Recalibrating global welfare regimes

Gough et al. (Reference Gough, Wood, Barrientos, Bevan, Room and Davis2004) aimed to provide an analytical framework for expanding and explaining welfare regimes outside of advanced capitalist countries, especially in situations where labour markets did not work pervasively as in OECD welfare states. They identified three analytical categories for the analysis of global welfare regimes: the OECD welfare state regime, as argued by Esping-Andersen (Reference Esping-Andersen1990), informal security regimes, and insecurity regimes. These classifications captured the institutional interplay between public, private, household, and community provision across different levels and spaces of governance. Over the years, there has been a key attempt to establish a set of criteria for determining the membership of a given welfare regime. However, reflecting on 15 years of research scholarship since the publication of the edited volume, there has been little agreement on the appropriate criteria for establishing these transitions, let alone the different methodological approaches for capturing them (for an overview, see Roumpakis, Reference Roumpakis2020a).

Schematically, the typology established by Gough et al. (Reference Gough, Wood, Barrientos, Bevan, Room and Davis2004) establishes a continuum, with the ‘welfare state regime’ as the most advanced form of social protection and the ‘insecurity welfare regime’ indicating the fragility of state interventions and even informal welfare at the other end. Crucially, this means that the middle transitional space is left to the informal welfare regime to occupy. It is perhaps not surprising that cases situated in that transitional space became the focus of attention of Wood and Gough (Reference Wood and Gough2006) in the same volume, as they identified the existence of different ‘species’ within the informal welfare regime category. These species were either trying to dynamically capture the transition of Latin American welfare regimes from conservative-informal to liberal-informal (see Barrientos, Reference Barrientos and Gough2004), while East-Asian welfare regimes were displaying productivist-informal characteristics, with Taiwan and South Korea displaying a dynamic towards a welfare state regime. Putting aside welfare regimes that displayed some weak or not fully developed welfare state regime properties, Gough identified two variations of informal security regimes that were firmly anchored in this category: ‘more’ or ‘less effective informal security’ regimes. More effective informal security regimes included countries with relatively good social outcomes but below-average public spending. Whereas countries that exhibited relatively poorer outcomes, fewer public commitments, and moderate international inflows of remittances formed ‘less effective informal security regimes’.

The studies on welfare regimes have so far lacked an understanding of how to capture the hybridisation of welfare regimes because most of these studies have strongly focused on state expenditure and social outcomes, with only a few incorporating transnational variables such as remittances, informal out-of-pocket payments, and quality of government and utilising aggregate data at the national or international level (Roumpakis, Reference Roumpakis2020a). This preference for formal social spending remains an essentially statist approach and misses out on the importance of informal arrangements that play a significant role in meeting the welfare needs of the poor and vulnerable in many parts of the world. Therefore, it is imperative to consider the role of informal and non-statutory provisions – which hitherto remained the focus of development studies – in analysing welfare regimes (Roumpakis & Sumarto, Reference Roumpakis and Sumarto2020). Furthermore, the role of informal and non-statutory provisions needs to be analysed not in isolation but in conjunction with statutory welfare measures (Sumarto, Reference Sumarto2017, Reference Sumarto2020; Roumpakis, Reference Roumpakis2020a; Mumtaz & Whiteford, Reference Mumtaz and Whiteford2021a; Mumtaz, Reference Mumtaz2023). This will enable a better understanding of the complexities of a given case, allow capturing the presence of various welfare regimes within a given context – hybridisation – bridge the gap between social policy with development studies, and offer a mutually beneficial and a more robust approach for the analysis of the welfare regime leading to better social policy measures for the welfare of the poor and vulnerable (Midgley, Reference Midgley, Midgley, Surrender and Alfers2019).

