Uruguay in 2002 is in an economic crisis that hits the poorest sectors of the population hardest, motivating people to steal en masse. In the slums of Montevideo, large numbers of people began illegally tapping electricity while the state electricity company and government merely look on, explains Laura Seelkopf. This is just one case among many contained in the volume “Social Policy by Other Means,” co-edited by Laura Seelkopf, a political scientist at LMU. But can theft really be considered a social policy? For Seelkopf, the theft of electricity in Montevideo is a clear, if extreme, example of “social policy by other means.” As she explains, “In the context of a less developed country, this type of political decision – namely actively allowing the theft—can be better than doing nothing at all. Frequently, so-called developing countries fail to implement anti-cyclical social policy because during a crisis they lack the funds and even the possibility of lending money on the international credit market.” Permitting such things as the stealing of electricity by the poor is a thus a method born of necessity that supports the redistribution of resources.
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Source: Phys.org