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This paper questions the intuitive assumption that twentieth‐century public welfare states have reflected the wider culture in which they operate. It is argued that the postwar welfare state was a "modernist" project designed to change mass culture. As a result, social policy analysis has tended to ignore the wider culture as both a source and context for welfare. At the beginning of the twenty‐first century new patterns of risk and postmodern cultural formations are supporting eclectic policy‐making which is more in tune with cultural majorities. This signals the end of the systematic welfare state.

THIS ARTICLE DEVELOPS AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK DESIGNED TO EXAMINE SOCIAL POLICY AS A STRATEGIC APPROACH TO ISSUES OF STATE-SOCIETY RELATIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNANCE IN LATIN AMERICA. IT ARGUES THAT IN LATIN AMERICA AND PARTICULARLY BRAZIL SOCIAL PROTECTION POLICY FLOWED FROM INITIATING CAPACITY CONCENTRATED ORIGINALLY IN THE STATE, AND SPECIFICALLY IN A TECHNOBUREAUCRATIC ELITE CONNECTED TO A STRONG EXECUTIVE. THE POLICY, HOWEVER, PRODUCED STRUCTURES WHEREIN INITIATIVE CAPACITY WAS DISPERSED INTO A MULTIPLE OF INTERMEDIATE POINTS AT THE NEXUS BETWEEN THE STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY. THIS IN TURN LED TO AN IMMOBILIZED DISSIPATION OF INITIATIVE CAPACITY IN THIS SPECIFIC POLICY AREA WHICH WAS SYMPTOMATIC OF, AND REINFORCING TO, A GENERALIZED IMMOBILISM OR POWER IMPLOSION THAT PERIODICALLY HAS GRIPPED THESE SOCIOPOLITICAL FORMATIONS, PRODUCING SHIFTS FROM FORMALLY DEMOCRATIC TO AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES AND VICE VERSE.

This article analyses the social costs of Mozambique's Economic Recovery Programme, sponsored by the World Bank and introduced in 1987. The programme has had some success in arresting economic decline, though not as fast as anticipated. However, social differentiation has increased, with traders, large farmers, corrupt state and military officials and private entrepreneurs gaining from the changes, while women, children and the poor in particular are finding their standards of living dropping sharply with devastating consequences for their health and nutritional status. The article uses the findings of research studies and interviews with urban dwellers on the issues of food supply, education and health to support this analysis. The loss to the IMF and the World Bank of Mozambican control over economic policy, the increase in human suffering with its potential for social and political breakdown, and the appropriateness of the programme in conditions of war, are the three central issues which have to be faced by proponents of this kind of adjustment.