We acknowledge that identifying cases as ‘hybrids’ reflects both comparative methodological tools (including new comparative empirical evidence) and analytical approaches (including new conceptualisations). In this article, we are unable to fully explore this comparative dimension and instead prefer to emphasise the importance of informed and in-depth case analysis. Therefore, this study provides empirical insights into this under-researched area and presents a novel methodology for analysing welfare regimes based on the availability, access, interaction, and usefulness of formal and informal welfare arrangements available to households and their social outcomes in a single country. To this end, we adopt an inductive approach aimed at identifying diverse welfare arrangements – formal and informal – and their interactions that contribute to the presence of different welfare regimes – hybridisation – in a single country context. Instead of attempting to unravel and explain the path trajectory of a given welfare regime (see Choi, Reference Choi2012, for East Asia and Sumarto, Reference Sumarto2017, Reference Sumarto2020, for Southeast Asia), we aim to capture the empirical reality at a specific point in time.

This study is ground-breaking research on several fronts. Firstly, it provides a unique methodology for data collection based on multistage sampling that enables the determination of different welfare arrangements available to households. This original methodology provides a new technique for capturing the hybridisation of welfare regimes in a single country or across countries by considering the mix of formal and informal welfare available to households. Secondly, the study demonstrates that the analytical focus on informal relationships should not be limited to welfare regimes in the Global South but can also be used for the analysis of welfare states in the Global North, especially those regimes that rely heavily on informal provisions (e.g. South European, Latin American). Thirdly, the study offers original and important findings on the effectiveness, ineffectiveness, and interaction of formal and informal welfare, which can be used to build effective social protection policies. Lastly, the study used a novel machine learning (ML) algorithm to explore the collection of data to form clusters that contribute to methodological innovation in the literature on social policy data analysis.

It is also important to note that the study is not able to capture temporal transition as the empirical evidence were collected at a single point in time. Neither are we able to address within this article why social provision is constructed in this particular way. We are aware that the analysis focuses largely on outcomes – this is not deviating from the extensive global welfare regime literature. Our methodological application is not aiming to discount the importance of additional variables (e.g. spending) but identify an effective way of determining membership within empirically complex cases that are often considered within the global welfare regime literature, analytically as hybrids.

Hybridisation in welfare regime analysis

The concepts of ‘hybrid’ and ‘hybridisation’ have been widely applied in the discussion of welfare regimes in the Global South over the last two decades. The concepts were highly developed after the publication of Esping-Andersen’s seminal work ‘The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism’, particularly after Esping-Andersen responded to criticisms of his work on the classification of Japan’s welfare regime. In response to the criticisms, Esping-Andersen (Reference Esping-Andersen1997) argues that Japan’s welfare regime combines key characteristics of liberal-residual and conservative-corporatist regimes, depicting a hybrid regime. In the analysis of welfare regimes in the Global South, terms such as ‘informal security’ and ‘liberal informal’ in an influential work by Gough et al. (Reference Gough, Wood, Barrientos, Bevan, Room and Davis2004) reflect the concept of ‘hybrid’ welfare regimes. Since then, scholars (e.g. Abu-Sharkh & Gough, Reference Abu Sharkh and Gough2010; Aspalter, Reference Aspalter2011; Choi, 2013; Sumarto, Reference Sumarto2020; Yang, Reference Yang2017) have considerably used hybridisation to analyse the characteristics of welfare regimes.

In the development of welfare regimes in the Global South, Wood and Gough (Reference Wood and Gough2006) argued that countries could combine elements of three types of welfare regimes: informal security, insecurity, or a welfare state regime, within a single social formation where a country’s population can experience different regimes. Some people might be successfully incorporated into state protection, while others rely on community and family arrangements or are dependent upon highly personalised politico-military patrons, indicating the presence of a hybrid welfare regime in a country. However, their analytical categorisations were based on the major primary welfare regime out of these three regime groups and did not fully represent the complexities of welfare provisioning in each country (Wood & Gough, Reference Wood and Gough2006; Mumtaz, Reference Mumtaz2022). It must be noted that the community was considered an important factor in the welfare mix of the Global South, as de-commodifying agents (Papadopoulos & Roumpakis, Reference Papadopoulos and Roumpakis2017). Therefore, its role must be fully explored along with the state, market, and family to capture the hybridisation of the welfare regime and de-commodification of labour within a country at a given point in time. As will be made clear by the following discussion, this remains a major methodological challenge in the literature.

