Dilemmas and Horizontal Logics: Subnational Industrial Policy in Spain and Brazil

Scholars of "decentralization" have recently revealed the importance of subnational industrial policy in responding to the challenges of globalization. But these treatments tend to make endemic assumptions about either the universal efficiency or inefficiency of decentralization. This article argues that subnational industrial policy performance is politically contingent and develops national patterns that are more composite than endemic. Political contingency is analyzed in terms of subnational incumbents'incentives to delegate authority and resources to industrial policy agencies and the degree of symmetry in authority and information flows across these agencies. A cross-regional/cross-national comparison of several subnational units in Spain and Brazil demonstrates that subnational industrial policy is implemented and maintained where incumbents delegate and policy-making agencies are symmetrically integrated.     

Presidential succession,economic crisis,and populist resurgence in Brazil

Latin American populism has been characterized as a time-bound phenomenon, part of the political revolution against the old agricultural oligarchy and accompanying import-substitution industrialization. It has been asserted that populism died with the “exhaustion” of the “easy phase” of import-substitution, and that bureaucratic authoritarian regimes were predicated on that demise. Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Peru are regularly cited as evidence. This article examines these definitional premises in light of the apparent resurgence of populist politics in the democratic transition in Brazil. It is argued that populism is not a pre-1964 anachronism, but is predictably appealing in the 1980s. Distinctions among populistappeals, contention for power, andsuccessful populist order suggest that populism and its leaders offer a very limited alternative to the future of Brazilian politics. Gamaliel Perruci, Jr., a native Brazilian, is a doctoral student in political science at the University of Florida. He is currently conducting research on Brazilian industrial and trade policy. Steven E. Sanderson is professor of political science at the University of Florida. His most recent book isThe Transformation of Mexican Agriculture: International Structure and the Politics of Rural Change (Princeton University Press, 1986). He is currently completing a book entitledThe Politics of Trade in Latin American Development.     

Scaling Down: The Subnational Comparative Method

Subnational units of analysis play an increasingly important role in comparative politics. Although many recent studies of topics such as ethnic conflict, economic policy reform, and democratization rely on comparisons across subnational political units, insufficient attention has been devoted to the methodological issues that arise in the comparative analysis of these units. To help fill this gap, this article explores how subnational comparisons can expand and strengthen the methodological repertoire available to social science researchers. First, because a focus on subnational units is an important tool for increasing the number of observations and for making controlled comparisons, it helps mitigate some of the characteristic limitations of a small-N research design. Second, a focus on subnational units strengthens the capacity of comparativists to accurately code cases and thus make valid causal inferences. Finally, subnational comparisons better equip researchers to handle the spatially uneven nature of major processes of political and economic transformation. Richard Snyder is assistant professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author ofPolitics after Neoliberalism (2001). His articles on regime change and the political economy of development have appeared inWorld Politics, Comparative Politics, Journal of Democracy, andBritish Journal of Political Science. I appreciate helpful comments on this material from Nancy Bermeo, Dexter Boniface, David Collier, John Gerring, Edward Gibson, Robert Kaufman, Juan Linz, James Mahoney, Kelly McMann, Gerardo Munck, Peter Nardulli, David Samuels, Judith Tendler, and two anonymous reviewers. I also benefited greatly from the insightful comments on an earlier draft provided by the participants in the conference on “Regimes and Political Change in Latin America,” held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in August 1999.     

Liberalization and ethnic conflict in Latin America

Most contemporary analysts explain ethnic identity as a socially rooted phenomenon which can be catalyzed by changes in both economic and political conditions. Taking the 1982 debt crisis as a main triggering event, this article analyzes the relationship between economic adjustment and increasing levels of indigenous mobilization in Latin America. Through a comparison of the Bolivian, Peruvian, and Mexican cases,the analysis reveals wide variation in the types and levels of ethnic conflict in the region. Explanations for these differences center on the timing and content of economic adjustment policies, and on the institutional opportunities available for expressing and channeling economic and political demands. The article concludes that political and economic liberalization are likely to clash when shrinking the state also removes channels for popular participation; moreover, when those that bear most of the adjustment burden are also challengers to national identity, states ignore this challenge at their peril. Alison Brysk is assistant professor of politics at the University of California at Irvine. Her book,The Politics of Human Rights in Argentina, was published by Stanford University Press. Various aspects of her current research on Latin American indigenous rights movements have appeared inComparative Political Studies, Latin American Perspectives, andPolity. Carol Wise is assistant professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. She has published articles on Latin American political economy inInternational Organization, Latin American Research Review, and theJournal of Latin American Studies; she is the editor of a forthcoming collection entitledThe Post-NAFTA Political Economy: Mexico and the Western Hemisphere.     

