Over the past 15 years, Cambodia has made significant strides in expanding effective access to free healthcare for poor people, thanks largely to ‘Health Equity Funds' (HEFs), a multi-stakeholder health-financing mechanism. HEF operators have helped expand access, incentivise health staff, and...

The proliferation of social cash transfers (SCTs) across much of Africa has resulted from interactions between international organisations – including both UN and related organisations, the donor agencies of governments in the global North, and international non-government organisations –...

The rise of the social protection agenda in Zambia over the past few years seems in some ways to fit with mainstream accounts of how welfare states are likely to emerge in developing countries, particularly in terms of the links to elections and pro-poor political parties. However, we...

This paper explores the evolution of the business–government dimensions of South Africa’s democratic political settlement. It details how and why market-based reforms were embraced by both political and economic actors in the 1990s as part of a broader commitment to a rule-bound political...