The idea of welfare regimes has led to numerous studies aiming to classify countries into welfare regimes and hybrids. However, such studies have relied on aggregate government spending data and have not considered households’ formal and informal welfare mix. For instance, Abu Sharkh and Gough (Reference Abu Sharkh and Gough2010) employed hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and K-means cluster analysis (KCA) to identify three distinct types of welfare regimes across 65 developing non-OECD countries using aggregate country-level World Bank data on government expenditures and revenues, immunisation rates, school enrolment of females, and levels of aid, and remittances for two points in time (2000, 2010) to identify whether there had been a change in the welfare regime. Choi (Reference Choi2012), in his study of three East Asian welfare regimes, used government documents, reports, and statistics to analyse how far these regimes have transitioned from their productivist legacy. Kuypers (Reference Kuypers2014) used aggregate data on the legislation of social protection, government expenditure, decommodification data (pensions, unemployment, sickness), and government spending on education, work, and income protection of five East and five Southeast Asian and six Latin American countries to demonstrate that the dissimilarities within the East Asian region are minor compared to the differences concerning the traditional and other emerging welfare regimes. Yang and Kühner (Reference Yang and Kühner2020) used data on government spending, generosity and coverage rates and argued that no specific prediction could be made about the future of productivist regimes in East Asia because of the diversity within and across East Asian welfare regimes. Mkandawire (Reference Mkandawire2020) identifies three types of welfare regimes in thirty-five African countries using cluster analysis based on aggregate welfare outcomes, forms of welfare arrangement, and institutional variables. Clement (Reference Clement2020) uses country-level aggregate data of public and private expenditure on education and health, international aid receipts, international remittances, civil society strength, literacy and poverty levels, and life expectancy to measure welfare outcomes.

Kuitto (Reference Kuitto2016) conducted a comparative statistical analysis of Central and Eastern European post-communist welfare states across three welfare dimensions – financing, targeting cash, and decommodifying potential – based on aggregate government spending data and found hybrid patterns of welfare policies in post-communist countries. Bertin and Pantalone (Reference Bertin and Pantalone2018) analysed local welfare policies in 20 Italian regions using aggregate government data from 2005 and 2010 concerning two areas of government intervention: social care and healthcare policies. They concluded that the Italian welfare system is a hybrid that is differentiated across regions and policies. Cox (Reference Cox2018) located their study in the context of the debate around Esping-Andersen’s ideal types of welfare state regimes and argued that the existence of a bifurcated welfare state – one for insiders who have access to welfare statutory provisions and one for outsiders who rely on social assistance and mainly informal arrangements – offers a means of understanding the key features of hybrid welfare states in East Central Europe. However, they did not present any methodology to do so. Shizume et al. (Reference Shizume, Kato and Matsuda2021) argued that the Japanese welfare system is evolving and is not a hybrid that shares aspects with the conservative welfare regime. Bertin et al. (Reference Bertin, Carrino and Pantalone2021) identified welfare typologies in twelve European countries focusing on government spending in healthcare and social care. They argued that healthcare and social care policies are characterised by the coexistence and overlap of multiple regimes, i.e., hybridisation.

It is observed from the above discussion that the majority of welfare regime literature on classification and hybridisation used aggregate data at the country level and limited welfare outcomes. This focus on aggregate government data did not adequately capture the welfare mix available to households, which is central to identifying welfare regime development or change, hybridisation, and de-commodifying labour (Gough et al., Reference Gough, Wood, Barrientos, Bevan, Room and Davis2004). In addition, this focus on national-level aggregate outcomes cannot capture various forms of formal and informal welfare arrangements, vulnerabilities, deprivations, inequalities, and social outcomes at the household level (Giraudy & Pribble, Reference Giraudy and Pribble2019). This inadequate focus can be attributed to the fact that in the global south countries, there is a lack of valid and reliable household data on formal and informal welfare sources (Abu Sharkh & Gough, Reference Abu Sharkh and Gough2010). This lack of focus will not enable an accurate capture of hybridisation or regime change within a country, as different regimes may follow different trajectories, leading to possible ‘tipping points’ between regime types. Therefore, there is a need for, and importance of, identifying the welfare mix that involves a complex combination of public welfare provision and informal collective welfare provided by the family and community, on which a large population is dependent in many developing and less developed countries (Papadopoulos & Roumpakis, Reference Papadopoulos and Roumpakis2017; Leyer, Reference Leyer2020). As argued by Roumpakis (Reference Roumpakis2020a), examining the relations of dependence and the importance of informal and non-statutory provisions of welfare would assist in better understanding the development of global welfare regimes. In the following section, we use the case study of Pakistan to present a novel methodology for examining the welfare mix available to households to capture the hybridisation of welfare regime at one point in time.