Pitfalls of power to the people: Decentralization,local government performance,and system support in Bolivia

Across the developing world, many governments have implemented political reforms—heavily promoted by international donors—designed to transfer greater power to subnational levels of government and to provide a more substantial policymaking and oversight role to citizens. Although economic analyses have frequently argued that such decentralization programs improve the efficiency of public expenditures, far less is known about their political impact. Based on an analysis of two large national public-opinion surveys from Bolivia, a country that has recently implemented one of the most comprehensive decentralization reforms yet attempted in Latin America, we analyze the role decentralized local institutions are playing in shaping citizen attitudes toward their political system. Our findings support the contention that decentralization can bolster citizen levels of system support at the national level. Equally important, however, we also demonstrate that the renewed emphasis on local government can have the opposite effect of producingmore negative views of the political system when the performance of local institutions falters. Jonathan T. Hiskey is assistant professor of political science at the Univeristy of California, Riverside. His most recent research focuses on subnational processes of political and economic development taking place across Latin America. Mitchell A. Seligson is Daniel H. Wallace Professor of Political Science, research professor of international studies, and professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. His research centers on surveys of democratic values and behaviors in Latin America.     

Mexico and Argentina: Economic reform and technocratic decision making

This article examines the Mexican and Argentine cases of market reform and argues that despite important differences in regime type and in recent economic and political trajectories, the decision-making process in the two countries came to display important common features. In both cases, economic crises and debt negotiations played key roles in propelling technocratic reformers into positions of policy predominance; both exhibited exclusionary technocratic decision-making styles in which small technocratic elites insulated themselves from both extra and intra state pressures. While policy isolation was no doubt necessary for the successful implementation of market reforms, this style may be counter-productive to political stability over the long term. Judith Teichman is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her articles have appeared in such journals asLatin American Research Review, Latin American Perspectives, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, andThe Canadian Journal of Political Science and in edited volumes. She is the author ofPolicymaking in Mexico: From Boom to Crisis andPrivatization and Political Change in Mexico and is currently carrying out a comparative study of the structural adjustment policy process in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile.     

Making Decentralization Work: A Cross-national Examination of Local Governments and Natural Resource Governance in Latin America

There has been increased emphasis in the last three decades on the decentralization of natural resource governance decisions to local government in developing countries as a means of improving environmental quality, public service delivery, and the accountability of local officials. We examine the performance of decentralization of natural resource management services in a large sample of municipal governments in four Latin American countries. Our analysis includes a variety of factors discussed in the literature as important in influencing the responsiveness of government officials to local needs. We provide a nested institutional model in which local officials respond to incentives created by the structure of formal political institutions at both the local and national level. The results provide support for the importance of considering local and national institutional arrangements as these co-determine the political incentives within decentralized systems.

The Transformation of the Western State: The Growth of Democracy,Autocracy, and State Power Since 1800

This article uses POLITY II, a new dataset on the authority traits of 155 countries, to assess some general historical arguments about the dynamics of political change in Europe and Latin America from 1800 to 1986. The analysis, relying mainly on graphs, focuses first on the shifting balance between democratic and autocratic patterns in each world region and identifies some of the internal and international circumstances underlying the trends, and deviations from them. Trends in three indicators of state power also are examined in the two regions: the state's capacity to direct social and economic life, the coherence of political institutions, and military manpower. The state's capacity has increased steadily in both regions; coherence has increased in the European countries but not Latin America; while military power has fluctuated widley in both regions. The article is foundational to a series of more detailed longitudinal studies of the processes of state growth. Ted Robert Gurr is a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland and Distinguished Scholar at the University's Center for International Development and Conflict Management (Mill Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742). Among his 14 books and monographs areWhy Men Rebel (awarded the Woodrow Wilson Prize as best book in political science of 1970).Patterns of Authority: A comparative Basis for Political Inquiry (with Harry Eckstein, 1975), andViolence in America, (3d edition. 1989). He is engaged in a long-term global study of minorities' involvement in conflict and its consequences and resolution. Keith Jaggers is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado and research assistant in the Department's Center for Comparative Politics, Campus Box 333, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309. He is co-author with Will H. Moore of “Deprivation, Mobilization, and the State,” recently published in theJournal of Developing Societies, and is currently working on an empirical study of the impact of war on the growth of the state. Will H. Moore is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado and research assistant in the Department's Center for Comparative Politics. He is also a co-author with Maro Ellena of a forthcoming article inWestern Political Quarterly on the cross-national determinants of political violence. His current research interests include the resolution of internal wars and the formation of coercive states.     

