Think Tanks and Poverty in Latin America: Role of the Thinkers in the Market of Social Policies in Argentina, Chile and Mexico

The high levels of poverty and inequity that affect a large portion of Latin American population are among the main issues that the region faces. According to CEPAL, 36,5% of the population of the region (194 million) is below the poverty line, while 13,4% (71 million) is below the extreme poverty line. Even though this issue has been present in the public policy agenda for a long time, it is in the last decades that the repeated socio economic crisis that affected the region has significantly increased the concern for this theme. Without doubt, the quest of solutions for such a wide and complex matter -as the lack of resources and opportunities of a great portion of the population- requires a significant effort, not only from governments and public bureaucracies, but also from a wider range of actors that can participate and offer alternatives to face and gradually solve the problem. The premise is that analyzing and better understanding the role and interests of all actors involved in the social public policy process leads to a-better understanding the results obtained with such policies. Taking this into account, the objective of this paper is to make a first approach in the analysis of the means and levels of involvement of think tanks and individual Experts in the area -specialists, academics, or professional researchers- in the different stages of social policy making in Latin America. Particularly, for this work, the field of study has been limited to one specific area of social policy: poverty reduction. Within this scope of study, the analysis focuses on three important poverty reduction programs by direct and conditioned transfers: Progresa-Oportunidades (Mexico), the Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados (Argentina), and Chile Solidario (Chile), which illustrate the workings of most of these type of program in the region. While the involvement of think tanks and experts in social policy presents multiple possible dimensions for study, this document focuses specially on the inner workings of the different social policy process stages. To accomplish the objective, this article is structured in four sections. Section I describes the theoretical framework of this paper and explains the main concepts used. Section II analyzes the three cases selected, while the main findings are detailed in Section III. Lastly, Section IV presents the conclusions of the research.