Welfare regime and social protection development – a case study of Pakistan

Pakistan has been identified as a country that fulfills the criteria for being part of a less effective informal security regime in two studies. Firstly, in an aggregate study of over fifty countries, Wood and Gough (Reference Wood and Gough2006) categorised Pakistan as a less effective informal security regime using variables such as low Human Development Index (HDI), international flows, and public spending. Secondly, Abu Sharkh and Gough (Reference Abu Sharkh and Gough2010) that analysed the transition of global south countries using the variable of levels of public spending, social outputs, and external flows of aid, placed Pakistan in clusters representing features of low-performing informal security regimes. Both studies however, had limitations as the variables used were limited to formal sources and did not include formal social protection benefits and informal statutory provisions, including family and community networks, which are essential components of global welfare regime theory. Abu Sharkh and Gough (Reference Abu Sharkh and Gough2010) acknowledged that a lack of data on formal and informal welfare arrangements constrained their study. This categorisation of a less effective informal security regime has implications because Pakistan represents features of a hybrid welfare regime, where informal relations largely decommodify labour and fulfill the welfare needs of a large population. Additionally, large formal social security benefits are utilised by the formal sector, while some populations in pockets of the country experience conflict and depend on highly personalised politico-militia patrons due to the breakdown of any form of social protection in such areas. Therefore, the classification of Pakistan as a less effective informal security regime underestimates the complexity of its welfare regime.

Pakistan’s development of welfare policies, particularly in social protection distribution, took place during British colonialism. The colonial bureaucracy exerted significant influence on policymaking and enjoyed favourable welfare benefits, including pensions, while social policies for the general population received minimal attention. Following independence in 1947, Pakistan confronted considerable challenges in the realms of humanitarian, political, and economic affairs lead to a high demand for economic development (Bashir, Reference Bashir, Sabharwal and Berman2013). During the late 1950s and the 1960s, the focus shifted towards economic growth, while social development received less attention.

An important element of welfare policy development arose in 1971, when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s socialist democratic government introduced social protection programs, which included the Employee Social Security Scheme, Workers’ Children Education Ordinance, Workers Welfare Fund Scheme, and the Federal Employees Old Age Benefits Institution, benefiting public sector employees. However, they excluded a significant labour force working in the informal sector, which accounts for 67% of the total workforce (Hassan & Syeda, Reference Hassan and Syeda2019). Bhutto’s social protection policy was discontinued and replaced by welfare policy introduced by Zia-ul-Haq (1978–1988) that happened after General Zia-ul-Haq executed Bhutto and implemented the Zakat and Ushr Ordinance, aiming to assist marginalized segments in the informal sector. These programs faced criticism for limited coverage and low transfers, and little impact on social development. Additionally, General Zia-ul-Haq, influenced by international aid organizations, pursued neoliberal structural adjustment programs, aligning Pakistan as a significant US ally during the Soviet-Afghan war (Abbasi, Reference Abbasi2021). In 1989 to 1999, Pakistan experienced democratic governments, which continued to embrace neoliberal governance principles. The predominant emphasis on neoliberal policies resulted in a lack of focus on social protection policies, particularly those targeting the informal sector. In 1999–2007, General Pervez Musharraf’s dictatorial regime pursued neoliberal economic reforms with a focus on ‘good governance’ and high GDP growth (Jadoon & Jabeen, Reference Jadoon and Jabeen2017). However, poverty and inequality continued to rise during this period.

