ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the interaction between social policy innovations, understood as a type of institutional change, and the resource boom in Bolivia during 2003–2014. It is argued that this boom depended on institutional reforms enacted during the 1990s. During the next decade, it enabled the successive governments to build a social protection system reflecting the increased government revenues. The Bolivian social protection system is based in a series of conditional cash transfer programs (CCT). The institutional drivers for this specific type of social policy innovation in Bolivia were mixed: first, there has been a strong regional influence in terms of social protection policies based on rigorous evaluations of programs implemented in other countries (particularly in Brazil and Mexico), but they also were endogenously driven by the resource boom due to their discovery and subsequent rise in commodity prices. The importance of these social protection innovations in overcoming the high poverty and inequality rates present in the country is undeniable. However, I argue that challenges persist related to the financial sustainability of the social protection system in Bolivia that could endanger the funding of the system. By linking the different cash transfers to the volatile global prices of oil and gas, an element of instability is introduced in the system which might limit the effects of the social protection system in the future, by restricting its capacity to provide support to those most in need.
