Decentralization And Subnational Politics In Latin America

Is it always true that decentralization reforms put more power in the hands of governors and mayors? In post-developmental Latin America, the surprising answer to this question is no. In fact, a variety of outcomes are possible, depending largely on who initiates the reforms, how they are initiated, and in what order they are introduced. Tulia G. Falleti draws on extensive fieldwork, in-depth interviews, archival records, and quantitative data to explain the trajectories of decentralization processes and their markedly different outcomes in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. In her analysis, she develops a sequential theory and method that are successful in explaining this counterintuitive result. Her research contributes to the literature on path dependence and institutional evolution and will be of interest to scholars of decentralization, federalism, subnational politics, intergovernmental relations, and Latin American politics.

Tulia G. Falleti explains the different trajectories of decentralization processes in post-developmental Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, and why their outcomes diverged so markedly.

This book explores how vertical inter-governmental political and fiscal bargains and horizontal variation in political, social and economic conditions across regions contribute to or undermine the provision of inclusive and sustainable social policies at the subnational level in Latin America and India. The question of how to advance universal social rights while reducing territorial inequalities has been a central dilemma for Latin America and India. After several decades of ambitious decentralization reforms in both regions, the balance between local accountability versus centralized planning remains a theoretical and empirical problem in need of systematic exploration. The chapters in this volume incorporate both federal and decentralized unitary states, pointing to common political tensions across unitary and federal settings despite the typically greater institutionalization of regional autonomy in federal countries. The contributors examine the territorial dimension of universalism and explore, in greater and empirical detail, the causal links between fiscal transfers, social policies and outcomes, and highlight the political dynamics that shape fiscal decentralization reforms and the welfare state. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Regional & Federal Studies.

Around the world, familiar ideological conflicts over the market are becoming increasingly territorialized in the form of policy conflicts between national and subnational governments. Thanks to a series of trends like globalization, democratization, and especially decentralization, subnational governments are now in a position to more effectively challenge the ideological orientation of the national government. The book conceptualizes these challenges as operating in two related but distinct modes. The first stems from elected subnational officials who use their authority, resources, and legitimacy to design, implement, and defend subnational policy regimes that deviate ideologically from national policy regimes. The second occurs when these same officials use their authority, resources, and legitimacy to question, oppose, and alter the ideological content of national policy regimes. The book focuses on three similarly-situated countries in Latin America where these two types of policy challenges met different fates; neither challenge succeeded in Peru, both succeeded in Bolivia, and Ecuador experienced an intermediate outcome marked by the success of the first type of challenge (i.e. the defence of a deviant, neoliberal subnational policy regime) and the failure of the second (i.e. the inability to alter a statist national policy regime). Derived from the in-depth study of these countries, the book's theoretical argument emphasizes three critical variables: 1) the structural significance of the territory over which subnational elected officials preside, 2) the level of institutional capacity they can harness, and 3) the strength of the societal coalitions they can build both within and across subnational jurisdictions. Transformations in Governance is a major new academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states up to supranational institutions, down to subnational governments, and side-ways to public-private networks. It brings together work that significantly advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series targets mainly single-authored or co-authored work, but it is pluralistic in terms of disciplinary specialization, research design, method, and geographical scope. Case studies as well as comparative studies, historical as well as contemporary studies, and studies with a national, regional, or international focus are all central to its aims. Authors use qualitative, quantitative, formal modeling, or mixed methods. A trade mark of the books is that they combine scholarly rigour with readable prose and an attractive production style. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.

This publication examines the various innovative projects on-going in Latin America, where fledging and developing local government policies are being introduced for reforming and improving services for the local communities whom they serve. The emergence of decentralised democracies in this region of the world offers may new challenges, that are dependent on building communities open to enterprise and innovation. Among such innovations are popular participation, service delivery, privatization and personnel management. Case studies of such developments are documented in this publication. For outside agencies and countries providing donor finance to this region, a greater awareness is required of the local policies that are being implemented. The World Bank recommends a process of participation in public choice, and a fostering of greater co-operation at a local level.

This book analyzes the reasons for lackluster performance selected Latin American countries in mobilizing subnational own-source revenues and explores policy options to increase these revenues as efficiently and equitably as possible. Seven case studies--Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela--span a wide range of characteristics, including federal and unitary countries, different geographical sizes, levels of economic development, and degrees of revenue decentralization. In this book, subnational governments include both intermediate and local levels of government, which are distinguished in the case studies. Together, the case studies provide a reasonably representative picture of the challenges faced throughout Latin America in mobilizing subnational own-source revenues in a manner that supports equitable growth.

A recent wave of decentralization in Latin America has increased the prominence of politicians at the subnational level. Politics Beyond the Capital is the first book to place this trend in comparative historical perspective, examining past episodes of decentralization alongside contemporary ones to determine whether consistent causal factors are at play. At the center of the book is the rigorous testing of two key hypotheses that attribute decentralization to liberalizing changes in political regime type and economic development strategy. The book focuses on the four Latin American countries where politicians have most extensively engaged in the redesign of subnational institutions: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. By reframing the "politics of decentralization" as the "politics of designing subnational institutions," the book moves beyond the policy orientation of much of the current literature, and broadens the debate by analyzing not just decentralization but re-centralization as well.

Social policies can transform the lives of the poor, yet subnational politics and state capacity often inhibit their success.