Chapman.niedzwiecki.marks.hooghe Regional+Authority+in+Latin+America.2012

7/27/2019 Chapman.niedzwiecki.marks.hooghe Regional+Authority+in+Latin+America.2012

1/34

REGIONAL AUTHORITY IN LATIN AMERICA:

AN ANALYSIS OF 27 COUNTRIES (1950-2010)

Sandra Chapman OsterkatzUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Sara NiedzwieckiUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Gary MarksUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

VU University Amsterdam

Liesbet HoogheUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

VU University Amsterdam

AbstractThis paper presents a new dataset on regional authority in 27 Latin American and Caribbean

countries for 1950 to 2010 based on the Regional Authority Index (RAI). For the first time, levels

of regional authority can be directly compared over time and across the region. We explain the

conceptualization, operationalization, and coding of regional authority. Our study offers an

assessment of regional authority under authoritarian rule and evaluates unwritten as well as

written norms. We present substantive observations about the variation across countries and

over time and discuss the implications and challenges of expanding the RAI to the Latin

American and Caribbean context. We conclude by considering avenues for future research and

opportunities for cross-national comparison.

Paper prepared for the American Political Science Association Meeting,

New Orleans, 2012

Draft comments welcome!

Please do not quote without authors permission


2/34

Page | 2

Different parts of the world provide contrasting settings for the study of decentralization. InLatin America, decentralization occurs against the backdrop of state consolidation that tookplace after serious conflict over territorial authority. Issues of centralization and decentralizationwere prominent dimensions of contestation. Ethnicity, which has shaped the territorial structureof government in Europe and Asia, was, until recent times, less influential as a force in Latin

America because of the nature of its colonial experience. So the effects of other factorsdemocracy, party politics, elite strategy, population, economic developmentloom larger.

An extensive literature has investigated the sources and consequences of decentralizationwithin Latin America. This work is mostly oriented to case studies and it has generated diverseand sophisticated theories. Efforts to test generalizations in this field have relied largely onbudgetary figures as a proxy for decentralization. Whereas our theories are concerned chieflywith subnational authoritythe extent to which subnational governments have the capacity tomake binding decisionsthe available measures are chiefly concerned with spending andrevenues. This is problematic if central governments provide local actors with money and tellthem how to spend it.

Our purpose in this article is to bring measurement of the structure of government morein line with the way political scientists have conceived it. Estimating subnational government inLatin America faces particular challenges: evaluating subnational authority both underauthoritarian and democratic rule; the heavy reliance on informal rules in many countries; andthe coexistence of different regime forms across different government tiers. We set out ameasure of regional authority in 27 Latin American and Caribbean countries on an annual basisfrom 1950 to 2010. We disaggregate regional authority in eight dimensions in an effort toobserve variation more precisely and more reliably. We take pains to distinguish subnationalauthority from the variables that are used to explain it, including regime type. And we seek tomake our conceptual and measurement decisions explicit by defining coding rules, collatingexamples, and deliberating ambiguities. The measure extends the Regional Authority Index(RAI) which has been used to estimate intermediate government in 42 democratic OECDcountries (Hooghe, Marks, and Schakel 2010).

The next section discusses the measurement instrument and coding criteria in the contextof the broader literature on decentralization. We conceive regional authority as a combination ofself rule, the authority a regional government exercises within its territorial jurisdiction, andshared rule, the authority a regional government (co)exercises in the country as a whole. Thisprovides the frame for disaggregation. We then explore trends in regional authority in LatinAmerica and the Caribbean over the past sixty years. Regional authority has increased, but thereis considerable variation across countries and among the dimensions. We pay special attention toasymmetric regionalization, which has a distinctive character in Latin America. In the finalsection we bring the information we have collected to bear on the intricate association between

democratization and regionalization. We find that the two go together but that the character ofthe association has varied over time and the relationship is stronger along some dimensions thanothers.

MEASURING REGIONAL AUTHORITY

The most refined and widely used data on regional government in Latin America and theCaribbean are financial data provided by the Inter-American Bank of Development, the IMF, and


3/34

Page | 3

the World Bank (Daughters and Harper 2007; Escobar-Lemmon 2001; Stegarescu 2005). Thesedata have been used to good effect, but a) they do not distinguish among levels of regionalgovernment and b) they do not directly measure regional authority. It is one thing for a regionalgovernment to collect taxes or spend, but quite another to set the rate or base of taxes ordetermine spending priorities.Departamentos in Uruguay, for example, spend more than twice

as much as a proportion of total government expenditure than those in Bolivia (15.4 per centversus 7.2 per cent), but have less authority over taxes (Daughters and Harper 2007: 224).

Measures that seek more direct estimates of regional authority often rely on thedistinction between federal and non-federal countries (Arzhagi & Henderson 2005; Inman 2008).The distinction is insensitive to variation among federal countries or non-federal countries(Rodden 2004; Schakel 2008). Decentralization is often the result of ongoing political choice.Hence we would expect more fluidity in the authority wielded by subnational governments thanin the categorization of countries as federal or unitary. Several countries, including Argentina,Brazil, and Mexico among federal countries and Bolivia, Colombia, and Uruguay among non-federal countries, have seen considerable regionalization without crossing the unitary-federaldivide.

A more revealing categorization of state structure is the tripartite distinction betweenfiscal, administrative, and political decentralization (Montero and Samuels 2004; Falleti 2005).Fiscal decentralization is control over subnational revenue generation and spending;administrative decentralization is the authority of subnational governments to set goals andimplement policies;1 and political decentralization refers to direct elections for subnationaloffices. These distinctions have proved useful, for example in analyzing sequences of reform(Falleti 2010), but they are concerned exclusively with the authority of a regional government inits own region and they combine diverse institutional outcomes that might sensibly bedistinguished.

We might wish to know the authority of regions to shape the rules of the game in the

country as a whole. To what degree does the central state have the last word in constitutionalchange? This goes to the core of the federal-unitary distinction, but one cannot assume thatregional governments in a federal regime can block constitutional change while those in a unitaryregime cannot. Venezuela is usually categorized as a federal regime, but subnationalgovernments have no role in constitutional change.2 In Brazil, regional assemblies can proposeconstitutional reform, but the national senate and chamber of deputies can both table and passconstitutional reform, if they are in agreement, without the consent of regional governments.Bolivia, considered a unitary regime, is similar in this respect. Constitutional reform can beenacted by concurrent super-majorities of congress and the regionally elected senate.

1 Faletti (2010: 329) takes a step towards a more specific conceptualization of administrative decentralization as theset of policies that transfer the administration and delivery of social services such as education, health, socialwelfare, or housing to subnational governments.2 Constitutional reform initiatives can be initiated by the executive, a congressional majority, or 15 per cent of theelectorate (1999 Constitution, Art. 342). The reform must then be passed within two years by two-thirds of thenational assembly (Art. 343) and approved by a simple majority of the population in a referendum (Art. 344). Inaddition, a constitutional congress can be called for a major reform of the state by the executive, two-thirds ofcongress, two-thirds of the municipal councils, or 15 per cent of registered voters (Art. 348), a process that does notgive a role to the intermediate tier.


4/34

Page | 4

Then there is the question of the role of regional governments in national law making.Are they represented in a national legislature (normally the second chamber), and if so, to whateffect? Can regional governments co-determine the proportion of national tax revenue that goesinto their own pockets? Do they have routinized access to extra-legislative channels to influence,or bind, the national government? To what extent, in short, do regional governments share rule in

the country as a whole?It is useful, as well, to disaggregate the capacity of a regional government to exert

authority within its own jurisdiction. On fiscal decentralization, one needs to pin down whether asubnational government can control the base and rate of major and/or minor taxes and the degreeto which it can autonomously borrow. On administrative decentralization one can estimate theextent to which the central government can veto subnational government and the kinds ofpolicies over which subnational governments exert authority. And on political decentralization,one might distinguish between indirect and direction election of offices, and further, between theelection of regional governors and regional assemblies.

The issues raised here are diverse, but researchable. They take us an important stepforward in pressing an abstract concept, regional authority, into questions that can be answeredby observing public institutions, and where researchers may resolve differences of interpretationby examining the evidence.

