on race, ethnicity, gender, and other group traits, inducing a more complex form of exclusion that is evident in much of the region today.

The excluded are poor and have chronically unstable work lives. Low wages and exclusion from social insurance mechanisms make the excluded more vulnerable in all dimensions of their social life. Neighborhoods rife with crime, lack of access to basic social and public services, discrimination, political disenfranchisement—all compound to limit the ability of the excluded to obtain outcomes valuable in a market economy. A large fraction of the excluded population belongs to groups that have been historically excluded based on their race, ethnicity, gender, and other group traits: exclusion in the region is as brown-skinned as poverty is. But looking at exclusion exclusively through the lenses of ethnicity, gender, and race can obscure the impact of modern forces of exclusion which affect an even wider and more diverse group within the population.

An especially important locus of these modern forces of exclusion is the labor market. The increase in the number of low-wage jobs is a bad omen for productivity and growth, and for many the labor market has become a source of exclusion rather than a path towards social integration (see Chapter 5). A growing body of literature on the impact of the investment climate on employment generation (Aterido, Hallward-Driemeyer, and Pagés, 2007, and references therein) suggests that economic growth and an improving business climate are crucial for attacking bad jobs as a source of exclusion. At the very least, one could argue that a faster-growing economy is better positioned to finance the transfer of resources towards (traditionally and modernly) excluded groups with much less political cost than a stagnant economy.

That said, the multidimensional nature of social exclusion in areas such as labor markets should alert us to the ineffectiveness of silver bullets, like economic growth, in attacking it. Exclusion needs to be deconstructed in its many interrelated dimensions via a range of actions at different societal levels by different social actors.

What role can public policy play in overcoming exclusion derived from such distinct forces and advancing inclusion to ensure more equal access to services and opportunities for all citizens? Like the literature on exclusion itself, the literature on public policy and inclusion is highly limited and relatively narrow, with little systematic evidence on what works best. There are no dynamic theories of how exclusion works, no body of research and analysis about how to construct “inclusive” public policies, no fixed set of applied policies and programs tested and ready to come off the shelf. Few, if any, policy initiatives use the term “inclusion” as the principal policy objective.

Yet the region is not starting from zero. There exists a set of policy instruments, institutions, and laws that are designed to promote more inclusive outcomes for specific groups or improve the performance of groups in key areas. In many instances protest movements have been successful in defining groups by the process that generates their exclusion (piqueteros and the unemployed in Argentina, for example), or in re-creating the social and political identity of traditionally excluded groups (such as the movimiento indigenista in Ecuador) (see Chapter 9 for a discussion of this issue). Some results have been tested over time; the effectiveness of other interventions is still to be determined. Beyond single program interventions, less is known about the whole—that is, which of these instruments, policies, or laws is most critical or what key instruments work together to promote inclusion and how they do so. What is the broader framework within which distinct policies and programs operate? Can we learn something more fundamental about how public policy in regard to inclusion operates, or is it all country and sector specific?

Given such a limited knowledge platform and the perils inherent in overgeneralizing for very distinct national policy and exclusion contexts, this chapter offers very modest objectives. It seeks to contribute to an understanding of the workings of public policy and inclusion by first analyzing—via a set of fundamental questions—the nature of inclusion being sought (e.g., is it static or is it dynamic?). After surveying the nature of inclusion, it then argues that it is more accurate to look at inclusive public policy as a public policy process rather than as a public policy end point (i.e., a single objective achieved at one point in time). It concludes by briefly reviewing how such an understanding may help in a rethinking of how nations view and construct an approach to combating exclusion. Chapter 14 follows the framework laid out in this chapter to provide more specific Latin American and Caribbean experience with the public policy building blocks of inclusion.

Given the current constraints of evidence, experience, and knowledge, the chapter seeks to make an analytic contribution to the thinking, or more likely rethinking, of public policy in regard to inclusion using the inputs of previous chapters. Such analytic objectives do have concrete policy implications, as they can inform and strengthen the content of strategies, policies, and action plans that need to follow in order for inclusion to be achieved in any particular national context. To begin to construct such an analytic framework, though, one must return to the original question posed in this volume—what is social inclusion to achieve?—and ask what this means for “inclusive” public policy.

