Aspectos políticos de la dependencia financiera en los municipios mexicanos1

Specialized literature has analyzed the impact of changes to fiscal institutions such as The National System of Fiscal Coordination (1980) and the constitutional reforms of article 115 (1983 and 1999) on the degree of financial dependence of local (municipal) governments and the governmental functioning. Political environment as well, affects to an important extent such functioning. Indeed, previous studies in the field of political economy point to the effects of political environment and fiscal institutions -such as public spending and debt- on national and sub-national governments. Based on four variables -political affiliation of the mayor, political affiliation of the governor, composition of local congresses and celebration of local elections-, the authors build indicators of “political confluence” at the municipal level. They study the effect that the degree of political unification at the municipal level has on the financial dependence with respect to the State government, and also to the local Congress. In their analysis, the authors also consider the political affiliation of the mayor and the local electoral cycle. Through its analytical focus and main empirical findings, this article contributes to broadening the scope of empirical studies of municipal financial dependence. Simultaneously, it adds to existing literature in the field of political economy that accounts for public finances at the sub-national level     

Municipal Democratisation in Rural Latin America: Methodological Insights from Ecuador

As municipal governments in Latin America acquire greater responsibility for public goods and services and the promotion of economic and social development, and play a greater role in local citizenship, questions about the quality of municipal democracy also need to be taken much more seriously. This article proposes a 'relative power approach' that examines the distribution of social power at the microregional level and its impact on municipal governance as the starting point for the analysis of municipal democratisation in Latin America. The approach lays particular emphasis on historical changes in the distribution of local productive assets, the political organisation of local social actors, coalitions between and divisions within local social sectors and the ways in which local power relations are shaped by global and national forces. The article then explores the practical application of the relative power approach to three municipalities in rural Ecuador.     

‘Municipal entrepreneurs’: local politicians and the delivery of urban sanitation in Kumasi,Ghana

ABSTRACT

The municipal government in Kumasi has been the focus of numerous reforms to improve local policymaking and delivery of public goods to the city’s dwellers. Yet, the reforms have spurred strategic reactions from local actors who exploit institutional ambiguities to pursue their interests. This paper draws on empirical data on the city’s sanitation franchising to show how ordinary local politicians exploit reform ambiguities; they establish themselves as local entrepreneurs to deliver urban sanitation services and also contest the municipal executive. The manipulations do not only undermine reforms proffered by the regime and external actors but the municipal government’s promise to deliver efficient public services also becomes problematic. Management of urban sanitation is a contested arena between bureaucrats and political actors all vying for their interests. The sanitation reforms are eventually subsumed under the ‘local politics as usual’ logic.     

The Economy of China

Evidence suggests that following liberalisation reforms in India, public sector contributions to social development projects responsible for public goods allocation and the provision of services have receded in favour of an enlarged role for private sector initiatives, particularly through public-private partnerships. As part of a “good governance” agenda, the state is embracing such partnerships, modelled on information communication technology (ICT), within a wider development strategy (ICTD) to improve goods allocation and government's image as a trustworthy agent. This has also coincided with a changing political economy that has granted greater authority to more localised units of government over economic and developmental processes. This paper examines a case study of Urban e-Seva, an ICTD public-private partnership in Hyderabad, and couches it in a larger examination of contemporary social development in India. The paper concludes that government needs to be embedded in public-private partnerships, that it must continue to be at the forefront of allocation strategies in general, and that globalisation is strongly shaped by public institutions operating at the sub-national level. Furthermore, reforms are needed to correct for globalisation and liberalisation's inabilities to foster proper social development in India.     

Municipalisation in Australia: The Case of Launceston 1880–1914

This article expands upon the crucial role of the state in the provision of infrastructure in late‐nineteenth century Australia by examining the hitherto overlooked role of local government, and in particular, the provision of municipal services in Launceston, Tasmania's second largest city. From the 1890s, socialist groups across Europe actively sought to control councils, believing “good” local government the key to social reform. Municipalisation in Tasmania had more pragmatic origins. Colonial governments encouraged local‐level service provision to prevent the draining of their own finances. In Launceston an ideological element occasionally surfaced. But municipalisation was driven by resentment of a neglectful Tasmanian government, by the desire to modernise the town, by intent to secure new sources of revenue, and by the strong civic pride of businessmen.     