A regional authority index

The measure we propose disaggregates regional authority across eight dimensions for 27 LatinAmerican and Caribbean countries on an annual basis from 1950 to 2010. The unit of analysis isthe regional government, defined as government between the local and the national levels havingan average population greater than 150,000. Regional governments are generally organized atnon-intersecting levels or tiers, where each tier has uniform authoritative competencies. Where

this is the case, we evaluate regions on a tier by tier basis, but if a regional government hasspecial competencies, we code it separately. Where different regional governments in a singletier have different authoritative arrangements, we weight by population to arrive at an aggregatescore for the tier and for the country.3 The intuition is to think of an individual citizen as nestedwithin a set of regional jurisdictions which, together, exert authority. Hence country scores canbe interpreted as estimates of the authority exercised by a countrys regional government orgovernments over the average citizen.

The dependent variable is the authority exercised by a regional government. Authority isconceived as legitimate power recognized as binding because it is derived from acceptedprinciples of governance (Dahl 1968). We operationalize regional authority in two domains. Self-rule is the authority that a subnational government exercises in its own territory. Shared rule is

the authority that a subnational government co-exercises in the country as a whole. Thisdistinction is widely used in the study of decentralization and federalism (Elazar 1987; Keating1998; Lane and Ersson 1999; Riker 1964). It provides a frame for disaggregating regional

3 For example, ten per cent of Nicaraguas population resides in two special autonomous Regiones Autnomas,which have different RAI scores from the rest of the intermediate tierdepartamentosso the RAI is weightedaccordingly. In countries with two or more intermediate tiers, scores for tiers are aggregated to produce a countryscore.


5/34

Page | 5

authority into eight conceptually distinct dimensions: a) to d) in the domain of self-rule; e) to h)in the domain of shared rule (Table 1 and 2).

[Table 1 and 2 about here: RAI dimensions]

a) Institutional depth distinguishes decentralization from deconcentration. A regionaladministration that implements a range of policies may, in fact, serve merely as ahierarchically subordinate outpost of the central government. Scores at the upper range ofthis dimension distinguish between regional administrations that are subject or notsubject to a central government veto.

b) Policy scope taps the breadth of regional policy competencies in police, own institutionalsetup, local government, residual powers; economic policy; cultural-educational policy;welfare policy; immigration or citizenship.

c) Fiscal autonomy is evaluated in terms of a regional governments authority to set the baseand rate of minor and major taxes in its jurisdiction. This dimension is associated withregional spending and taxation, but it is designed to tap authority over taxes rather thantax share.

d) Representation assesses whether a regional government has a regionally electedlegislature; whether that legislature is directly or indirectly elected; and whether theregions executive is appointed by the central government, dual (i.e. co-appointed by thecentral government), or autonomously elected (either by the citizens or by the regionalassembly).

e) Law making, in the domain of shared rule, assesses the role of regions in structuringrepresentation at the national level (i.e. in the second legislative chamber); whetherregional governments are directly represented in the second chamber; whether regionshave majority or minority representation there; and the legislative scope of the secondchamber.

f) Executive control taps the possibility that regional executives have routine meetings withthe central government and whether these are advisory or have veto power.

g) Fiscal control refers to the role of regions in negotiating or exerting a veto over theterritorial allocation of national tax revenues.

h) Constitutional reform assesses authority over the rules of the game. Can the centralgovernment unilaterally reform the constitution or must reform gain the assent of regionalgovernments or a regionally-dominated second chamber?

Each dimension is scaled as a set of observable institutional alternatives. The dimensionscan be interpreted as distinct ingredients that can be added or weighted4 to produce an aggregatescore for each region or country, or the dimensions can be interpreted as indicators of a latentvariable that can be calculated for each region or country. In fact, it does not make muchdifference which approach one chooses because the association between the scores is 0.95 or

greater.5

The reason for this is that the dimensions are quite tightly coupled. The Cronbachsalpha for the eight dimensions across 27 countries in 2010 is 0.885 which is well above theconventional threshold of 0.7 for an index. Polychoric factor analysis (Table 3) produces a factor

4 The maximum score for each dimension reflects its relative importance in the index.5 The Pearson correlation between additive and latent factor scores for eight dimensions across 27 countries in 2010is 0.97.


6/34

Page | 6

that accounts for 82 per cent of the variance in the indicators.6 The association of this variablewith a weighted additive index that assumes equal intervals across the scales for the eightdimensions is 0.97.7

[Table 3 about here]

Our focus in this paper is chiefly at the country level, but the information allowscomparison at the level of the individual region. While it is often useful to talk of countries aswholes and to assume that authority is composed of just one, two, or three distinct elements,these are radical simplifications gained by aggregating (and therefore losing) more refinedinformation. Attention to the complexity of authority and its multiple indicators produces morereliable estimation because combining observations reduces the random error of the latentvariable (Ansolabehere, Rodden, Snyder 2008; Marks 2007).

The measurement instrument taps authority, that is, explicit rules governing the exerciseof formal power. The first place to look is in constitutions, laws, and official documents, and weendeavor to root coding decisions in sections, articles, or paragraphs in legal documents. Butwhat is written and what is practiced may differ. Some written rules never make it into practice.

If the constitution states that subnational governments may tax their own populations, yetenabling legislation was never passed (as is the case in departamentos andprovincias in Peru),then we do not consider the regions to have fiscal authority.8 Similarly,we code the date when areform (or election) takes place, not when it is prescribed in legislation.9 Finally, someregularized and explicit practices never make it into texts. A regime that sacks regionalgovernors clearly diminishes the authority of regional executives.10 One must be careful here tocode only routinized institutional practices, not the effect of exogenous influences such as thecharisma of a political leader or the many factors that can affect the ability of a government toachieve its goals.11

6 Polychoric factor analysis is appropriate for ordinal indicators such as the ones in the RAI. We constrain theanalysis to produce principal components for a single factor.7 In the remainder of this paper, we use the weighted index because it makes the interpretation of results clearer.8 The 1933 and 1979 constitutions gave departamentos extensive fiscal authority with the capacity to set rate and

base of certain taxes. However the 1933 and 1979 provisions were not translated in enabling legislation, and a 1988law that foresaw that the national government transferred property and income tax to the regions over a period ofthree years was never implemented (Dickovick 2003: 7). The 1979 Constitution also appeared to give provinciasextensive fiscal authority, including property tax, vehicle tax, and construction tax (C 1979, article 257), butconsecutive governments have interpreted these competences narrowly and continue to set the base of all taxeswhile determining narrow parameters for rates (Ahmad and Garca-Escribano 2006: 15; von Haldenwang 2010,651).9 In Argentina, the 1994 Constitution (C 1994, Chapter II) introduced direct elections for senators to replaceappointment by the provincial legislature (C 1957, Art. 46). The first direct elections took place in 2001, which is

the time point from which we code direct election.10 Article 6 of the Argentine Constitution allows federal intervention only in a handful of cases (civil war, violationof the National Constitution the provision was copied from the US constitution), but the article was invoked 39times by the federal government between 1945 and 2001, most recently under president Nestor Kirchner (2002-2007). Hence we interpret the authority of Argentine provinces to be limited by the real possibility of a federalgovernment veto and this is reflected in a reduced score on institutional depth (2 instead of 3) that is more typical fora decentralized polity than a full-fledged federation.11 We solicited in-depth commentary on our judgments for twelve of the most complex cases from acknowledgedcountry experts. Profiles, amounting to 120,000 words, detail and explain coding decisions in the dataset. Their

purpose is to make our judgments explicit, and therefore open to amendment or refutation.


7/34

Page | 7

MEASURING REGIONAL AUTHORITY UNDER REGIME CHANGE

The perception of regional authority in Latin America has been framed by its interaction withdemocracy and authoritarianism. The authority exercised by subnational authorities is believed tobe heavily constrained by whether a regimefor a country as a wholeis democratic orauthoritarian. When we speak of democracy and authoritarianism, we normally refer to national

polities as the sole unit of observation, an assumption shared by the major indices of regime type(Armijo and Gervasoni 2010; Coppedge et al. 2008; Gleditsch and Ward 1997; Marshall andJaggers 2002).12 If an authoritarian regime violates individual rights and liberties, how can theyultimately be protected at the regional level? If authoritarian governments concentrate politicalpower, how can subnational governments resist central imperatives? The implication is that themost one can expect under authoritarianism is deconcentration, not decentralization, of authority.

While there are strong grounds to expect authoritarian regimes to be less decentralizedthan democratic regimes, the history of Latin America is replete with examples where democratshave favored centralization and authoritarians have sought decentralization. Liberalism andconservatism are open-textured on the issue of the territorial structure of the state. Moreover,case studies suggest that the effect of regime type on regional authority is complex (Eaton 2001;Samuels 2004).