Another significant welfare development was the introduction of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) that was established in the same year as financial support from international institutions such as the World Bank, USAID, DFID, and ADB, to provide social safety nets for vulnerable population (Mumtaz & Whiteford, Reference Mumtaz and Whiteford2017). This happened after the government of Pakistan endorsed the publication of the World Bank’s report (2013) on social protection mechanisms in Pakistan and introduced an inaugural Social Protection Strategy. Despite the implementation of the social protection strategy however, expenditure on BISP has consistently remained below 0.2% of GDP, and overall spending on social protection programs has not exceeded 1.9% of GDP to date. This leaves a meagre 9.2% of the population covered by at least one social protection benefit, representing one of the lowest rates in the region (Mumtaz, Reference Mumtaz2022). Notably, the most significant allocation of social protection benefits in Pakistan is directed toward the public pension system, benefiting retired formal public sector employees (Ministry of Finance, 2021). These privileged groups receive also comprehensive in-service benefits. In contrast, only 1.1% of GDP expenditure is allocated to the 65% of Pakistan’s workforce engaged in the informal sector, caused them to depend on informal welfare arrangements (Jabbar & Iqbal, Reference Jabbar and Iqbal2021). Furthermore, conflict-ridden regions, such as former areas of FATA and Baluchistan, lack access to any form of formal or informal social protection (Mumtaz, Reference Mumtaz2022). This prevalence of social welfare benefits favouring the public sector arises from the consolidation of authority within the influential civil-military bureaucratic elite, as asserted by Cohen (Reference Cohen2004), who contend that policymaking in Pakistan has persistently been under the sway of potent civil-military and political elites, prioritising their own well-being over the welfare of the impoverished.

Given the above discussion on Pakistan’s welfare regime and social protection policy development, it is essential to recognise and capture the presence of a hybrid welfare arrangements in a developing country like Pakistan. To enable us to engage directly with the global welfare regime literature, we will rely on classifications developed by Gough et al. (Reference Gough, Wood, Barrientos, Bevan, Room and Davis2004). This effort will help identify the populations in need of welfare interventions, the nature of such interventions by the state, and the sectors requiring reduction or elimination of state social protection interventions.

Research design and methods

It is important to clarify that the purpose of this study is not to identify the variable(s) responsible for regime development/formation. Rather, the study aims to identify different regimes co-existing at a single point in time. Yorük et al. (Reference Yörük, Öker, Yıldırım and Yakut-Çakar2019) argued for combining social protection expenditure variables to capture the diversity of welfare arrangements globally and establish an analytical and empirical level playing field for capturing the diversity of both Global North and South countries. This research goes one step further and aims to analyse the hybridisation of Pakistan’s welfare regime by using a novel data collection methodology based on the formal and informal welfare mix available to households and the extent to which such a welfare mix decommodified labour and contributed to social outcomes. To this end, we employed a mixed-methods approach, that combined quantitative and qualitative primary data collection, including surveys and semi-structured interviews. The semi-structured interviews triangulated the survey data to provide robust data and in-depth analysis. The survey questionnaires, along with the semi-structured interviews, contained variables that provided a comprehensive picture of the welfare mix available, accessible, and utilised by households and such welfare mechanisms’ ability to decommodify labour and impact social outcomes.

In the survey, we developed a questionnaire that generated over 300 variables. The household survey questionnaire consisted of three main parts. The first part contained questions designed to capture households’ socioeconomic conditions, risks, and shocks, as well as the means available to them to manage such risks and shocks. The second part aimed to capture the accessibility and usefulness of the formal social protection programs received by the households. This part of the survey included questions about households’ knowledge, accessibility, and usefulness of every formal/public welfare program in Pakistan, such as public programs of Zakat/Bait-ul-mal, BISP, retirement pensions (public and private), free public education, free technical education received from a government vocational training institute, free health treatment from a government dispensary or hospital, health insurance (Sehat card), youth loans, and free food and shelter programs. The survey’s last part required households to provide information about various sources of informal welfare available to them, as well as the extent to which they considered such sources useful. These informal welfare mechanisms included extended family, friends or community, employer, landlord, remittances sent by immediate family members from overseas, religious organisations, and local and international NGOs.

