The Politics of Non-state Social Welfare

This volume brings together a multidisciplinary group of contributors who use survey data analysis, spatial analysis, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic and archival research to explore the fundamental transformation of the relationship between states and citizens.

Melani Cammett is Associate Professor of Political Science at Brown University. She is the author of Compassionate Communalism: Welfare and Sectarianism in Lebanon, also from Cornell and Globalization and Business Politics in Arab North Africa. Lauren M. MacLean is Associate Professor of Political Science at Indiana University and the author of Informal Institutions and Citizenship in Rural Africa.

The Politics of Non-state Social Welfare begins to fill a major gap in the welfare literature. Almost all of the previous literature on welfare provision in developing countries has focused on relations between citizens and the state. This book offers the first comprehensive examination of how citizens and states are affected by the growth of NGOs, sectarian organizations, informal brokers, and other types of non-state actors. The authors of the case study chapters offer in-depth accounts of such providers, drawing on extensive fieldwork. In introductory and concluding chapters, Melani Cammett and Lauren M. MacLean elaborate and assess a series of carefully nuanced propositions about variations in the inclusiveness, accountability, and sustainability of the services provided by non-state actors and the conditions in which they complement or undermine the role of the state.