Why No Mayan Party? Indigenous Movements and National Politics in Guatemala

Unlike indigenous social movements in several other Latin American countries, Mayan movements in Guatemala have not formed a viable indigenous‐based political party. Despite the prominence of the Mayan social movement and a relatively open institutional environment conducive to party formation, indigenous groups have foregone a national political party in favor of a more dispersed pattern of political mobilization at the local level. This article argues that the availability of avenues for political representation at the municipal level, through both traditional political parties and civic committees, and the effects of political repression and violence have reinforced the fragmentation and localism of indigenous social movements in Guatemala and prevented the emergence of a viable Mayan political party. The result has been a pattern of uneven political representation, with indigenous Guatemalans gaining representation in local government while national political institutions remain exclusionary.     

Centre–Periphery Relations and the Emergence of a Public Sphere in Saudi Arabia: The Municipal Elections in the Eastern Province, 1954–1960

This article examines the introduction of municipal elections in Saudi Arabia during the reign of King Sa?ud. The elections from 1954 to the early 1960s constituted important political arenas that have hitherto been overlooked in scholarship on Saudi Arabia. Grievances and political aspirations of the Saudi population were publicly voiced during these elections, which coincided with an emerging radical press and a labour movement at the ARAMCO oil company. Though these elections were limited in scope, marred by procedural flaws and ultimately failed on the institutional level, they nevertheless had a lasting impact on people in the Eastern Province―especially the Shia― and their subsequent political mobilisation outside state structures. As such the municipal elections represent a failed attempt to co-opt local elites and to broaden the popular base of the centre in the periphery. The failure of the municipal elections contributed to the tense relationship between the Saudi centre and the peripheries, which culminated in the 1979 uprising in the Eastern Province.     

From Machine Politics to the Politics of Technocracy: Charting Changes in Governance in the Mexican Municipality1

Abstract — A typology comprising technocratic rationality versus political partisanship helps to identify several local government structures found in contemporary Mexico: political machines; autonomous-indigenous; technocratic; and modernising party governments. Case study research in over a dozen municipalities for three principal parties suggest a trend towards increasing technocratic and more administratively efficient municipal government and changing patterns of partisanship. This arises from new pressures associated with electoral opening, political alternation, new government actors, growing urban development complexity, and from federal reforms offering greater local government autonomy. However, while improved administration and technocratic governance often leads to positive outcomes, they do not necessarily imply ‘good government’.     

The PDS in Western Germany: An Empirical Study of PDS Local Politicians

Even though its leadership continues to insist that the PDS is a national party of the left, it is de facto an eastern German regional party. In the last several years, however, the PDS has found some measure of success at the local level in western Germany, where it now claims over 100 seats in local parliaments. Emboldened by this success, party leaders have suggested that the PDS-West is gradually 'putting down roots' in the old states of Germany, thus increasing the party's electoral chances there. This article, based on an empirical study carried out from September 2000 to March 2001, looks at the experiences of the PDS at the local level in western Germany. It finds that although many of the problems identified by scholars as standing in the way of PDS electoral success in the West are very much in evidence at the local level as well, the party has nevertheless made enormous strides in gaining political expertise, developing partnerships with local groups, and, in general, becoming more attractive to voters. Whether the PDS can translate these positive experiences above and beyond the local level remains open to debate. Nevertheless the opportunity is there.     

Local democracy in a hybrid state: pluralism and protest in Volzhskiy,Russia

The standard narrative of Russia's “authoritarian backsliding” fails to grapple with the tremendous variation in subnational politics that emerged over the past two decades. This article offers a case study of the industrial city of Volzhskiy, which, although once a stalwart supporter of the Communist Party (KPRF), has evolved into a highly pluralistic system with democratic municipal institutions. Drawing upon analysis of local publications, protest data, and interviews with local politicians, this article traces the interplay of formal institutions and informal political processes in Volzhskiy's local-level transition to democracy. Volzhskiy's pluralism and local democratic outcome can largely be explained by (1) the emergence of a more diverse set of economic and political interests and constituencies, and (2) a KPRF organization that was strong and provided robust competition that created the conditions for cooperation among the competitors to form fair and open local political institutions, which fostered the city's pluralism.     

