The book analyzes the different social policy models adopted in Latin America during the commodity boom of the 2000s. Departing from mainstream scholarship  on the Welfare State, which proposes a unidimensional vision focused on income redistribution, my study presents a multidimensional conceptualization of redistribution that contemplates the different tools that governments have at their disposal to forge coalitions with the popular sectors. My book focuses on two types of policies: those that redistribute income towards individuals from the popular sectors (formal and informal workers), and those that redistribute economic and political power towards their organizations (unions and social movements).

This reconceptualization reveals three models of redistribution in Latin America that combine redistribution of income and power in different ways. The Poverty Alleviation model (Brazil and Chile) only redistributes income and only to those individuals in the lowest deciles of the population, without empowering unions or social movements. Under Left Populism (Argentina and Venezuela), governments redistribute income to broader segments of the popular sectors, and they also redistribute economic power, but not political power. The most redistributive model is the Social Democratic model (Uruguay and Bolivia), which combines high income redistribution with political and economic empowerment towards social organizations.

The book develops an argument that I call the "weak left paradox" to explain this variation: Leftist presidents adopt more generous redistributive policies when they have low control over leftist parties and popular sector organizations. Greater redistribution allows presidents to forge coalitions with these actors in order to consolidate their leadership over the left. This argument challenges the existing literature, which argues that countries with electorally strong presidents and centralized left movements are more likely to adopt more ambitious redistributive policies. The evidence for this argument comes from two years of fieldwork in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, where I conducted archival research and 267 in-depth interviews with public officials, social leaders, businessmen, and party leaders. In addition, I created an original database on the career paths of more than 1,500 left-wing officials, trade unionists and legislators from 1990 to 2015. This empirical evidence and the combination of methods (process-tracing and statistical analysis) allow me to explain changes in three types of welfare policies: income support programs, labor-market regulations and pension policies. To show that my argument is generalizable beyond my three main cases, I extend my research to Chile, Venezuela, and Bolivia.