Current trends, persistent challenges, and emerging opportunities of social policy implementation in Latin America and Southern Europe

Abstract Implementation represents the most crucial step in the policy process; it is at this stage where the hardest battles for policy success are fought. Implementation is also the most complex of the policy cycle stages, with the largest amount of resources and highest number of actors involved in it. In the realm of social policy, outputs and outcomes determined during the implementation stage have a direct impact on the welfare of the population. However, in both political and academic domains, the analysis of implementation activities commonly receives less attention than the other stages. This article seeks to address this gap by reviewing and comparing relevant issues of social policy implementation in Latin America and Southern Europe, regions that share similar historical and political legacies. Research on these two regions enables the identification of many critical obstacles that social policy implementation faces today in these and other contexts and of opportunities for its improvement.