Relational Well-Being in Policy Implementation in Mexico

This book provides key insights into the nature of officer–recipient relationships and shows how they have non-negligible impacts on the way recipients feel and think about themselves and their lives using mixed methods and subjective and psychosocial well-being approaches. The importance of placing well-being at the heart of policy is widely accepted. Yet, it is far less clear how this can be translated into practice. Discussion has tended to focus on the outcomes of policy and particularly on the metrics to assess well-being. While these are important debates, they can obscure an equally vital dimension: the processes of policies and the effect that implementation can have on the experiences – and ultimately well-being outcomes – of the recipients. This is the subject matter of this book. By taking the world-renowned case of the Oportunidades-Prospera conditional cash transfer programme in Mexico, it provides an in-depth account of interactions between officers and recipients and how these influenced programme delivery and well-being outcomes. It particularly scrutinizes the implementation of the health conditionalities of Oportunidades-Prospera by physicians working in the health clinics of rural and indigenous localities.

Viviana Ramírez is Associate Professor in International Relations and Political Science at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Mexico. She specializes in well-being, policy implementation and conditional cash transfers and has written various articles and book chapters on these topics. She has been Research Fellow at the Centre of Development Studies at the University of Bath and in the Centre for Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK. She has also collaborated in research projects and with international organizations applying a well-being approach in countries including Bangladesh, India and Mexico.