Talk abstract: 

Expanded social programs in Global South democracies fail to reach many people who are eligible for them. We develop a new concept – state-centric persistence – which calls attention to the importance of demand-side dynamics in explaining these gaps in access.

Drawing on original focus groups in Brazil and Argentina, we illustrate the importance of state-centric persistence and develop an attitudinal theory of individual variation in persistence. Analyzing original survey data from Brazil and Argentina, we show how entitlement, indignation, and self-efficacy can help explain variation in state-centric persistence.

We connect existing literatures on claim-making in the Global South and administrative burden in the Global North. The research contributes to a growing understanding of the decline in the relevance of clientelism for accessing social programs and offers an alternative, individual-level theory of access.

The talk will be moderated by Professor Austin Strange, Master of International and Public Affairs (MIPA) program director.

About the speaker

Matthew S. Winters is a professor in the Department of Political Science and director of the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Illinois.  He studies foreign aid, development, and political behavior and has conducted field work in countries including Indonesia, Mali, and Brazil. He has published over 40 articles in leading political science and development studies journals. Winters received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University.  He held a Council on Foreign Relations – Hitachi International Affairs Fellowship in Japan in 2016 and a Fulbright – University of Birmingham Distinguished Scholar Award in 2023-2024.