ADVANCING INCLUSION VIA PUBLIC POLICY: TOWARDS SOME FUNDAMENTALS

To What End? Setting the Parameters for Inclusion and Public Policy

What does an inclusive society look like? What would public policies designed to achieve inclusion be seeking? Very broadly, an inclusive society would be a society with low rates of inequality based on group characteristics and high rates of social mobility among classes (Chapter 6). In this inclusive society, opportunities and services would be available equally based on the rights of citizens, and advancement would be based on merit and effort. Political representation would be increasingly representative and resources apportioned on a nondiscriminatory basis (Chapter 9). An inclusive society would not necessarily be devoid of poverty and social ills, but the color of a person’s skin and the wealth of a person’s parents would not be key determinants of who is poor, how well he or she is educated, or whether he or she receives proper medical care (Chapter 2).

An inclusive society is not just about inclusive outcomes, however. Inclusion affects not only the results of public policy, but also the way those results are achieved. Inclusion aims to achieve equality in access and opportunities for excluded groups by bringing excluded groups into the social, economic, political, institutional, and community structures that make decisions about access and opportunities. In most cases, this represents a significant transformation regarding the way resources are apportioned, political institutions are designed, and opportunities are accessed (Chapters 4, 5, 9, and 12). Inclusion is thus central to democracy, for greater inclusion advances the quality of representation (Chapter 9). When inclusion is viewed in this way, a society cannot be economically inclusive without being politically and socially inclusive as well. An inclusive society would not likely have equality in education without also fostering greater political participation and local participation in schools. Many argue as well that inclusion and the fundamentals for addressing the region’s inequality can realistically be achieved only via a social compact (Birdsall and Menezes, 2004).

Can any nation in the world today be said to have arrived at inclusion for all groups? Can inclusion be achieved in one public policy field and not another? For example, despite significant progress, have women achieved equality of opportunity in any nation? Among the developing regions of the world, Latin America and the Caribbean is the one that has made the most significant progress in women’s education, labor force participation, and political participation. Yet at the same time, the region has some of the highest rates of occupational segregation for females in domestic and clerical work, has not achieved standards of equal pay for equal work, and has large majorities of women employed in informal work, particularly indigenous women. The example of gender illustrates that inclusion is not a single arrival point, but a continuum of different “degrees” of inclusion in distinct fields (e.g., labor markets, political participation, social interactions) that may be at different stages of advancement over relatively long historical periods (Chapters 1 and 2). Even within a specific public policy field—say, education—there can be distinct degrees of inclusion (Chapter 2). For example, inclusion of members of indigenous groups may be more advanced in one subfield (primary education) than another (university-level education), and although inclusion has increased markedly for women at the university level, indigenous women have sustained the smallest gains among women in this area.

Is inclusion pursued for all groups simultaneously and in the same way? Looking back in time historically offers another insight into what might now be understood more as a spectrum of inclusion, not a single end point (Chapter 1). Movements or advocacy for inclusion can be led by a single group (e.g., women, although many women may belong to a number of excluded groups) or by the combined forces of a number of excluded groups. For example, although the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960s was principally led by African Americans, a key policy result, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, barred discrimination on the basis of a wide range of group traits (race, religion, gender, ethnic origin). In the U.S. case, the women’s movement began at the turn of the last century with a push for the right to vote, and the civil rights movement for African Americans made strong and rapid advances in the 1960s based on a wider set of voting, civil, economic, and social rights. Although the women’s movement gained steam earlier, gender was “added” at the last minute to pending congressional civil rights legislation by some who hoped it would doom the whole advance. The U.S. experience demonstrates what is observed worldwide: that the inclusion process can have distinct historical trajectories and different priorities for different groups, as well as unplanned, historical accidents.

