In this new version of the database we have included pilot social assistance programmes. A number of pilot cash transfer programmes have been introduced in Latin America, Asia and Africa in the last year or so, and a few more are in the design stage. Their scale and rationale suggest there is a good chance they will be scaled up in the near future. In theory, pilot social protection programmes should imply experimentation in the face of uncertainty regarding the way forward, but several of the pilots covered in the database, and many of those in the pipeline, represent instead a specific route to the extension of social protection, and as such they merit discussion. The main purpose of this brief note is to provide such discussion, and illuminate on this specific mode of development of social protection in developing countries. In Sub-Saharan Africa, there are pilot cash transfers schemes in place in Kenya, Malawi, Ghana and Zambia; and in the implementation stage in Nigeria, Liberia, Uganda, and Tanzania. In Latin America, pilot programmes have been rolled out in Paraguay, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Argentina, and the Dominican Republic. In South Asia, ’s Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction - Targeting the Ultra Poor programme is in fact a pilot programme, as as is Pakistan’s Child Support programme. Why the high number of pilots? In the context of technocratic models of policy making, pilot programmes would make a great deal of sense if policy makers are uncertain of the feasibility and likely impact effectiveness of interventions. Before introducing innovative, complex, and costly interventions, sensible policy makers would recommend testing the interventions in a small scale experiment. Knowledge from the delivery and impact of the interventions could then inform the desirability and design of a scaled up programme. There is a sense in which the social protection pilot programmes referred to above, and described in the database, do not fit fully into this description. We have accumulated a large ...