Governance from Below in Bolivia: A Theory of Local Government with Two Empirical Tests

This article examines decentralization through the lens of the local dynamics it unleashed in the much‐noted case of Bolivia. It argues that the national effects of decentralization are largely the sum of its local‐level effects. To understand decentralization, therefore, we must first understand how local government works. The article explores the deep economic and institutional determinants of government quality in two extremes of municipal performance. From this it derives a model of local government responsiveness as the product of political openness and substantive competition. The quality of local politics, in turn, emerges endogenously as the joint product of the lobbying and political engagement of local firms and interests and the organizational density and ability of civil society. The analysis tests the theory's predictions on a database containing all Bolivian municipalities. The theory proves robust. The combined methodology provides a higher‐order empirical rigor than either approach can alone.     

(Un?)Healthy Politics: The Political Determinants of Subnational Health Systems in Brazil

How does political competition shape institutions that govern the expansion of social policy subnationally? Brazilian states have shown a surprising variation in the design of their public health institutions, which regulate the distribution of health resources and citizen access to public health care. While many states have experienced fragmentation, some have remained highly centralized and discretionary, and only a select few have established a coordinated system based on power sharing and rules‐based distribution. Accounts that link public health care expansion to federal government imposition, the presence of the public health care movement, and leftist parties cannot fully explain this variation. Instead, in the three Brazilian states examined here, the nature of subnational political competition triggered different institution‐building strategies. The findings indicate that plural political competition yielded incentives for limiting state‐level discretion and for sharing power with municipal governments, while political concentration reinforced the attraction to centralized and discretionary policymaking.     

Bringing the Citizen Back In: Democratic Dimensions of Local Reforms in Germany and Japan

Since the 1990s, local governments in many countries have responded to the crisis of public finances, legitimacy, and a low level of performance with a combination of territorial and functional reforms, and the introduction of management and political reforms. This article focuses on the latter by analyzing new modes of citizen participation in Germany and Japan. It will employ theoretical assumptions from the local governance debate in order to explore the democratic dimensions of local government reforms. The question considered is concerned with the political context for new modes of participation and whether they can offer opportunities for an improvement of local democracy in terms of an increase in legitimacy and political capacity building for citizens. The conclusion will be reached that while we would expect more favorable preconditions in Germany with regard to a positive impact on local democracy, the opposite is the case: a relatively weak tradition of local autonomy and low resources of civil society actors in Japan explains their focus on co-production of services with local governments but at the same time offers greater opportunities for an improvement in local democracy.     

Education Funding in a Recentralizing Democracy: A Cautionary Tale of Four Brazilian Cities

The administration of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso enacted measures to constrain subnational politicians in a newly democratized and highly decentralized federal system. Lacking sufficient accountability at the subnational level, the central government attempted to increase its control of educational funding and minimize local discretion over educational spending. These reforms constrained the distribution of intergovernmental transfers, but entrusted the disbursement of educational spending to local oversight. This article argues that while the constraints protected the federal treasury from predatory practices, the local oversight did not protect educational spending from mayoral discretion. This argument is based on an analysis of initial reform implementation in four municipal school systems. The mayors responded to the federal initiatives in a variety of ways, but these were based on the requirements of their own political survival. The four cases thereby become studies in how one effort to recentralize democracy is working in Brazil.     

Culturing identities,the state,and national consciousness in late nineteenth‐century western Guatemala1⋆

This paper examines the procedural culture that shaped ethnic and national identities in late nineteenth‐century western Guatemala. Rooted in face‐to‐face encounters between departmental jefes políticos (departmental governors) and local Maya communities, this procedural culture emerged from routines of governance such as annual municipal inspections, ethnic struggles for municipal control, and local efforts to title community lands that led Maya and state officials to develop contrasting understandings of each other and their relations. Far from precipitating a national identity of mutual belonging, state formation here intensified the racism and political violence that would rend Guatemala during the century to come.     