In order to evaluate these expectations we require a measure of regional authority thatestimates the level of decentralization independent from regime type. The disaggregatedmeasurement approach described above allows us to unpack the effects of authoritarianism anddemocratization. Rather than conceive authoritarianism as an on/off light switch, we approach itas a dimmer that can affect one or more aspects of regional authority. There are wide differencesin the degree to which authoritarian regimes control the military, the legislature, subnationalpolitical and economic actors, and even their own ruling juntas, and there are wide differences inthe degree to which purportedly democratic regimes allow freedom of association and expressionin competitive elections.

Where authoritarian rule reduces the autonomy of regional governance we lower thescore for institutional depth, the first dimension of the RAI. Institutional depth drops from 3 to 2in Brazil in 1964 to reflect the legal constraints on state government imposed by the militaryregime. While Brazilian estados maintained some fiscal autonomy and policy scope, the militarygovernment regularly used its decree powers to intervene. It replaced direct with indirectelections for governors, thus affecting the representation dimension. The 1967 constitution didaway with the notion that estados were self-governing. All this underpins the observation thatmilitary rule impaired the authority of Brazilian states without reducing them to deconcentratedunits (Eaton 2001; see also Dickovick 2004; Falleti 2011). One can debate the timing: either1964, when the regime assumed power and passed several disempowering pieces of legislation,or 1967, when state self-governance was constitutionally limited. We select the former date

because it is more consistent with facts on the ground, such as the replacement of oppositiongovernors as early as 1964 and the passing of theAtos Institucionais.

12 Democracy and authoritarianism may be unevenly present across tiers. Multilevel governance opens up thepossibility of diverse regimes at different levels. Authoritarian central regimes may be induced to leave regionalauthority untouched; democratic regimes may harbor repressive regional governments (Gervasoni 2012; Giraudy2009).


8/34

Page | 8

The nuance of coding under authoritarian rule is also illustrated as the military period inBrazil comes to a close. While the transition to democracy is generally marked in 1985, the shiftin regional authority came earlier as part of the abertura process. Competitive elections forgovernors and the legalization of political parties in subnational elections took place beforedemocratic presidential elections, so regional authority begins to creep up in 1982.

Authoritarian regimes rarely abolish subnational institutions. Two partial exceptions areCuba and Chile. The Castro revolution initially side-lined provincial and municipal institutionsin favor of sectoral juntas (Roman 2003a, b). The system failed, and in 1966 the regimereintroduced local and provincial general purpose government with representative institutions(Malinowitz 2006; Mendez Delgado and Lloret Feijoo 2007). We reflect this in our coding byreducing institutional depth to zero for 1959-1965 and bringing it back to 1 with the revival ofterritorial subnational government. Chile entered the Pinochet military regime (1973-1987) withtwo tiers of deconcentrated government: departamentos andprovincias. The regime sustainedprovincias, abolisheddepartamentos, and created a new upper layer of 15 deconcentratedregiones in an effort to deliver economic development to Pinochets primarily non-urbanconstituencies (Eaton 2004).

Authoritarianism constrains representation if elections for subnational executives orlegislatures are suspended or abolished. But authoritarian rulers do not always suspendsubnational elections. Argentina illustrates the range of choices. The 1955 military coup oustedthe national government but left subnational institutions intact (Eaton 2004: 71). During theRevolucin Argentina (1966-1972) all elected governors were replaced by central governmentappointees and provincial legislative responsibilities were put under control of the (nowappointed) provincial executive. During the 1976-1982 dictatorship the provincial assemblieswere disbanded and the military distributed control over provincial administration in equal sharesamongst the army, navy and air force (Eaton 2004: 71 and 1178; Falleti 2010). We continue tocode representation 4 under the first regime, against zero under the second and third militaryregimes.

The military regime in Brazil (1964-1982) was more measured. Initially, it maintaineddirect elections for governors and assemblies, and later an indirect system was introducedwhereby assemblies chose governors from options produced by the central government (Samuelsand Abrucio 2000: 48). Unlike in the authoritarian regimes in Chile and Argentina, electionswere never canceled, but representative authority was restricted. Governors could be replaced bythe military regime (and some 25 per cent were in 1964 alone), and direct elections forassemblies took place under a new constitutional framework restricting political parties and civilliberties (Samuels and Abrucio 2000: 49). Our scoring reflects the contrasting strategies of themilitary in Argentina and Brazil: a sharp drop from the maximum to the minimum score onrepresentation in Argentina and an intermediate score for both assembly and executive in Brazil.

The PRI regime in Mexico reflects an alternative path.Estado governors were directlyelected since 1917, but the president had the right to remove elected governors and appoint newgovernors, which gave him a veto over governorships. We conceive it as a dual executivewhich is partly centrally and partly locally appointed. We upgrade executive representation from1 to 2 in 1989 when the first non-PRI governor won the gubernatorial election in Baja California,which broke the pattern.


9/34

Page | 9

Shared-rule dimensions also vary in their sensitivity to regime change. If the centrallegislature is dissolved, suspended, or disempowered, this affects shared rule. The capacity ofregional governments to co-determine national legislation (the first dimension in Table 2) isalmost certainly reduced, and their role in constitutional reform may also be affected. Fiscalcontrol and executive control are less tightly coupled with regime change so long as formal

intergovernmental bargaining processes remain in place. The shifts in shared rule due toauthoritarianism tend to be less dramatic.

REGIONAL AUTHORITY ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

Seven of the 27 countries have no intermediate government between the local and national; 17have a single intermediate tier, and Chile and Peru have two tiers. Fourteen countries have (orhad) asymmetric or special autonomous regions.13

Figure 1 presents country scores for 1950 to 2010. The picture is diverse, both cross-nationally and over time. Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina are the most regionalized, whileVenezuela, which is nominally federal, has relatively weak regions. Countries with smallerpopulations tend to be more centralized, but there is wide variation among the so-called unitarycountries. The regional authority index detects considerable variation, both cross-nationally andover time, in countries that are sometimes lumped together as non-federal.

[Figure 1 about here]

The period as a whole has been characterized by deepening regional authority. Seventeencountries have become more regionalized (by one or more points on the RAI), eight have thesame score, and two countries, Costa Rica and Ecuador, have become less regionalized. In 1950,21 Latin American countries had some form of intermediate government, but only in Argentina,Brazil, Ecuador and Uruguay were these governments relatively autonomous (i.e. non-deconcentrated). By 2010, relatively autonomous regional governments had also emerged in

Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru.

So there has been a definite upswing in regional authority in Latin America over the past60 years. But variation among countries has increased. The standard deviation in the RAI for thetwenty independent countries that we code in 1950 is 4.7; in 2010 it is 5.9.

Figure 2 summarizes the average RAI score across the twenty countries for which wehave continuous data for 1950 to 2010. The imposition of military rule in the 1960s and 1970s inseveral countries is evident in aggregate, as is the effect of the third wave of democracy from thelate 1970s. The average level of regionalization in 1950 was reached again in 1985.


13 We speak of an asymmetric arrangement when a region falls under a country-wide constitutional structure butscores differently on one or more dimensions. A special autonomous region is exempt from the country-wideconstitutional framework and receives special treatment in the constitution or in statutory law. While an asymmetricregion can be described as a standard region, a special autonomous region is more aptly conceived as an opt-out(Hooghe, et al 2010: 29).


10/34

Page | 10

Patterns in self rule and shared rule

The elements of regional authority tend to vary together, but there is nevertheless someinteresting variation. The dashed line in Figure 3 captures the surge in elected regional

assemblies and executives that took place after 1980. In 1950, nine of the 20 countries that wecode continuously had a directly or indirectly elected executive or assembly, but only Argentina,Brazil, Peru, and Uruguay had both. By 2010, 14 countries had directly or indirectly electedregional executives or assemblies, and Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador,Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela had both directly elected assemblies andelected executives.14


The policy competences of regional governments have broadened. The number ofcountries having regions with authoritative competencies in at least two major policy areastripled from just three in 1950 to nine in 2010. Average regional fiscal autonomy has inched upslightly. In 2010, regions in five countries had some capacity to control base or rate of taxes,which is actually one country fewer than in 1950.