Exchange Rate Regime,Central Bank Independence,and Political Business Cycles in Brazil

This article examines policy consequences of electoral cycles and exchange rate regime choices in Brazil. The literature on opportunistic political business cycles maintains that governments adopt expansionary economic policies before elections to mobilize voters’ support. However, research findings in Latin America based on the theory has been inconclusive. I argue that the lack of conclusive evidence in Latin America stems from measurement errors common in the use of cross-national aggregate data. Using Brazil’s monthly data from 1985 to 2006, this article shows that there are electorally induced fiscal cycles under fixed and crawling peg exchange rate regimes and electorally induced monetary cycles under floating exchange rates only when the nation’s central bank is not independent. Indeed, accounting for Brazil’s unique economic contingencies and longitudinal variations in the de facto central bank independence, its public policy behavior remarkably resembles that of the more affluent, economically stable OECD countries.

Limitations of rational-choice institutionalism for the study of Latin American politics

This article analyzes the analytical limitations of rational-choice institutionalism for the study of Latin American politics. Adherents of this approach have made important contributions by analyzing topics that Latin Americanists traditionally neglected, such as the political impact of electoral rules and the processes of legislative decision-making. But rational-choice institutionalism has difficulty explaining the complicated, variegated, and fluid patterns of Latin American politics. It overemphasizes the electoral and legislative arenas and—in general—the input side of politics; it overestimates the importance and causal impact of formal rules and institutions; it does not explain the origins of political change and often suggests a static image of political development; it offers an incomplete analysis of institutional creation by neglecting the importance of political beliefs; it cannot fully account for crisis politics; and it puts excessive, analytically arbitrary emphasis on “microfoundations.” The article questions whether these limitations can successfully be overcome, arguing that rational-choice institutionalism—while an important addition to the debate—is not inherently superior to other approaches applied in Latin American Studies. Kurt Weyland is associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of two books—Democracy without Equity: Failures of Reform in Brazil (Pittsburgh, 1996) andThe Politics of Market Reform in Fragile Democracies: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela (Princeton, 2002)—and of numerous journal articles on democratization, market reform, social policy, and populism in Latin America. His current research focuses on the diffusion of policy innovations across countries. I would like to thank Barry Ames, James Booth, Ruth Collier, Marcelo Costa Ferriera, Wendy Hunter, Mark Jones, Fabrice Lehoucq, Scott Mainwaring, Gerardo Munck, Anthony Pereira, Tim Power, Ken Roberts, Charles Shipan, Richard Snyder, Donna van Cott, and two anonymous reviewers for excellent comments.     

Unlikely candidates for democracy: The role of structural context in democratic consolidation

Many contributors to the new literature on democratic consolidation overemphasize the role of political leadership, strategic choices about basic institutional arrangements or economic policy, and other contingent process variables. Their focus on political crafting has encounraged an undue optimism about the possibility of consolidating democracies in unfavorable structural contexts. This article critiques the current literature and asserts the primary importance of structural context in democratic consolidation. The powerful influence of structural context is illustrated by using just two structural variables, economic development level and prior authoritarian regime type, to indicate a group of thirty-eight countries in which democracy has failed to consolidate during the third wave of democratization (1974-present) and is very unlikely to do so in the near or medium-term future. Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. J. Mark Ruhl is Gleen and Mary Todd Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. He has written extensively on Latin American politics and has specialized in the cases of Colombia and Honduras. Recent publications by Professor Ruhl includeParty Politics and Elections in Latin America (Westview, 1989), coauthored with R.H. McDonald of Syracuse University, and “Redefining Civil-Military Relations in Honduras”Journal of Intermerican Studies and World Affairs (Spring 1996).     

