Emerging social assistance regimes in middle income countries: Turkey in comparative perspective

Countries in the global South have expanded social security significantly since the late 1990s. What kind of social security are they heading for? Are they following models from the global North, or are genuinely Southern models building up? Focussing on middle income countries (MIC) and on the last safety net, social assistance, the article investigates the social assistance regime that has emerged in Turkey and situates the Turkish case in the broader context of the global South and North. We draw on Turkish policy documents and on partially self-constructed quantitative data on the global South and North. While most MIC have adopted social assistance programmes, which are a Northern model, we find that the institutional design, the objectives, the institutionalisation, and the scale of social assistance differ fundamentally from European models. The case of Turkey confirms this finding, and also exemplifies the formative influence of international organisations on MIC. While some distinctive features may indicate deficiencies of ‘Southern’ social assistance, others may be seen as appropriate adaptations of a Northern model to development contexts.