Figure 4 shows the course of shared rule since 1950. The scale of the Y-axis in Figure 4 ismuch smaller than for self rule. Whereas self rule can be reformed in ways that do not affect acountrys central political institutions, shared rule engages law making, policy making, andconstitutional reform for the country as a whole. Regional authority in law-making andconstitutional reform has decreased as a result of the reform or abolition of territorially-basedsecond chambers in Colombia, Cuba, and Ecuador.15 Fiscal control, or the authority of regions toco-decide fiscal allocation, has not budged much. Executive control is the only dimension ofshared rule that has seen an increase. In 1950, regular intergovernmental bargaining was virtuallyunknown outside of fiscal consultation. By 2010 regional governments in five countries had

access to routinized intergovernmental bargaining outside formal legislative channels.[Figure 4 about here]

Asymmetric arrangements

Table 4 lists three types of asymmetric arrangements commonly found in Latin America. Eightcountries have capital districts with a distinct status, often with greater fiscal authority than otherregions. Most combine the status of a municipality and of a region, which can imply exceptionalself-rule alongside shared rule in the national legislature, though sometimes in return for a moredirect role for central government in representation.16

[Table 4 about here]

14 In Bolivia, Colombia and Nicaragua, special autonomous regions have directly elected assemblies and executives.In Panama, some special indigenous communities have indirectly elected assemblies, and others directly electedassemblies; executives are headed by a local representative and a government appointee.15 Haiti is the only country that has gone in the opposite direction.16 The City of Freeport in the Bahamas is a special case. While not a capital, it enjoys considerable autonomy (and aspecial tax statute). Set up by the British in 1955, Freeport was run as a private corporation, but since 1996 it haselected representative institutions and some policy autonomy.


11/34

Page | 11

A second, declining, source of asymmetry is internal colonialism. This reflects the factthat several Latin American countries possess inaccessible and scarcely populated territories. InArgentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico the dependencies became standard provinces severaldecades ago. In Venezuela, the last Territorio Federal became a state in 1992, but theDependencias, a group of islands with some 3,000 inhabitants off the coast of Caracas, are still

centrally governed. While some of these territories have indigenous minorities, the rationale fortheir special statute is the perceived national interest in direct federal protection and control.

Seven countries have regions with special autonomous statutes that are primarily aresponse to ethnicity or geography. Tobago entered newly independent Trinidad and Tobagowith special status in 1962, and was granted self-rule in 1980. The Galpagos Islands of Ecuadorwere directly governed by the center before they achieved limited autonomy in 1998. Specialautonomous regions for indigenous communities have been created in the 2000s in Nicaragua,Bolivia, and Colombia, alongside five communities (comarcas) in Panam that have existed withvarying degrees of institutionalization since the early 20th century.17 The new indigenousterritories in Bolivia have lower levels of authority than traditional regions, but are still in flux.In Colombia, the resguardos indgenas and the special archipelago region ofSt Andres,

Providencia & Santa Catalina (until 1991 an intendencia) also have slightly lower levels ofregional authority, while in Panam and Nicaragua these territories have higher levels ofauthority than the rest of the tier. Since 2010, the resource-rich region ofGran Chaco in southernBolivia has a special statute.

Regional authority has waxed and waned in Latin America over the past 60 years. As thefigures show, there was a general decrease in regional authority in the authoritarian decades priorto the third wave of democratization and a rise since then. There is great variation acrosscountries and across regions.

DEMOCRATIZATION AND REGIONAL AUTHORITY

The current wave of interest in decentralization and multilevel governance in Latin America istied to three historical processes: a paradigm shift in economic policy,18 debt crises,19 anddemocratization. Here we illustrate how more fine-grained data can help shed light on alongstanding debate: to what extent, and how, does democratization promote decentralization?

Democratization has been associated with rising decentralization in Latin America(Crook and Manor 1998; Diamond and Tsalik 1999) and beyond. The intimate connectionbetween democratization and decentralization transpires in the work of Falleti (2010: 185), whoobserves for Brazil that decentralization demands . . . were imbued with the discourse of

17 Ecuador passed in 2010 a law to regulate the creation of circunscripciones territoriales indgenas y

afroecuatorianas, but no circunscripciones had been created as of 2010.18 The shift from import substitution industrialization to market liberalism in the 1980s led to privatization,deregulation, and decentralization of public services. International financial institutions played a pivotal role in this

process, advocating decentralization to increase government responsiveness, improve accountability, and deependemocracy (IDB 1997; World Bank 2000; Burki, Perry and Dillinger 1999; Huther and Shah 1998).19 Debt crises beginning in the early eighties and whose ripples continued through the nineties highlighted the needfor fiscal responsibility. This was particularly acute in countries where intermediate territorial entities could borrowfreely, as in Argentina and Brazil (Haggard 2000: 42; Rodden 2006). Debate focused on the appropriate extent offiscal decentralization and on problems of governance, capacity, and corruption at the subnational level(Prudhomme 1995; Treisman 2000; Santos 1998).


12/34

Page | 12

democratization or Grindle (2000, 18), who argues that audacious reforms that decentralizedauthority in Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela were designed to strengthen democracy. The coreargument is that democracy empowers a variety of actors to mobilize and pursue previouslysuppressed (or newly manifested) demands (Huber and Stephens 2011). To the extent thatregionalization is attractive for voters, interest groups or political parties, one may expect rising

pressure for decentralization. This argument appears persuasive against the backdrop of LatinAmericas tortuous history of state building characterized by deep-seated territorial conflict (seee.g. Castro-Claro and Chasteen eds 2003; Centeno 2002; Rector 2009).

However, the relationship between democracy and decentralization is neither simple norstraightforward (Eaton 2004: 16; Gibson ed. 2004; Montero and Samuels eds. 2004). For one,Eaton (2004: 17) suggests that the interplay may be historically contingent. For example,democratization in early 20th century Argentina or Uruguay led to centralization of politicalauthoritynot the reverse. Others emphasize party politics as a mediating factor. Studyingdecentralization efforts in Bolivia and Colombia, ONeill (2005) argues that decentralization is afunction of the anticipated electoral trade-off for national parties of spreading authority acrossnational and subnational arenas. Willis, Garman, Haggard (1999) and Eaton (2001, 2004)

propose that decentralization occurs to the extent that subnational elites broker candidateselection for national elections.

Path dependence may also intervene. Comparing decentralization in Argentina, Brazil,and Mexico, Falleti (2010) finds that sequencing mediates the effect of democracy ondecentralization: reforms where political decentralization is prior to fiscal or administrativedecentralization lead to deeper decentralization. And finally, charting decentralization in Brazil,Samuels (2004) emphasizes that military regimes may be the ones initiating decentralization toundercut oppositional forces (see also Eaton (2004)) on Chile.

Theoretical expectations about democratization and regionalization are moresophisticated than the available evidence. Here we place our new dataset on regional authority

before Latin American scholars, and pair it with existing measures of democratization as a steptowards more valid inference. Our purpose is to uncover and illustrate plausible patterns ofregionalization and democratization in order to signpost some fruitful lines for futurecomparative inquiry.

Exploring associations

There are several widely used measures of democracy for Latin American countries, includingthe Polity IV index, the two-dimensional measure developed by Coppedge, Alvarez andMaldonaldo (2008), andFreedom House. We use the Polity IV index because it has the fullestoverlap with our dataset.20 Our findings are broadly consistent across all three measures ofdemocracy.

Figure 5 plots standardized average readings by year for each measure against the RAIaverage for the 20 countries for which we have data since 1950. Democracy and regionalauthority move broadly in tandem, and this is robust across measures. The bivariate correlations

20 Polity IV covers all 61 years in our dataset, but lacks entries on four out of 27 countries (Bahamas, Barbados,Belize, and Surinam). Freedom House has readings for all countries but is limited to the period 1972-2010, andCoppedge, Alvarez and Maldonaldo (CAM) have all but one country (Dominican Republic) with estimates for1950-2000.


13/34

Page | 13

across the respective time periods range from 0.20 (inclusion measure of Coppedge et al.) to 0.28(contestation measure of Coppedge et al.).


However, the real testing ground for the argument that democracy co-varies with regional

authority is within each country. Figure 6 summarizes bivariate correlations between the RAIand Polity IV across 61 years for 18 Latin American countries. The two processes movetogether: the association is strongly positive in 15 countries and above 0.70 for eleven of these.Two countries display weakly positive associations (Panama and Ecuador), and in two countriesthe relationship is negative (Cuba and El Salvador).21 The average association is 0.59.