This survey was conducted among households across fourteen cities in Pakistan using a multistage sampling methodology. The households were selected based on their records in religious institutions (madrassas), which were chosen for several reasons: a) madrassas are prevalent across the country; b) they are one of the largest providers of informal welfare in Pakistan; c) mostly poor and vulnerable households send their children to madrassas, although in some cases, middle- and upper-middle-class families send their children to madrassas to attain religious education only, which demonstrates the diversity in their coverage; and d) madrassas contain records of the families who sent their children to these institutions (Mumtaz, Reference Mumtaz2022).

The multistage sampling comprised four stages. In the first stage, all cities in Pakistan were divided into ten clusters based on the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), ^{Footnote 2} as follows: cluster 1 included cities with an MPI of 1–10; cluster 2 included cities with an MPI of 11–20; cluster 3 included cities with an MPI of 21–30; and so on. Cluster 81-90 was not chosen for sampling because the objective was to conduct fieldwork in conflict-affected tribal areas, aiming to understand the characteristics of households and welfare outcomes in regions with similarities to insecurity regimes. The MPI survey was not conducted in these tribal areas. Moreover, the cities within this cluster 81-90 exhibit similar characteristics to those in Cluster 91-100, where extreme poverty and the prevalence of diseases and illnesses was common. As a result, only one city was surveyed from Cluster 91-100, representing shared features of these two clusters. In the second stage, one or two cities were randomly selected from every cluster for the survey, and a total of fourteen cities were randomly selected from remaining nine clusters. The selection of cities from each cluster was based on their population and geographical area. If a city with a large population and area was selected during the random selection process, then only one city was chosen from that cluster. One city, ‘Bajor’, was selected from conflict-affected tribal areas where an MPI survey had not been conducted, and one randomly selected city, ‘Upper Dir’, had experienced conflict in the recent past. In the third stage, from each city, a total of five to eight madrassas were randomly selected from the list of madrassas obtained from the city administration. In the fourth stage, the list of households that sent their children to madrassas was obtained from each madrassa. From that list, eight to ten households were randomly selected, and the primary researcher distributed a total of 660 survey questionnaires, of which 560 households returned the survey.

The quantitative data collection method described above was followed by the qualitative one i.e. for the semi-structured interviews. In the qualitative data collection approach, we selected research participants for semi-structured interviews who were different from those who participated in the survey, but they were identified through the same multistage probability sampling method. A total of 103 households were approached for interviews, out of which 90 households agreed to participate in semi-structured interviews across fourteen cities, enabling us to triangulate the survey data. The high response rate of interviews (87%) and surveys (85%) is attributed to the employment of strategies such as assistance from local sources and help from district administration. Approval was obtained from the University Ethics Committee to conduct the fieldwork. The multistage sampling method enabled us to obtain a representative sample of the population to capture the hybridisation of Pakistan’s welfare regime.

Cluster1 – Potential welfare state regime

Of the households surveyed, 8.24% were classified within cluster1 – Potential welfare state regime. Most of the households in this cluster belonged to low MPI cities in Pakistan, i.e., wealthy urban areas. This cluster exhibited the features of a ‘potential welfare state regime’, characterizsed by formal employment, high income, better health, and education outcomes. Many households in this cluster were not eligible to receive benefits from formal social protection programs. One participant from Lahore, for instance, stated:

Because these households had ample resources, savings, high-income formal sector employment or business, and access to quality health and education services provided by the state, they did not rely on informal welfare mechanisms during times of crisis. One participant remarked:

The results indicated that the state’s role was well established in offering comprehensive social protection in this cluster, and the cluster’s population was receiving considerable welfare benefits mainly because of formal public-sector employment. A majority of this population resided in wealthy urban areas of the country and had access to quality health and education services, which contributed to positive social outcomes and successful decommodification of labour (Table 1).