La vie à l'assemblée,angle mort de la science politique française

Legislative studies are an important branch of political science in the United States and most European countries, but French scholars, during the past twenty years, have somewhat neglected the analysis of parliamentary behaviour. This research note argues that this low interest in the life of national and local assemblies can be explained by the conjunction of two factors: on the one hand, the weakness of parliamentary intervention in France, which results from the increasing importance of the executive branch, at the expenses of assemblies, in the formulation of public policy; on the other, the emancipation of political science from law as well as its openness to the sociological approach during the 1980s and 1990s.     

Transparency and Political Budget Cycles at municipal level

We analyze the effect of municipal financial transparency on the magnitude of political budget cycles. Our sample covers the Spanish largest municipalities in the period 1999‐2009. While the impact of transparency on the electoral cycle has been studied at the international and regional level, there is no empirical evidence of its effect at the local level. Using the financial transparency index made by Transparency International Spain, we show that municipalities with lower levels of financial transparency present an electoral cycle in total spending, whereas such an electoral impact on total spending does not appear in high transparent municipalities. Furthermore, the magnitude of cycles in capital spending and taxes does not vary among low‐transparency municipalities and high‐transparency municipalities.     

‘The association that dissociates’ – narratives of local political resistance in Kosovo and the delayed implementation of the Brussels Agreement

ABSTRACT

The existing literature on the EU’s transformative role in the Balkans looks at EU conditionality as a unidirectional system of rewards that is expected to motivate local elites to comply with EU rules. This article raises a different question: how do local actors bypass the implementation phase of EU conditionality and what kind of political resistance narratives do they use for this purpose? The analysis attempts to tackle these inter-related questions by focusing on the delayed implementation of the Brussels Agreement between Belgrade and Pristina as a case study, using the interpretive method of narrative analysis. The article aims to link fieldwork empirics with theoretical discussions in the field of EU compliance literature by stressing the importance of local actors’ resistance to EU incentives. Three levels of analysis will be conducted in order to address the research question: (1) mapping different types of actors at the local level and stressing their heterogeneity; (2) understanding how local resistance to EU pressure evolved in the period 2013–2016; and (3) showing how their policy narratives influenced the implementation phase and the maintenance of the status quo. In conclusion, the analysis shows that the EU’s mediation strategy of ‘constructive ambiguity’ favours local actors’ political resistance, particularly in the implementation phase. The main findings show that ‘dividers’ outnumber ‘connectors’ in local actors’ narratives, thus strengthening political resistance to EU pressure.     

Petitioning,addressing and the historical imagination: the case of Great Yarmouth,England 1658–1784

ABSTRACT

This article examines the role of loyal addresses, petition-like texts that emerged during the Cromwellian Protectorate in England, as repositories of public memory. It contends that loyal addresses were a particularly mnemonic form of political communication: not only did addresses themselves incorporate historical narratives but their reproduction in contemporary newsbooks facilitated their later collection in compendia and histories of addressing. These volumes in turn gave an overall ‘sense’ or character to public opinion nationally and allowed its shifts to be charted over time. The article uses the case study of an address to Richard Cromwell issued in 1658 from the corporation of Great Yarmouth to demonstrate how this text was redeployed to wage a political campaign against leading magistrates in the town in the 1670s. The address gained renewed political significance in the late eighteenth century, as the interplay of local political and historical interests made its depiction of the influence of religious factions in the borough once again relevant. This local memory in turn fed upon a wider national use of the Cromwellian addresses as an example of political faithlessness and duplicity. Combined, these local and national discussions demonstrated the importance of addresses in defining public opinion and political identity over time.     

The Debate on the Crucifix in Public Spaces in Twenty-First Century Italy

Although the presence of the crucifix in public classrooms and other public offices is an ancient Italian tradition, it was never a political issue until recent times. In the early 2000s, some court cases and other events (first at the national and later also at the European level) turned the public display of the crucifix into a major issue in the national political debate. This article analyses the frames used by social and political actors in the different phases of this debate, in order to understand its evolution and its connection to the broader discussion on values in the public sphere developed in Italy in recent times.