Description
The relationship between social welfare and peace is complex, bidirectional, and sometimes contradictory. On the one hand, social welfare programmes may improve state legitimacy, enhance social cohesion, or reduce horizontal inequalities, all of which may in turn reduce the likelihood of conflict. On the other hand, armed conflict or other forms of societal violence are likely to undermine social welfare and social protection systems, making them more politicised and undermining their effectiveness by eroding public trust and state capacity, reducing available financing for social welfare, or by increasing the extent of external engagement. In conflict settings, elites are more likely to establish social welfare schemes in ways that benefit their own social group, a dynamic which can exacerbate conflict. Inadequate services may generate conflict in the form of violent or non-violent protests. Conversely, wars may create moments of opportunity where new rules of the political game can be established, when public expectations about the role of the state change, and where political leaders have space to make radical changes to the social contract.
In this paper, we show that the bi-directional relationship between social welfare provision and conflict have been connected in existing work by four main mechanisms (state and non-state legitimacy, social cohesion, horizontal inequalities, and economic development), which in turn are shaped by two further factors (the design of the social welfare programme, and the underlying political settlement). We advocate a more contextualised approach and illustrate the potential of this approach by exploring the relationship in the MENA region, drawing on comparative research in Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon. Our analysis demonstrates the limitations of Weberian approaches to the state, emphasising how in many MENA countries, states rest on transactional models of governance based around clientelism and authoritarian bargains, which heavily condition the relationship between social welfare and conflict.