The connection between democracy and decentralization appears historically contingent.We split the six decades in two equal eras: 1950-1980 and 1981-2010. The cut-off point broadlycorresponds with the onset of a major ground shift in Latin American politics from importsubstitution, military rule, and interstate conflict to market liberalism, civilian (and moredemocratic) rule, and interstate collaboration within regional international organizations.

Figure 7 plots bivariate correlations for the eleven countries where regional authority andpolitical regime change in the first and second period. The association between democracy andregional authority appears similar in the two periods: mean and median correlations are notsignificantly different (0.43 and 0.61 respectively in 1950-1980; 0.44 and 0.62 in 1980-2010).But this masks marked differences between the two periods.


First, continuity between the two periods needs to be nuanced. In the earlier period, theRAI does not detect change in seven countries even while their polity score changed: Bolivia, ElSalvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Paraguay. In the later period, Honduras

did not change on RAI but changed on polity, while in Costa Rica and Cuba RAI but not politychanged.22 Because no correlation can be calculated with a constant, these countries cannot beplotted on the graph, and yet they suggest a weak association between democracy andregionalization. Second, the ratio of regional to regime reforms was much lower in the firstcompared to the second period0.39 against 0.74. The lower the ratio, the looser tends to be theassociation. Finally, the association between democracy and regional authority switches signs in

21 For two countries there are no correlations: Costa Rica because the polity score is constant (while the RAIchanges once from 1 to zero in 1995), and Honduras because the RAI remains constant at 1 while polity scores vary.22 Scale pressures for intermediate government are relatively low in these countries. Research on the relationship

between population scale and the OECD countries suggests that regional authority increases in step with populationfrom a minimum population of 2-2.5 million (Marks, Hooghe, Schakel 2008; Hooghe and Marks 2012). All butCuba have small or modest populations: four below 2.5 million (El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay for

period 1), three below 4 million (Bolivia and Haiti for period 1, Costa Rica for period 2), two below 5 million (Haitifor period 1, Honduras for period 2). Cuba had a population of 10 million in 2010. In 1950, all countries had anintermediate tier of deconcentrated government, and Bolivia and Cuba had some representative institutions as well.Costa Rica abolished provincias in 1995, and switched to a model of task-specific deconcentrated regions(mancomunidades) flexibly charged with implementing particular services such as waste management, economic

planning etc. (Elmenhorst et al. 2011; Ryan 2004). While intermediary in territorial scale, mancomunidades do notmeet the criterion of general purpose government.


14/34

Page | 14

several countries: from negative to positive in Chile and Panama, and the converse in Ecuadorand Colombia. These patterns are consistent across different measurements for democracy.23

The latter two cases merit some discussion. At first blush, it is surprising to find anegative association between democracy and regional authority in Colombia, because thecountry is widely seen as one of the more dramatic cases of how democratization aids

decentralization (ONeill 1999; Penfold-Beccera 1999; Falleti 2010). The paradox appearscreated by crude operationalization of democracy underlying the three democracy measures. The1991 constitutional reform, which enshrined departmental and indigenous self-governance andwas followed by a series of enabling laws empowering departamentos, came on the heels of therestoration of competitive party politics. However, none of the democracy measures picks up thesubtle change in party-political dynamics that opened the door for decentralization. For example,Polity IV registers Colombia as a stable formal democracy with polity scores ranging between 7and 9 since 1957.

Contrary to Colombia, the negative association between democracy and regionalauthority reflects facts on the ground for Ecuador. From 1981-2010 regional authority increased,albeit moderately from 5.99 to 7.0, after provincial assembly and prefect elections werereinstated at the end of military rule in 1979.24 However, democratic quality decreased from2000 (from 9 to 6 on Polity IV) even while regional authority resisted change. Interestingly, thenegative association between democracy and regional authority would become stronger if thenew 2008 constitution, which deepens decentralization, is implemented (ONeill 2003; Frank2007).

All this suggests that a) the effect of democracy on regional authority appears weaker inthe earlier period than in the second, and b) that it is contextual: stronger in some countries thanothers.

A final argument relates decentralization to democratic transition. This claim emphasizespunctuated change, and anticipates that decentralization is most likely in democratic transition.

Figure 8 shows that there is lot to be said for this. The box plot compares annual change inregional authority during democratic transition periods (right) and non-transition periods (left)for the 23 countries for which we have polity scores. Not surprisingly, the median year shows nochange. More telling are the boxes, which represent the 25-75 interquartile range, and thewhiskers, which show the 5-95 per cent range across 23 countries, and these reflect aconsiderably busier as well as more varied reform schedule in transition periods than outside.Average annual change is +0.23 in transition years against +0.008 in non-transition years withstandard deviations of 1.10 and 0.87 respectively. A difference of means test proves thesedifferences to be significant. We define a transition period as any ten years following a polityshift from negative/neutral to positive whereby a) the polity score is consistently positive for theentire ten years, and b) the annual score is five or higher during at least half of the period.25


23For the 1950-1979 period, the Coppedge et al. measures; for the 1980-2010, the Freedom House measure.24 Ecuadorian provincias did not regain all authority lost as a result of military rule, because the abolition of theSenate meant that they lost control over law making and constitutional reform.25 We experimented with variations on these criteria with no appreciably different results.


15/34

Page | 15

Illustrating causal mechanisms

The causal mechanisms connecting democratization and decentralization are diverse. Threeappear common: U-curve normalization after military rule, centripetal regionalization fuelled bynational party competition, and economic development pressures. Centrifugal regionalization asresponse to regional party or movement mobilization is a fourth mechanism. While possibly the

main driver of regionalization in Europe and Southeast Asia, it has so far played a minor role inLatin America. The few successful cases can be read off the last column of Table 4.

This section illustrates how information collected by the RAI project can be used toilluminate one of these mechanisms: U-curve normalization. We provide brief portraits fromthree countries.

Normalization after military rule may well be the most common path in Latin America.Authoritarian regimes often suspend elections, replace elected by centrally vetted or appointedgovernors, or send the national legislature home. Once military rule is lifted, electoralarrangements are the first institutions to be restored. The pattern of regional authority follows aU-curve.

Where regional authority was extensive before authoritarian rule, regime change cantherefore trigger a sharp reversal of fortunes. An interesting implication is that federalcountriesArgentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuelashould experience the largest variation inregional authority, and indeed, the standard deviation in regional change is three times higherthan among non-federal countries.26 Hence regime change appears an exception to the rule thatfederal institutions help preserve a structurally induced status quo bias (Diaz-Cayeros 2004;Stepan 2004).

Brazil, Uruguay and Mexico illustrate variants of the U-curve normalization dynamic. InBrazil, a military coup in 1964 ended two decades of competitive politics. A series ofAtos (Acts)that superseded the constitution set out the legal framework for centralization (Samuels and

Mainwaring 2004: 92-94). They authorized direct intervention in the estados without warning,instituted indirect elections for governors, and imposed severe restrictions on political parties andcivil liberties (Samuels and Abrucio 2000: 49; Falleti 2009: 117-119). Our scoring reflects thecontrolling hand of the military regime in legislative and executive representation.Estado policydiscretion was curtailed, including its tutelage over local government, even though states retainedsome implementation capacity (Wilson et al 2008: 147). The military police were brought backunder central control. National legislative power shifted to the president who had the authority topurge elected officials from office and shut down the assembly, which happened three times infifteen years of military rule (Falleti 2009). The Senate lost its veto over constitutional change.The combination of military control, regular use of decree powers, indirect elections, and aheavily constrained national legislature meant that the estados self rule and shared rule had been

fundamentally compromised. The upshot was a sharp drop in regional authority of more than 9points, the third-largest drop in the dataset.27 In 1967 these and other measures were consolidatedin a new constitution, which now also formally limited state autonomy.Estados regainedauthority in two spurts in 1982 and 1988. TheAtos were overturned in 1979, though politicalcontrol remained in military hands until the onset ofabertura, or political opening, with the first

26 On average the RAI changes in federal countries 0.43 a year against 0.11 in non-federal countries, with a standarddeviation of 1.78 and 0.58 respectively. These figures are for the 20 countries for which we have scores since 1950.27 The largest drops in RAI were in Argentina, in 1966 (12) and again in 1976 (13).