Viewing inclusion more as a spectrum of inclusions in distinct fields (e.g., cultural, employment, education, as reviewed in Chapters 1 and 2) allows for a better understanding that groups may have different priorities in that inclusion at different points in time (e.g., indigenous peoples seeking land rights and cultural autonomy; persons with disabilities seeking physical access to government buildings and workplaces). This is not to deny the important commonalities among groups and the importance of groups working together towards equality of opportunities. At its core, groups are seeking access to their rights, those provided to all citizens regardless of their skin color or ethnic origin. To continue with the example of the U.S. civil rights and women’s movements, at different points in time these two movements collaborated with one another and advanced key policies that benefited all excluded groups.
Will a nation arrive at inclusion and never regress? Even those nations considered highly advanced towards inclusion cannot be considered in a static state. Developed countries that have gone through periods of nation building in which they expanded suffrage and economic inclusion can regress and fracture. New socioeconomic pressures or pressures exerted by the arrival of new migrant groups may result in the reassertion of old or new patterns of discrimination. European countries such as France and Germany, hosting an influx of immigrants from Muslim countries in the context of slowed economic growth, face challenges of inclusion on different terms than considered for earlier groups. The prior chapters have laid out how Latin America and the Caribbean can evolve into more complex forms of exclusion even before making significant advances against the traditional sources of exclusion, such as those based on race and ethnicity.

VIEWING INCLUSION AS A PUBLIC POLICY PROCESS

This multidimensional, multigroup understanding of inclusion as sought progressively over time offers a distinct perspective on what inclusive public policy is and what it is not. Inclusive public policy is not a single policy or policy end point. It is not a goal whose achievement means that none of the mechanisms designed to promote inclusion are needed any longer. As set forth in the questions above and in Chapter 1, inclusive public policy should be seen as a dynamic policy process aimed at actively promoting social, economic, and cultural equality, addressing past and present discrimination of excluded populations, and achieving diversity on a continuously improving basis. “Process,” in this instance, means that advances in one area are needed to make advances in the other; for example, social and economic inclusion cannot be achieved without political inclusion as well. This stems both from the interrelated nature of exclusion (e.g., exclusion in one field is linked or gives rise to multiple other exclusions), and from the very nature of socie­ties, which are constantly changing and introducing new schisms or even new excluded groups. Although this may seem straightforward, and some might argue that development itself is a process, an understanding of it is not reflected in the way public policies are designed to advance inclusion.

When inclusion processes begin to take shape, they do so in an environment in which exclusion is likely still operating in many sectors. This means that new programs, policies, and campaigns are initiated while existing programs and policies may continue to produce exclusionary outcomes, or conversely that policies and programs intended to be inclusionary may have unintended effects that must be adjusted midcourse.

The dynamics resulting from the simultaneous forces of inclusion and exclusion in a society cause the public policy process to move not in a straight line forward, but forward in some areas, not much at all in others, and backward in yet others. On a purely observational level, this mirrors what is commonly perceived by excluded groups; they may advance in some fields but not others, or at least in distinct time frames. As noted in the initial questions posed in the previous section, inclusion rarely, if ever, seems to come to a finite end point; rather, new outcomes (both inclusive and exclusive) continue to feed back into a public policy process of further refinement and advances in structure. As previously observed, developed countries thought long to be on the road to inclusion can veer backwards with the exclusion of new groups.

Understanding inclusion as a process means that the impact of a single policy or program cannot be considered in a vacuum. If exclusion is embedded in a range of institutions, processes, and social interactions, then its undoing is a multilayered, dynamic process in which advances in regard to one form of exclusion may be spurred by advances in another field (e.g., political representation). In understanding inclusion as a long-term process, gone is the notion that there is a single program or initiative that in itself will achieve inclusion. There is no silver policy bullet. Inclusion is a long-term, ever-dynamic process.

Three Levels: Normative, Institutional, and Instrumental

If inclusion is a process, of what does it consist? Although there are distinct historical, cultural, and social differences among countries, this chapter proposes that public policy operates within three interrelated levels to address inclusion (see Figure 13.1) and that public policy on these three levels interacts with societal and cultural changes, resulting in a much larger societal process (illustrated in Figure 13.2). These three levels—or frameworks—are the normative, institutional, and instrumental.

