Abstract

Universalism has been at the centre of international and national debates throughout the twenty-first century. Such debates are especially meaningful and challenging in the developing world, where social policies never reached some groups of the population. Nevertheless, the expression universalism can be ambiguous and governments can address it through different rationales and, therefore, different social policy paradigms. From a social rights based approach, universalism is closely related to the degree in which social policies can reach the whole population and provide the protection people need independently of their position in the society and previous performance. Thus, universalism implies the decommodification and defamililisation in the access to essential social services and, hence, specific arrangements in the mechanisms involved in the social production of welfare, namely the welfare regime. Based on a comparative policy analysis, the paper aims at discussing the extent to which recent social policy reforms developed in Chile and Mexico, stated by governments as addressing the universalisation of essential social services, have advanced towards higher levels of decommodification and defamililisation of social welfare. Chile and Mexico are well-consolidated democracies, with markedly liberal economies and members of the OECD that throughout the twenty-first century have pioneered the introduction of innovative social policies in Latin America (e.g. Ingreso Ético Familiar, AUGE-GES and Pensión Básica Solidaria in Chile and Prospera, Seguro Popular and non-contributory pensions for elderly people in Mexico). Nevertheless, these two countries also are between the most unequal in Latin America and in the world, which in turns is expressed in the capacity of different segments of the population to access quality social services and cope with social risks. Specifically, the paper interrogates the main health care and pension reforms developed in Chile and Mexico so far in the twenty-first century, namely the AUGE-GES Plan and Pensión Básica Solidaria in Chile and the Seguro Popular and non-contributory old-age pension reform in Mexico. The paper illuminates the different paths followed by the reforms and their key challenges, expanding our knowledge on their achievements, shortcomings and limitations. Drawing on this analysis, the paper argues that the analysed reforms show uneven degrees of success in terms of decommodification and defamililisation. Such differences are strongly related to the policy paradigm that bases the design of each reform, which emerges from the conceptualisation of the problem of universalism. Thus, although these reforms have succeeded in the expansion of coverage of health care and old-age pensions, it has not necessarily meant progress in universal access independently of the households´ ability to pay and provide family support for their members. A number of gaps in the comprehensiveness and adequacy of services and the opportunity of access illustrate the still prominent role that families have to manage social risks either through their relationship with the market or informal support strategies.