Exploring Power Elites' Agreement on Public Policy to Reduce Poverty in Argentina

GHILARDI, LUCÍA; BELÉN CAÑADAS; BASTIAS FRANCO

Haifa

Workshop; The 3rd Annual Haifa International Social Science Workshops for Graduate Students ?Beyond the ivory tower: bridging between science and society?; 2021

University of Haifa

Poverty is one of the most relevant global problems and the strategies to face it are a subject of great debate in societies. In academia, a large part of the antecedents on the subject tends to study poverty analyzing the negative consequences of this situation on physical and psychological health. However, empirical studies that study poverty from the perspective of those groups that are in strategic places in social and political decision-making are not so common. Thus, this work aims to describe and understand the attitudes of power elites of the province of San Juan (Argentina) on different types of public policies and on certain social rights that the State must guarantee. Likewise, it seeks to analyze the agreement between the sectors studied. For this, an interdisciplinary team was formed with researchers and professionals from different areas of specialization, such as social psychology, political science, education, social work and law. An online survey was conducted with 121 people with hierarchical positions in the executive, legislative and judicial powers, leaders of companies, NGOs, syndicates, religious institutions and educational institutions in the mentioned Argentine province. The survey includes questions about the agreement with public policies that attempt to guarantee access to social rights, such as housing and decent employment, safe food, health, education, access to basic services, connectivity and the environment. For the design of the survey at least two public policies referring to each social right were selected. For each public policy, the level of support with it, the agreement with the use of taxes to finance it, and the aspects in which this policy could improve were evaluated. Subsequently, the respondents were asked to order the social rights according to their priority. This was proposed based on the allocation of a fictitious budget and with the slogan of distributing it among the seven social rights considered. The partial results indicate that the different sectors prefer policies related with the rights of Education, Health, Labor and Social Security; while the politics related to rights of housing, food, basic services, environment and connectivity would be further relegated. On the other hand, the policies with the least support were those referring to direct monetary transfers, such as those that have as receiver people economically affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (emergency family income, feed card) and a policy that implies a transfer monthly money for each child in the household for education and health expenses (Universal allowance per child). Further analysis shows that support for these three policies in particular is negatively associated with the belief that they promote State´s dependency and that the government uses them for electoral purposes. The results of this research can be a useful contribution to understand not only the differences between power elites on beliefs about inequality, poverty and public policies, but also to sustain intersectoral dialogues based on agreements, in order to join forces in the fight against poverty.