The normative framework refers to the fundamental laws and constitutional provisions of a nation that govern the fair treatment and rights of citizens in a nondiscriminatory manner. This is the “macro” framework from which institutions and later policies and programs for inclusion derive and operate. Inclusion calls for a constitutional and legal framework that recognizes collective (group-based) rights as well as individual rights.

The institutional framework refers to the set of institutions that develop and execute laws, programs, and policies. For public policy to succeed in advancing inclusion, the institutions that design and administer laws, policies, and programs must also operate inclusively.

Finally, the specific instruments—policies and programs—designed to achieve proinclusionary outcomes constitute the instrumental framework. In an ideal situation these inclusionary outcomes would feed back into the normative and institutional frameworks, whose changes would in turn result in new programs and policies that deepened the inclusionary outcomes. Chapter 14 discusses in greater depth distinct Latin American and Caribbean experience within each of these three frameworks.

Once an inclusion process has begun in some form, all three levels—normative, institutional, and instrumental—appear to be represented, albeit with very distinct levels of intensity. There is simply no known example in which a nation has sought to address inclusion or some form of group-based stigma and discrimination and effected only a program change, without institutional and legal changes as well. Inclusion even in its incipient stage involves all three policy levels in some form. This stems most fundamentally from the multidimensional nature of exclusion—from a nation’s constitution, to inside its institutions, to within the programs and policies of its government.

On any of these three levels, public policy does not function in an isolated fashion. Rather, public policy operates in distinct national contexts in which society at large both influences policy and is influenced by it. Nina Pacari Vega (2004) writes that inclusion is twofold, encompassing both governments and societies at large. How society at times propels change, takes to the streets, or incorporates gains (or losses) from government policies shapes very distinct inclusion processes at the national level. What do we know about how social inclusion happens or can be made to happen via the interactions of society and public policy? Although we can find different actors linked to inclusion examined in the political science literature—that is, the role of social movements, political parties, and elites (Chapter 9)—few studies have been conducted with the explicit intention of mapping how social inclusion does (or does not) happen.[1]

Such a mapping might begin to unlock a more systematic understanding of the interactions among the three policy levels and how public policy links to the wider context of societal and cultural change—change that is both an input (“driver”) and output (“result”) of the inclusion process. The record of gender inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean clearly tells the story that changes within society—in the role of women, respect for their rights, their economic contributions—have been fundamental to the public policy changes that have been driven by or responded to changing societal notions about women (Buvinic´ and Roza, 2004).

Deconstructing the key elements of an inclusive public policy process, one can view distinct factors or drivers that play a critical role in inducing the changes in policy “means”—within the normative, institutional, and instrumental frameworks—necessary for public policy to lead to more inclusive outcomes. Figure 13.2 illustrates these relationships in their rudimentary form. Societal drivers stimulate the distinctive changes at the normative, institutional, and instrumental levels that contribute, in the best-case scenario, to more inclusive outcomes in specific fields or sectors. These inclusive public policy outcomes in turn feed back into motivating and stimulating additional normative, institutional, and instrumental changes that stimulate additional outcomes. Indeed, as noted in the initial questions posed in this chapter, inclusion does not reach a finite end point. Countries have been known to regress in regard to incorporating new groups into their societies even after other groups have been included successfully.

Drivers

Who or what is able to stimulate the chain of social, political, and economic changes needed to advance towards inclusion? Although other factors can be noted, the principal “drivers” of such a process identified in the literature are political leadership (as manifested in “political will”) to implement needed social, political, and economic changes; civil society (more highly organized and active civil organizations lead to both pressure and support for public policy changes); and socioeconomic and cultural change. When functioning well, dynamic inclusion processes include organized and representative civil society organizations with both national and international links, representative and more proactive political leadership and institutions, and wider cultural and social change, which propels acceptance of and leadership in regard to inclusion.

