Dismantling social protection in times of crisis and austerity

Times of crisis and governments of the right and extreme-right wings have spread across the world. In many countries, recent experience is one of austerity and the dismantling of welfare regimes. The objective of this panel is to analyze recent processes of dismantling social protection policies in developing countries to understand its characteristics, drivers and consequences. In general, the concepts of dismantling social policy, specially, dismantling welfare regimes include reforms, cutbacks, (de)regulation, and efforts to contain and reduce social expenditures, whether through welfare retrenchment or policy dismantling. Several closely related concepts are used to express a multifaceted phenomenon. It is very useful to understand the various dimensions of this phenomenon. We argue that the term “policy dismantling” can include all these analytical categories. They should be used to internally disentangle the phenomenon.