Reshaping state-citizen relationships through donor-designed targeting systems in Lesotho and Malawi

Social and humanitarian cash transfers in sub-Saharan Africa are increasingly used to support a wide range of vulnerable populations with long-term support or immediate relief. Designing and implementing cash transfers typically involves a range of transnational actors and government stakeholders who continuously exert power which in turn affects state-citizen relations. The data informing this article come from 109 key informant interviews with (inter)national-level stakeholders involved in three social cash transfers and two humanitarian cash transfers in Lesotho and Malawi. This article argues that donor-designed targeting approaches in Lesotho and Malawi create space for new state-citizen relations, but that these are relatively shallow and reconfigured once technical capacity allows for targeting approaches that rely less on communities. It contributes to the literature on the role of transnational actors in social protection by showing that their role is significant when it comes to creating new redistributive relations, even if transnational actors are unable to convince host governments to take full fiscal responsibility for their initiatives due to differing views on who deserves what kind of support.