Institutions and growth in East Asia

Institutions have played a central role in political economy explanations of East Asia’s growth, from the developmental state to the micro-institutions of industrial policy. A review of these institutional explanations finds that few if any of the postulated institutional explanations involve either necessary or sufficient conditions for rapid growth. This finding suggests two conclusions. First, there are multiple institutional means for solving the various collective action, credibility, and informational problems that constitute barriers to growth. The search for a single institutional “taproot” of growth is likely to be a misguided exercise, and more attention should be given to understanding the varieties of capitalism in East Asia. Second, institutions are themselves endogenous to other political factors that appear more consequential for growth, including particularly the nature of the relationship between the state and the private sector. Stephan Haggard is the Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego. He is the author ofPathways from the Periphery: The Political Economy of Growth in the Newly Industrializing Countries (1990) andThe Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis (2000). He is the co-author (with Robert Kaufman) ofThe Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (1995) and (with David McKendrick and Richard Doner)From Silicon Valley to Singapore: Location and Competitive Advantage in the Hard Disk Drive Industry (2000). Also with Robert Kaufman, he is co-editor ofThe Politics of Economic Adjustment (1992). He is currently working with Robert Kaufman on a project on changing social contracts in East Asia, Latin America, and Central Europe. I am indebted to Tun-Jen Cheng, Rick Doner, Cheng-Tian Kuo, Greg Noble, and Andrew MacIntyre, not only for comments but for extended discussion of these issues over the years.     

Subnational Economic Nationalism? The contradictory effects of decentralization in Peru

Across the third world, transnational corporations (TNCs) and subnational governments (SNGs) are coming into new forms of contact as a result of liberalization and decentralization. Despite scholarly expectations that subnational governments will respond by seeking out foreign direct investment, in much of Latin America these governments are confronting rather than courting transnational corporations. Conceptualizing this phenomenon as ‘subnational economic nationalism’, the article explores both how subnational governments are challenging neoliberalism and why these challenges often fail to subvert neoliberal outcomes. By examining two struggles against transnational capital that had different outcomes but that took place within a single subnational jurisdiction (Arequipa, Peru), the article argues that decentralization can work at cross purposes. While voters are increasingly demanding that elected subnational officials adopt nationalist positions vis-à-vis TNCs, these same officials often seek financial support from TNCs so that they can compete successfully in the subnational elections that have been introduced by political decentralization.     

International tutelage and domestic political will: Building a new civilian police force in El Salvador

Under peace accords signed in January of 1992, a new civilian police force replaced the military as the sole agency responsible for providing internal security in El Salvador. This new institution has the potential to substantially transform the relationship of citizen and state, to improve both human rights and public safety, and, eventually, to reduce tensions in civil-military relations. Despite extensive international participation in and verification of this project, however, implementation proved difficult. Political polarization and lack of political will on the part of the government initially undercut the civilian character of the project, while the international community proved unable or unwilling to provide sufficient material assistance. Significant improvements took place under a new presidential administration, which had greater will to implement the project as designed. William Stanley is assistant professor of political science at the University of New Mexico, where he teaches international and Latin American politics. His research focuses on how domestic and international political forces interact with the institutional characteristics of military and police agencies to affect the frequency of human rights violations. His bookElite Politics, State Violence, and Civil War in El Salvador is forthcoming from Temple University Press. He has published various articles on human rights, migration and refugee affairs, and on the role of the United Nations in post-conflict peace consolidation in Central America.     

The limits to military power: Institutions and defense budgeting in democratic Argentina

This article examines the reasons behind the dramatic decline in military budgets in Argentina under democratic rule. These trends were unexpected, given the, political power the armed forces of that country have wielded in the past. Here it is argued that within the democratic state, there were institutional arrangements that enabled civilian decision makers to trim defense expenditures, despite opposition from the military. The two key institutional traits were found to be the concentration of authority and the autonomy of decision-makers from outside pressures. Because budgetmaking was centered within a well-insulated civilian-run ministry, fiscal planners working at the behest of the president were able to design and implement budgets they wanted, over and above the objections of military officers, and without interference from other branches of government. David Pion-Berlin is a Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of several books, includingThrough Corridors of Power: Institutions and Civil-Military Relations in Argentina (Penn State University Press, 1997), and numerous articles on the subjects of Latin American civil-military relations, military regimes, political economy, and political repression.     

Russian Local Politics in the Putin–Medvedev Era

Political reforms and changes on the local level by the Putin–Medvedev leadership have resulted in an almost unprecedented turnover of leadership but they have aroused political conflict and even resistance by unsettling the political status quo throughout the 83 subnational units of the Russian Federation. The reforms have resulted in the marginalisation of the authority of city mayors, the recruitment from outside of chief executives of federation regions, and the polarisation of ethnic enclaves by national policies. Destabilising everything is the combination of a United Russia (Edinaya Rossiya) political party bent on national dominance, ambiguous liberal appeals and democratic reforms by President Medvedev, and a global economic recession.     