Cluster2 – More effective informal security regime

Of the households surveyed, 16.7% comprised Cluster2, which exhibited the features of a ‘more effective informal security regime’ and had relatively good outcomes from low state social spending levels. A complementary mix of formal and informal welfare contributed to better outcomes in this cluster. Nearly 70% of the households in this cluster resided in urban areas of the country, and the incidence of formal employment was relatively higher than in Cluster3 – Less effective informal security regime, and Cluster4 – Insecurity regime. Chronic disease prevalence was uncommon, and no household had ever experienced conflict, indicating a reduced level of insecurity. However, some households faced shocks such as unemployment and illness during their life course (Table 1). To manage such shocks, several households did not require any assistance. In contrast, a lower percentage of households relied on formal and informal welfare mechanisms to manage the shocks they faced. This indicates that households in Cluster2 – More effective informal security regime, faced insecurities, but to a lesser scale than those in Cluster3 – Less effective informal security regime. They had access to a welfare mix of formal and informal sources to effectively manage the shocks they had faced. People employed in the informal sector, including overseas employment, earned a substantial income that complemented formal sources of income contributing to better social outcomes. As one participant explained,

Another participant narrated,

These results show that a complementary mix of formal and informal welfare in Cluster2 – More effective informal security regime, effectively countered the challenges of maintaining well-being, administered the risks and shocks faced by households, and decommodified labour to a large extent.

Cluster3 – Less effective informal security regime

Of the total households surveyed, the majority (68.4%) belonged to Cluster3 – Less effective informal security regime, with most residing in rural areas. This cluster exhibited characteristics of a ‘less effective informal security regime’, with inadequate schooling, a high prevalence of disease/illness, predominantly low-income informal sector employment, and insufficient social protection to manage risks and shocks (Table 1). Furthermore, many households experienced conflict and natural disasters that exacerbated their insecurities. The most common forms of employment in this cluster were low-paid, uninsured, informal sector jobs, including street vendors or hawkers, and some incidence of child labor. Living conditions were poor, with a strong prevalence of unhygienic and crowded living arrangements. As one participant noted:

The coverage and income support of formal social protection were insufficient in this cluster, but most households received informal welfare through various sources, as explained by one participant:

Another interviewee stated:

This discussion highlights that Cluster3 exhibited characteristics of a less effective informal security regime, where people relied mainly on informal relationships to meet their security needs and did not receive adequate support from formal state welfare services. Such measures produced low social outcomes and did not effectively commodify labour.

Cluster4 – Insecurity regime

Cluster4 exhibited features of an ‘insecurity regime’, with approximately 7% of the total surveyed households comprising this cluster. Most households in this cluster resided in rural areas with high MPI cities. The population in this cluster had a high prevalence of chronic diseases, inadequate education, high levels of poverty, and few or no employment opportunities (Table 1). This situation was further exacerbated by tribal and military conflicts and natural disasters, which generated extreme forms of suffering for most households, as narrated by some participants in the study. For example:

Another participant explained,

The discussion has shown that Cluster4 exhibited features of an insecurity regime, where households faced gross insecurities due to disasters, conflict, and unstable economies, causing persistent insecurity for them. Such a situation constrained the possibility of even informal welfare, resulting in persistent insecurity for populations in this cluster.

Implications, discussion, and conclusion

This article highlights the importance of taking a comprehensive approach to analysing welfare regimes by considering the intricacies of social policy and its implementation. Through an innovative methodology presented in the study that establishes clear criteria for identifying welfare regime membership, we can better understand how welfare regimes develop and what factors contribute to their classification. The clusters identified remain located within the global welfare regime literature and typologies – what this method enables is to capture how the arrangements on the ground, and their lived experiences, relate to existing welfare regime typologies. This understanding can help inform policy decisions and contribute to the development of more effective welfare systems that can cater to the diverse needs of populations.