At the center of many analyses of the key forces propelling inclusion is the role played and leadership exerted by representatives of excluded groups themselves. Civic organizations and alliances of organizations are as essential to the lifeblood of democratic development (well studied) as to inclusion (less studied). The advancement of women’s rights in Latin America and the Caribbean has been the result of coordinated advocacy by women’s organizations, principally in the 1980s and 1990s. Indigenous organizations have become essential sources for articulating social demands and for political organization, as evidenced in the advances of indigenous movements in the Andean nations in recent years and the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia. Nina Pacari Vega (2004), Ecuador’s first indigenous minister of foreign affairs, writes that social inclusion should be viewed from two perspectives: inclusion of the views of indigenous peoples in the national economic and political debate, and the social inclusion that indigenous authorities should exercise for their local societies by voicing their communities’ opinions and participating in local decision making. As Aggleton, Parker, and Maluwa (2004) found in studying civic organizations for persons with HIV/AIDS, participation within such organizations is essential to overcoming societal stigmas impeding self-identification with the disease. Advocacy flows from the self-identification and mutual support provided by participation within such civil organizations. Judith Morrison (2006) points to the example of Organización de Desarrollo Etnico Comunitario (ODECO), a Honduran nongovernmental organization comprised of indigenous and Afro-descendant groups that has increased these groups’ access to the president and high-level decision makers and has translated this greater access into greater influence in national policymaking. Ecuador offers a case in which years of organization by indigenous peoples followed by the organization of Afro-descendant groups has played a central role in that nation’s path towards social inclusion (see Box 14.4).

The political system has also had to adapt to the changing pattern of inclusion and exclusion by responding to, or at least dealing with, the demands of groups whose political identity does not arise from race or ethnicity, but rather from their lack of access to resources and employment. Social movements such as the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST) in Brazil or the piqueteros in Argentina interact with the political system in two important ways (see Chapter 9). First, with their practice of contentious politics they are able to nudge the political system towards taking action to distribute resources to their members. Second, the MST and the piqueteros themselves have been used by the government to channel resources (such as land titles or cash transfers) towards their members.

The policy advocacy role of civil organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean in particular has benefited greatly from international contacts and international networks; thus an advanced version of Figure 13.2 would include international dynamics as well. AfroamericaXXI and Mundo Afro function via partner organizations of Afro-descendants throughout Latin America and the Caribbean that build regional identity and support wider regional rights processes, such as the follow-up to the 2001 United Nations Conference to Combat Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, and the Regional UN Santiago Conference of Latin American and Caribbean representatives in 2000 that developed Latin American input and commitments to the Durban Conference. Romero Rodríguez, the founder of Mundo Afro, explains the international dynamic in the Afro-descendant community following the Santiago Conference:

Santiago forced Afro-descendents of the Americas to place their development within a regional perspective and to articulate the demands along with their sister communities. This created a new drive, in which these communities began to look at themselves in relation to the African Diaspora in the world. . . . Afro-descendents must generate proposals and present their perspective on development agendas in order to make the human rights debate more profound [in order to] prompt action and changes in attitudes on involvement by governments and their institutions. (quoted in Morrison, 2006: 222)

Political leadership can play a role as either a driver of or a brake to the inclusion dynamic. Authoritarian governments, in particular, may base their power and identity on highly institutionalized exclusion enforced through exclusionary laws and extralegally through violence. The South African political leadership, highly sheltered via institutionalized racism after 1948, severely repressed the active civic organization of black South Africans. Only after decades of civic organization and civil disobedience, and growing international isolation and sanctions, did the elite finally give way to the dismantlement of apartheid in 1990. Although such an agency was much sought after by Afro-Brazilians, it was the leadership of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva that eventually proved to be the catalyst in the creation of the Special Secretariat for the Promotion of Public Policies for Racial Equality (Secretaria Especial de Políticas de Promoção da Igualdade Racial, or SEPPIR), the national agency on race (see Box 14.2).