16/34

Page | 16

direct elections for governors in 1982. The elected governors reclaimed revenues andresponsibilities, which liftedestados as early as 1982, before democratization, two-thirds to theirpre-1964 level of authority (Montero 2001: 59; Samuels and Mainwaring 2004: 97). It was notuntil the 1988 constitution, which ushered in full democratization and restored the equal juridicalstatus of states, that estados recouped all lost terrain. This is not to say that Brazilian politicians

simply pushed the reset button. As Samuels (2004) details, the contextual conditions in 1982were profoundly different from those in 1963: the country had become more urbanized andmilitary policy had played into this by privileging municipalities over states. Thus territorialpolitics in post-military Brazil came to resemble a three-way balancing act between broadlyequal partners.

Non-federal Uruguay was in the 1950s a relatively consolidated democracy withauthoritative departamentos possessing directly elected assemblies and executives, residualpowers, and some fiscal autonomy. A military coup in 1973 dissolved the legislature andreplaced elected politicians with military personnel even while the departamento continued tofunction as an administration. The result is a sudden drop in RAI by 5 points. In 1980 themilitary government proposed a constitutional reform that would have regularized the existing

regime, but this was rejected in a plebiscite. The military regime collapsed, and in 1985, the yearof democratization, direct departmental elections were restored. The RAI score regained its pre-1973 level.

The first leg of the U-curve is much flatter in Mexico. One-party authoritarianism,institutionalized after the 1917 revolution, had been slowly chipping away at estado autonomy sothat Mexican states entered our dataset in 1950 at a modest level of authority: 12.5 (of amaximum of 24)well below Argentineprovincias (15.5), Brazilian estados (16.5), Australianstates (18.5), US states (19.5) or Canadian provinces (20) of that period. Central encroachmenthad been helped by a constitution that, while federal, was primarily about limiting the power ofthe states (Diaz-Cayeros 2004: 301). The cornerstone of this system was the conditionaldependence of state governors, who, though directly elected, could be (and regularly were)replaced by presidential appointees (Diaz-Cayeros 2006: 81). One-party authoritarianismcontinued to erode regional authority over the following decades, and by 1982 state authoritybottomed out at 10.5. With hindsight, the corner was turned in the late 1970s, whendemocratization inched forwards as did state authority. Electoral reforms were also here thetrigger for political change, but while in Brazil the game changer was restoring direct electionsfor governors, in Mexico, the phased introduction of proportional representation and looser legalconstraints on opposition parties in 1977, 1986, and 1989 injected competitiveness in elections.Baja California was the first state to elect a non-PRI governor in 1989 and a nearly century-longone-party monopoly was broken. The exact timing for upscaling states from deconcentrated toself-governing jurisdictions is not easy to determine because states had never formally lost theirconstitutionally entrenched legislative autonomy. A constitutional amendment in 1983strengthened municipal autonomy, but a similar provision for state autonomy was not strictlynecessary. The transition was more subtle and infused with democratic practice. As Ochoa-Reza(2004; 274) observes, Divided and juxtaposed governments . . . do mean that the federalgovernment cannot control all state and local decisions. As juxtaposed and divided governmentsarose in Mexico, multiparty competition . . . transformed the formal federal framework into afunctioning federal system. We opt for 1989 rather than 1977 or 1983 in light of the dominantview in the literature that the first reforms in the 1980s were primarily characterized bydeconcentrationthe central government offloading tasks and personnel without commensurate


17/34

Page | 17

policy discretion (Jordana 2001; Diaz-Cayeros 2004; Faletti 2010). Starting in 1994, PRIPresident Ernesto Zedillo introduced reforms that heavily constrained the federal veto on estadoautonomy (Grindle 2007, 31), which is reflected in the coding by increasing institutional depth tothe maximum. Political decentralization was followed by extensive policy decentralization ineducation and welfare in the 1990s, and in 2004, states recouped authority to levy a surtax on the

VAT. However, unlike their Argentine or Brazilian counterparts Mexican estados have hadlimited success in securing co-determination in executive and fiscal national policy making.

CONCLUSION

This paper sets out a flexible annual measure of regional authority across the countries of LatinAmerica and the Caribbean. Regional authority varies in interesting ways both over time andacross countries. It also varies in ways that reflect the contrasting barriers to reform in self ruleand shared rule. Finally, one can discern patterns of variation across each of the dimensions thatwe conceive as indicators of these more general concepts. Our intention is to make the numerousdecisions that underpin our coding transparent so that researchers can amend or refute them or

re-aggregate scores to produce alternative general measures. While the level of detail producedin the RAI for a particular country can never compete with that of an ideographic case study, weintend to capture the twists and turns of reform in each country and to do so in a frame thatallows systematic comparison across space and time.

Bringing our knowledge of decentralization in the OECD and in Latin America intosystematic contact comes with some serious challenges. Perhaps the most serious is to evaluatethe authority of regional governments under authoritarian rule at the center. We know thatauthoritarian rule does not necessarily annul regional authority, but we seek to develop ameasure that is sufficiently nuanced to detect variation.

Then there is the issue of informal and formal authority. Our focus is on formal authority,

broadly understood to include not only formal legislation, but also the routinized application oflaw. But we do not engage the range of informal conditionsparty political structures,clientelism, the effect of individual leaderson the grounds that it is useful to keep theseseparate if we wish to evaluate their causal impact. Our focus on formal authority opens the doorfor an empirical investigation of whether, when and why there is a gap between formal andinformal authority (Eaton, Kaiser and Smoke 2010).

Our effort to conceptualize and code formal subnational authority through an annualtime-series contributes to the broader literature on multilevel governance. There is much herethat would repay detailed investigation. Some small and relatively ethnically homogenouscountries have created special autonomous regions with substantial political authority forindigenous communities (e.g. Nicaragua and Panama), while some large and more diverse states

have not (e.g. Brazil, Mexico or Peru). Some of the most stable democratic regimes in LatinAmerica still have centrally-appointed regional executives (e.g. Chile), while some democracieswith lower polity scores have regional elections and referenda (e.g. Bolivia, Colombia, Peru).

Municipal decentralization also appears to be more prominent in Latin America than inother world regions. Several Latin American countries have large municipalities performingfunctions that in many OECD countries are carried out at intermediate levels. In some of themost centralized countries, devolution of authority has taken place at the municipal level


18/34

Page | 18

bypassing intermediate government, and in one (Costa Rica) the intermediate level wasabolished. Municipal decentralization falls outside the remit of the RAI, except in those contextswhere asymmetric regionsusually national capital districtscombine the status of amunicipality with that of being a special region. Far from side-lining the analysis of localgovernment, our study highlights the urgency of making headway in estimating and theorizing

local governance if we wish to have a more complete understanding of the way in whichgovernments at different scales interact.


19/34

Page | 19

REFERENCES (incomplete)Amoretti, Ugo and Nancy Bermeo eds. 2004. Federalism and Territorial Cleavages. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins

University.Ansolabehere, Stephen, Jonathan Rodden, James M. Snyder, Jr. 2008. The strength of issues: using multiple

measures to gauge preference stability, ideological constraint, and issue voting.American Political ScienceReview 102 (2): 215-32.

Armijo, Leslie Elliott, and Carlos Gervasoni. 2010. Two dimensions of democracy and the economy.Democratization 17: 1, 143-174.

Arzaghi, Mohammad, and Vernon Henderson. 2005. Why countries are fiscally decentralizing.Journal of PublicEconomics 89 (7): 1157-89.

Beer, Caroline. 2004. Electoral competition and fiscal decentralization in Mexico, in Alfred P. Montero and David J.Samuels eds.Decentralization and Democracy in Latin America, Notre Dame, Ind: University of NotreDame Press, 180-202.

Beer, Caroline and Neil J. Mitchell. 2006. Comparing nations and states: human rights and democracy in India.Comparative Political Studies 39:996-1018.

Birdsall, Nancy, Augusto de la Torre, and Felipe Valencia Caicedo. 2010. The Washington Consensus: Assessing aDamaged Brand. Washington DC: Center for Global Development: Working Paper 211 (May 2010).

Borges, Andr. 2007. Rethinking state politics: the withering of state dominant machines in Brazil.BrazilianPolitical Science Review 1 (2).Burki, Shahid Javed, Guillermo Perry and William Dillinger. 1999.Beyond the Center: Decentralizing the State.