Democracy, Colonization, and Human Capital in Sub-Saharan Africa

This article examines an empirical anomaly. In most developing regions, poor democratic nations enroll more primary school students than their authoritarian counterparts. Regime type, however, cannot account for the wide variance in enrollment in Africa. This study demonstrates that colonial heritage is a good predictor of primary school enrollment for low-income countries in Africa. Additional analysis shows that colonization's impact on education has not diminished since independence. Rather, the initial differences in enrollment between the former French and British colonies have grown over time. The results hold important implications for the study of political institutions and their impact on economic development. Even after they no longer exist, political institutions can have substantial lingering effects on important developmental outcomes. David S. Brown is an assistant professor of political science at Rice University. His work has appeared recently inThe American Political Science Review, Political Research Quarterly, and inComparative Political Studies. His work focuses on the political economy of development and is based on cross-regional work with specialization in Latin America. Specific areas of interest are human capital, democracy, and the international determinants of domestic politics.     

Why do presidents fail? Political leadership and the Argentine crisis (1999–2001)

This article explores why Argentine president Fernando de la Rúa (1999–2001) failed to govern and the factors that prevented him from compelting his constitutional mandate. This study draw on current literature about leadership. We argue that President De la Rúa’s ineffective performance was characteristic of an inflexible tendency towards unilateralism, isolationism, and an inability to compromise and persuade. Moreover, we examine how de la Rúas performance, in the context of severe political and economic constraints, discouraged cooperative practices among political actors, led to decision-making paralysis, and ultimately to a crisis of governance This work seeks to make four contributions. First, it conceptualizes political leadership by providing an analytical framework that integrates individual action, institutional resources and constraints, and policy context, thus filling a gap in the literature. Second, it explains the importance of effective leadership in building up and maintaining multiparty coalitions in presidential systems. Third, it complements existing institutional approaches to improve our understanding of a new type of instability in Latin America: the failure of more than a dozen of presidents to complete their constitutional mandates. Fourth, it analyzes the way political and economic variables interact in times of crisis. Mariana Llanos is a researcher at the Institut für Iberoamerika-Kunde (IIK) in Hamburg, Germany, and teaches Latin American politics at the University of Hamburg. Her research focuses on Latin American political institutions particularly to the president-congress relations and the legislatures of the Southern Cone. She is the author ofPrivatization and Democracy in Argentina (Palgrave, 2002), co-author ofBicameralismo, Senados y senadores en el Cono Sur latinoamericano (ICPS, Barcelona, 2005, together with Francisco Sánchez and Detlef Nolte) and co-editor ofControle Parlamentar na Alemanha, na Argentina e no Brasil (KAS, Rio de Janeiro, 2005, with Ana María Mustapic), among other works. Ana Margheritis is assistant professor of international relations and Latin American politics at University of Florida. Her research interests are in international political economy, foreign policy, regional cooperation, and inter-American relations. She is the editor ofLatin American Democracies in the New Global Economy (2003); author ofAjuste y Reforma en Argentina, 1989–1995 (1999); and co-author ofHistoria de las relaciones exteriores de la República Argentina (with Carlos Escudé et al., 1998) andMalvinas: Los motivos económicos de un conflicto (with Laura Tedesco, 1991), as well as of several articles in academic journals and book chapters. The authors are grateful to Vicente Palermo and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.     

From environmental policy concepts to practicable tools: Knowledge creation and delegation in multilevel systems

The problem‐solving capacity and problem‐generating potential of multilevel systems entail the need for the delegation of authority. When the problem concerned is about how to put an abstract policy concept into a practicable policy tool, the choice of the respective delegation trajectory depends on the policy models or the policy‐relevant knowledge that the respective political levels can supply. When regarding the European Union (EU) level as the starting point of knowledge creation and delegation trajectories, and concentrating on transaction costs, policy knowledge and models generated at the international level provide the most cost‐effective solution. Only when the international level is not able to provide further policy knowledge and innovation does the EU delegate its definitional authority, first downward to the member states and then sideways to EU agencies. We illustrate the plausibility of our dynamic understanding of multilevel governance by using Environmental Policy Integration as an example.     

An Approach to Measuring Subnational Administrative Autonomy in Education

Efforts to measure decentralization have focused on political or fiscal autonomy, but not on administrative autonomy. Focusing on the education sector, we measured de facto subnational administrative autonomy across 64 countries/economies, via the domains of human resource management, salary management, budget management, and service content design. The findings reveal that subnational autonomy can differ substantially across those domains and within countries, and that the use of a single country-level indicator for administrative decentralization is inadequate. Furthermore, we show that administrative decentralization is as significant a factor as federal status in evaluating the degree to which a country/economy is decentralized or centralized.