All three of the drivers discussed are simultaneously providing input into a nation’s inclusion process when it is in its fuller phase. In Latin America and the Caribbean today inclusion processes, or movements for the rights of key excluded populations, are front and center in the political life of several nations; in others an inclusion debate is barely perceptible. Possible explanations for these differences in timing and prominence include the following, many of which relate to the quality and nature of the societal “drivers”: political stability/political leadership, strength and presence of civil society organizations, strength and intensity of past repression/exclusion, and the dynamics of new forces of exclusion, such as violence and marginal work. Chile’s most recent innovations in social policy via Chile Solidario, investments in indigenous development, and policy attention to persons with disabilities can be partially attributed to the country’s political history and recent electoral (party) stability, which has avoided chronic political swings that politicize and undermine the effectiveness of government institutions and programs.

The Inclusion/Exclusion Dynamic: Making History

How does the interrelationship of civil and political society work in practice towards inclusion? While systematic study of inclusion in specific national contexts is scant, one can observe an identifiable interrelated process at work in periods of heightened historical social and political movements. In countries outside of the region, one can detect historical periods in which more intense reforms and programs were inaugurated in concentrated time frames, constituting important historical moments of change. Depending on the country, these higher-profile historical periods represent the confluence of socioeconomic pressures, institutional political change, and the growing visibility of social movements. Examples of such periods include postapartheid South Africa; the United States in the 1960s, with the civil rights movement, and in the early twentieth century, with the women’s suffrage movement; and Malaysia in the 1980s, with the country’s New Economic Policy. In these cases, one can clearly see the importance of the confluence of activated civil organizations drawing on political will or leadership (governmental) and propelled by socioeconomic changes that bring inclusion to the forefront as a national priority in key moments in a nation’s history. Within Latin America and the Caribbean, seeds of historical change may also be in process with the election of Bolivia’s first indigenous president in 2006 and the election of Lula in Brazil, who has put a new spotlight on the inclusion of Afro-Brazilians.

TOWARDS ADVANCING INCLUSIVE PUBLIC POLICY

As stated at the chapter’s outset, how public policy does, or more importantly, can work to advance inclusion is a vastly open field. Systematic review of policies and their impacts, and more importantly of the interactions among different policies (e.g., what changes trigger what other changes), is scant. Even affirmative action, the public policy most associated with addressing exclusion, has been subject to little systematic research in respect to Latin America and the Caribbean. Given the multidimensional nature of exclusion, it is widely agreed that to be effective, affirmative action must be part of a complementary “set” of proinclusion policies; yet the content and nature of this set of complementary policies is rarely spelled out or more importantly introduced along with a new affirmative action effort.

The review of exclusion and Latin American and Caribbean experience presented in this report points to some key conclusions to guide future public policy:

• The inclusion process is dynamic and interrelated; changes in one area (e.g., education, Chapter 2) are necessary, but are not sufficient, to bring about changes in another (e.g., labor markets, Chapter 5).

• Inclusion is not achieved at a single point in time, but is more realistically viewed as a spectrum of advances in a wide range of sectors at different points in time.

• Countries do not “arrive” at inclusion and remain fixed there. Countries can regress in some forms of exclusion and advance in others; individuals may experience discrimination based on their group affiliation in some areas and not others (Chapter 1).

• New groups and new forms of exclusion (e.g., exclusion as a result of violence, Chapter 10) likely need to be considered and addressed over time, as they arise, with the groups integrated and the new forms of exclusion remedied; this places the incorporation of rights frameworks at the center of institutionalizing inclusive societies (Chapter 1).

• Inclusion should change outcomes, but most importantly it should change how outcomes are achieved and how opportunities are made available in a society. Thus, central to inclusive public policy is changing the nature of participation and decision making, as well as the nature of political representation in democratic societies.

• Excluded groups can have different priorities in advancing towards inclusion, and the historical sequencing of these advances can differ from group to group.

The formulation and implementation of inclusive policies is a very complex process in which changes in norms, institutions, and policy are driven by the interplay of different social actors in a particular historical setting. This means that no “one size fits all” kind of prescription will be of much help to policymakers interested in advancing inclusion. History and the analysis of historical experiences of the process of inclusion are a better guide to the extent that they help us understand how different actors in different countries have interacted within different normative, institutional, and policy frameworks to achieve (or fail to achieve) a more inclusive society. This is the purpose of the next chapter.