The World Bank, Washington DC.Carbonell, Miguel [s.d.]. Notas sobre la Reforma Constitucional en Mxico.

http://www.juridicas.unam.mx/publica/librev/rev/facdermx/cont/245/art/art14.pdf.Castro-Klaren, Sara, and John Charles Chasteen eds. 2003.Beyond Imagined Communities: Reading and Writing

the Nation in Nineteenth Century Latin America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Charron, Nicholas, Lewis Dijkstra, and Victor Lapuente. 2010.Bringing the Regions Back In: A Study of Sub-

National Variation in Quality of Government in 172 EU Regions. Paper prepared for the 2010 AnnualMeeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington DC, September 2-5, 2010.

Chen, Xi. 2005.An Authoritarian State and a Contentious Society: the Case of China. PhD dissertation, ColumbiaUniversity.

Centeno, Miguel Angel. 2002.Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America. University Park, Penn:Pennsylvania State University Press.

Collier, David, and Stephen Levitsky. 1997. Democracy with adjectives: conceptual innovation in comparativeresearch. World Politics 49: 43051.

Coppedge, Michael, Antonio Alvarez, and C. Maldonado. 2008. Two persistent dimensions of democracy:contestation and inclusiveness.Journal of Politics 70: 63247.

Comisin Permanente de Funcionarios Fiscales. Programa para la Optimizacin de la Gestin del Impuesto Predialy la Modernizacin Catastral. Accessed February 04, 2012. http://www.indetec.gob.mx/cpff/comision/.

Conferencia Nacional de Gobernadores - CONAGO. Listado de Gobernadores Miembros de la CONAGO.Accessed May 03, 2010. http://www.conago.org.mx.

Dahl, Robert. 1968. Power",International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 12: 405-15.Daughters, Robert and Leslie Harper. 2007. Fiscal and political decentralization reforms, in Eduard Lora, ed. The

State of State Reform in Latin America. Washington D.C.: Inter-American Bank for Development, 213-61.Diaz-Cayeros, Alberto. 2006. Federalism, Fiscal Authority, and Centralization in Latin America.New York:

Cambridge University Press.Diaz-Cayeros, Alberto. 2004. Do federal institutions matter? Rules and political practices in regional resource

allocation in Mexico, in Edward L. Gibson ed. Federalism and Democracy in Latin-America. Baltimore:Johns Hopkins, 297-322.

Dickovick, James Tyler. 2004.Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations In Developing Countries: Brazil, South Africa,Peru, And Senegal (1980-Present). Doctoral dissertation, Princeton University.

Eaton, Kent 2001. Political obstacles to decentralization: Evidence from Argentina and the Philippines.Development and Change 32(1): 101-27.


20/34

Page | 20

Eaton, Kent. 2004. Politics Beyond the Capital: The Design of Subnational Institutions in South America. Stanford:Stanford University Press.

Eaton, Kent. 2006. Decentralization's nondemocratic roots: authoritarianism and subnational reform in LatinAmerica.Latin American Politics and Society 48(1): 1-26.

Eaton, Kent. 2008. Federalism in Europe and Latin America: conceptualization, causes, and consequences. WorldPolitics 60 (4): 665-98.

Elazar, Daniel. 1987.Exploring Federalism. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Elmenhorst, Andreas, Sylvia Aguilar, Nidia Cruz, and Rolando Castro. 2011. Gua para Mancomunidades en

Gestin Integral de Residuos Slidos. Programa CYMA.Escobar-Lemmon, Maria. 2001. Fiscal decentralization and federalism in Latin America. Publius 31(4): 23-41.Faguet, J. P. 1997. Decentralization and local government performance. World Bank/FAO/GTZ paperfor the

Technical Consultation on Decentralization, Rome.Falleti, Tulia G. 2005. A sequential theory of decentralization: Latin American cases in comparative perspective.

American Political Science Review 99(3): 327-46.Falleti, Tulia. 2010.Decentralization and Subnational Politics in Latin America. New York: Cambridge University

Press.Falleti, Tulia G. 2011.Varieties of authoritarianism: the organization of the military state and its effect on federalism

in Argentina and Brazil. Studies in Comparative International Development, (published online November17, 2010).

Frank, Jonas. 2007.Decentralization in Ecuador: Actors, Institutions, and Incentives. 1st ed. Baden-Baden

[Germany]: Nomos.Gervasoni, Carlos. 2010. Measuring variance in subnational regimes: results from an expert-based operationalization

of democracy in the Argentine provinces."Journal of Politics in Latin America 2(2)13-52, online:.

Gibson, Edward L. ed. 2004. Federalism and Democracy in Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.Giraudy, Agustina. 2010. The politics of subnational undemocratic regime reproduction in Argentina and Mexico.

Journal of Politics in Latin America 2(2):53-84.Giraudy, Agustina. 2009. Subnational Undemocratic Regime Continuity after Democratization: Argentina and

Mexico in Comparative Perspective. PhD Dissertation, University of North Carolina. Accessed July 08,2011.

Gleditsch, Kristian, and Michael Ward. 1997. Double take: a re-examination of democracy and autocracy in modernpolities.Journal of Conflict Resolution 41: 36183.

Goldberg, Ellis, Erik Wibbels, and Eric Mvukiyehe. 2008. Lessons from strange cases. Democracy, development,

and the resource curse in the U.S. States. Comparative Political Studies 41(4/5):477-514.Grindle, Merilee S. 2007. Going Local: Decentralization and the Promise of Good Governance. Princeton, N.J:

Princeton University Press.Haggard, Stephen. 2000. The politics of decentralization in Latin America, in Shahid Javed Burki and Guillermo E.

Perry, eds. 2000.Decentralization and Accountability of the Public Sector. Annual World Bank Conferenceon Development in Latin America and the Caribbean 1999. Proceedings of a Conference held in Valdivia,Chile June 20-22, 1999.

Haggard, Stephen and Stephen B. Webb. 2004. Political incentives and intergovernmental fiscal relations:Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico compared, in Alfred P. Montero and David J. Samuels eds.Decentralizationand Democracy in Latin America. Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press, 235-270.

Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and Robert H. Wilson. 2008. Governance in the Americas:Decentralization, Democracy, and Subnational Government in Brazil, Mexico, and the USA.Notre Dame,Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.

Hernandez Valdez, Alfonso. 2000. Las causas estructurales de la democracia local en Mexico, 1989-1998. Politica yGobierno 7(1):101-144.Hill, Kim Quaile. 1994.Democracy in the Fifty States. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Hooghe, Liesbet, Gary Marks, and Arjan H. Schakel. 2010. The Rise of Regional Authority: A Comparative Study of

42 Democracies. Routledge: London and NewYork.Hooghe, Liesbet, and Gary Marks. 2012. Beyond federalism: estimating and explaining the territorial structure of

government. Publius (online doi: 10.1093/publius/ pjs029).Huther, and Anwar Shah. 1998. Applying a simple measure of good governance to the debate on scale

decentralization. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, no. 1894.IADB. 1997.Latin America After a Decade of Reforms. Washington DC: IADB.


21/34

Page | 21

Inman, Robert P. 2008. Federalism's values and the value of federalism.NBER Working PaperNo. W13735.Inter-American Development Bank. 2007. Decentralization in Mercosur Countries: The devil is in the details.

Working PaperDecember 2007.Jordana, Jacint. 2001. Relaciones Intergubernamentales y Descentralizacin en Amrica Latina: Una Perspectiva

Institucional. IABD (http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=2220186.)Huber, Evelyne an Stephens, John. 2012. Democracy and the Left. Social Policy and Inequality in Latin America.

The University of Chicago Press.Keating, Michael. The New Regionalism in Western Europe: Territorial Restructuring and Political Change.

Aldershot: Edward Elgar.Lane, Jan-Erik, and Svante Ersson. 1999. Politics and Society in Western Europe. London: Sage.Lijphart, Arend. 1999. Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. New

Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Malinowitz, Stanley. 2006.Decentralization, Participation, and Consumer services: A Case Study of Municipal

Enterprises in Cuba. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Economics, University of Massachussetts,Amherst.

Marks, Gary. 2007. Triangulation and the square root law.Electoral Studies 26, 1: 1-10.Marshall, M., and K. Jaggers. Polity IV Project. Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 18002002.