First and foremost, this article aims to address how to best capture and analyse hybrid cases; cases that do not fully satisfy the properties of a given analytical category (in this case global welfare regime typology) but instead reflect a combination of characteristics of different categories. We argue that what is essentially presented as an analytical problem of classification or transitioning can also be, in fact, a methodological one. Given the lack of agreement in the dependent variable and the various methodological approaches for capturing welfare regime classification, the methodological approach presented in the study enables us to both identify the existence of multiple welfare regimes within a single case and equally determine the most populous cluster within a single case.

By applying this novel technique in a single case study, we are able to demonstrate the different variants of welfare support in place in Pakistan. They can confidently determine that its properties best resemble a ‘less secure informal regime’ given that it is by far the most populous cluster.Footnote ³ It remains crucial, however, to highlight that other than answering this problem of hybridisation, this method is highlighting that we cannot ignore the sufferings and hardships of the population who are faced with such a violent crisis daily. Nor can we ignore how the elites are able to purchase the highest quality of services available in the global private market, thereby sidestepping the public sector in schooling, medical care, safety, and security. All of these key findings are essential both for policymakers in devising their policy interventions and for enriching the understanding of scholars interested in social policy and development studies.

An important finding of the study relates to the geographical location and welfare outcomes in Pakistan. The results highlight that urbanised areas with low MPI tend to have a majority of households benefiting from a potential welfare state and a more effective informal security regime. Conversely, rural areas within cities are associated with a prevalence of less effective informal security regimes, while tribal areas exhibit higher levels of insecurity regimes. However, it is important to note that households experiencing less effective insecurity regimes or potential welfare state are not exclusively limited to rural or urban areas respectively; they can also be found in urban areas, although less frequently indicating the connection between geography and welfare regimes. One potential policy implication is that governments should prioritise social protection interventions in underdeveloped areas, as they are more likely to face socio-economic deprivations.

Gough et al. (Reference Gough, Wood, Barrientos, Bevan, Room and Davis2004) opened the way for researchers to explore the interplay between statutory and informal provisions. The ‘global welfare modelling business’ did not develop an agreement on the dependent variable or appropriate methods for capturing categorisations or transitions, let alone how to explain hybrid cases. Shifting the level of analysis to households, even within a single case, enables us first to gain a better insight into the empirical reality as it is experienced at the micro level and also adopt a more in-depth understanding of the cultural, economic, and social dynamics for welfare regime development. By paying attention to how non-statutory provisions, including family and community relationships, interact with and are often conditioned by statutory (or lack of thereof) provisions, this methodology offers the next step in identifying the particularities of each welfare regime. It represents one of the first attempts to empirically capture how households are receiving welfare provision and, more importantly, how institutional arrangements are captured on the ground, not simply by macro or meso level variables. The methodology presented in the paper can be used as a heuristic tool mainly in welfare regimes where the level of informal provision is extensive so that researchers and policymakers capture formal and informal welfare’s role and its impact on livelihood outcomes, considering the presence of informal support networks though on a smaller scale in high-income countries.

The study offered a unique methodology of data collection based on multistage sampling that enabled the determination of different welfare arrangements available to households. This data was explored using a novel machine learning (ML) algorithm to form clusters contributing to methodological innovation in social policy data analysis literature. This original methodology provided a new technique to capture the hybridisation of welfare regime(s) based on outcomes in a single or across countries by considering the welfare mixes – formal and informal social protection – available to households. However, one major limitation of using such an approach is that it cannot capture the benefits enjoyed by the richest elite in a country.

The study presented original findings on the effectiveness and ineffectiveness, as well as the interaction of formal and informal welfare, highlighting the more effective informal security regimes that can be used to build effective social protection policies. This research methodology has the potential to set a new research agenda as the way institutional arrangements and informal provisions interact with each other at the household level remains subject to change. The study does not claim that Pakistan will not effectively shift to a more effective informal welfare regime, but rather suggests that identifying future paths is a task for future empirical research. The article has not opted to explore the political strategies employed, by successive governments, in reproducing the complex relationship between social policy and democratic governance (Schneider & Ingram, Reference Schneider and Ingram1993) but exposing these inequalities should be a sufficient requirement for future scholarship to engage with.