Dataset Users Manual. 2002. Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM),University of Maryland, http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity

Mendez Delgado, Elier and Mara del Carmen Lloret Feijoo. 2007. Anlisis territorial del desarrollo humano en

Cuba. Electronic book available at www.eumed.net/libros/2007c/.McMann, Kelly, and Nikolai Petrov. 2000. A survey of democracy in Russias Regions. Post-Soviet Geography and

Economics 41(3):155-182.Merrill, Tim L., and Ramn Mir. 2011.Mexico: A Country Study: Government Structure. Accessed November 28,

2011. http://countrystudies.us/mexico/82.htm.Montero, Alfred P., and David Samuels, eds. 2004.Decentralization and Democracy in Latin America.Notre Dame,

Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.Ochoa-Reza, Enrique. 2004. Multiple arenas of struggle: federalism and Mexicos transition to democracy, in

Edward L. Gibson, ed. Federalism and Democracy in Latin America. Johns Hopkins University Press:Baltimore, 255-296.

ONeill, Kathleen. 2003. Decentralization as an electoral strategy. Comparative Political Studies 36.ONeill, Kathleen. 2005.Decentralizing the State: Elections, Parties, and Local Power in the Andes. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Panizza, Ugo. 1999. On the determinants of fiscal centralization: theory, and evidence.Journal of Public Economics74 (1): 97-139.

Penfold-Becerra, Michael Alan. 1999.Institutional Electoral Incentives and Decentralization: Comparing Colombiaand Venezuela. PhD. thesis, Columbia University.

Prud'homme, Rmy. 1995. The dangers of decentralization. The World Bank Research Observer. 10(2):201-220.Ravallion, Martin. 2002. Are the poor protected from budget cuts? Evidence from Argentina. Journal of Applied

Economics 5(1):95-121.Rector, Chad. 2009. Federations: The Political Dynamics of Cooperation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Riker, William H. 1964. Federalism: origin, operation, significance. Boston: Little, Brown.Roeder, Philip G. 2007. Where Nation-States Come From: Institutional Change in the Age of Nationalism.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.Rodden, Jonathan. 2002. The dilemma of fiscal federalism: grants and fiscal performance around the world.

American Journal of Political Science 46(3): 67087.

2004. Comparative federalism and decentralization: on meaning and measurement. Comparative Politics36(4): 48199. 2006.Hamiltons Paradox: The Promise and Peril of Fiscal Federalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.Rokkan, Stein and Derek Urwin. 1983.Economy, Territory, Identity. Politics of West European Peripheries.

London: Sage.Roman, Peter. 2003a. Peoples Power: Cubas Experience with Representative Government. Lanham, MD:

Rowman & Littlefield.Roman, Peter. 2003b. Representative government in socialist Cuba.Latin American Perspectives 20 (1): 7-27.


22/34

Page | 22

Ryan, Jeffery. 2004. Decentralization and democratic instability: The case of Costa Rica. Public AdministrationReview 64 (1): 81-91.

Samuels, David J. 2004. The political logic of decentralization in Brazil, in Alfred P. Montero and David J. Samuelseds.Decentralization and Democracy in Latin America,Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press,67-93.

Samuels, David J., and Fernando Luiz Abrucio. 2000. Federalism and democratic transitions: the "new" politics ofthe governors in Brazil. Publius, 30:2: 43-61.

Santos, B. D. S. 1998. Participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre: toward A redistributive democracy. Politics andSociety 26 (4).

Schakel, Arjan H. 2008. Validation of the regional authority index.Regional and Federal Studies 18 (23): 14366.Shair-Rosenfield, Sarah, Gary Marks, Liesbet Hooghe. 2012.Regional Authority in Indonesia, Malaysia, the

Philippines, South Korea and Thailand from 1950 to 2010. Paper prepared for the American PoliticalScience Association, New Orleans, Sept.

Sobarzo, Horacio. 2004. Tax effort and tax potential of state governments in Mexico: a representative tax systemWorking Paper #315. Unpublished manuscript, last modified October 08, 2011.

Solt, Frederick. 2003.Explaining the Quality of New Democracies: Actors, Institutions, and SocioeconomicStructure in Mexicos States. Ph.D. thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Souza, Celina. 2005. Brazil's tax system: the dilemmas of policy reform. February Policy Paper for Focal:Canadian Foundation for the Americas.

Stegarescu, Dan. 2005.Decentralization of Government in an Integrating World. Doctoral Dissertation, Zentrum fur

Europische Wirtschaftsforschung, Mannheim, Germany.Stepan, Alfred. 2004. Federalism and democracy, in Ugo Amoretti and Nancy Bermeo eds. Federalism and

Territorial Cleavages. Johns Hopkins University Press.Stepan, Alfred, Juan J. Linz and Yogendra Yadav. 2011. Crafting State-Nations: India and other Multinational

Democracies. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Treisman, Daniel. 2000.Decentralization and the Quality of Government. Department of Political Science Working

Paper. University of California, Los Angeles.Watts, Ronald L. 1999. Comparing Federal Systems, 2nd ed. Kingston: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations,

McGill-Queens University Press.West, L., C.P. Wong. 1995. Fiscal decentralization and growing regional disparities in rural China: some evidence in

the provision of social Services. Oxford Review of Economic Policy 11(4):70-84World Bank. 2000.Entering the Twenty-First Century. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.


23/34

Page | 23

Table 1: Self-Rule

Self-rule The authority exercised by a regional government over those who live in the region

Institutionaldepth

The extent to which aregional government isautonomous rather thandeconcentrated.

0-3 0123

no functioning general-purpose administration at regional leveldeconcentrated, general-purpose, administrationnon-deconcentrated, generalpurpose, administration subject to central government vetonon-deconcentrated, generalpurpose, administration not subject to central government veto

Policy scope The range of policies for

which a regionalgovernmentis responsible.

0-4 0

1

234

very weak authoritative competencies in a), b), c), d)

authoritative competencies in a), b), c) or d)a) economic policy;b) cultural-educational policy;c) welfare policy;d) one of the following: residual powers, police, own institutional setup, local governmentauthoritative competencies in at least two of a), b), c), or d).authoritative competencies in d) and at least two of a), b), or c).criteria for3 plus authority over immigration or citizenship

Fiscal autonomy The extent to which aregional government canindependently tax itspopulation.

0-4 0123

4

central government sets base and rate of all regional taxesregional government sets the rate of minor taxesregional government sets base and rate of minor taxesregional government sets the rate of at least one major tax: personal income, corporate, value added, orsales taxregional government sets base and rate of at least one major tax: personal income, corporate, valueadded, or sales tax

Representation The extent to which aregion is endowed with anindependent legislatureand executive.

0-4012

012

Assembly:no regional assemblyindirectly elected regional assemblydirectly elected assemblyExecutive:regional executive appointed by central government;dual executives appointed by central government and regional assemblyregional executive is appointed by a regional assembly or directly elected


24/34

Page | 24

Table 2: Shared Rulea

Shared rule The authority exercised by a regional government or its representatives in the country as a whole.

Law making The extent to which regional representatives codetermine national legislation.

0-2 0.50.50.50.5

regions are the unit of representation in the legislatureregional governments designate representatives in the legislatureregions have majority representation in the legislaturethe legislature with regional representation has extensive legislative authority

Executive control The extent to which a regional government codetermines national policy in intergovernmentalmeetings.

0-2 0

1

2

no routine meetings between central and regional governments to negotiate policroutine meetings between central and regional governments without legally bindauthority.routine meetings between central and regional governments with authority to realegally binding decisions

Fiscal control The extent to which regional representatives codetermine the distribution of national tax revenues.

0-2 0

1

2

regional governments or their representatives in the legislature are not consultedover the distribution of tax revenuesregional governments or their representatives in the legislature negotiate over thdistribution of tax revenues, but do not have a vetoregional governments or their representatives in the legislature have a veto overthe distribution of tax revenues

Constitutional reform The extent to which regional representatives codetermine constitutional change.

0-3 0

1

2

3

the central government and/or national electorate can unilaterally change theconstitutiona legislature based on the principle of regional representation can vetoconstitutional change; or constitutional change requires a referendum based on

principle of equal regional representationregional governments or their representatives in a legislature can, alone orcollectively, do one or more of the following: postpone constitutional reform,introduce amendments, raise the decision hurdle in the other chamber, require asecond vote in the other chamber, require a popular referendumregional governments or their representatives in a legislature can, alone orcollectively, veto constitutional change.

a Shared rule criteria are adjusted for special autonomous regions.


25/34

Page | 25

Table 3: Factor analysis (principal factors)

Factor loadings Uniqueness

Insti tut ional depth 0.660 0.565Policy scope 0.866 0.251

Fiscal autonomy 0.818 0.330Representat ion 0.783 0.387Law making 0.613 0.624Execut ive contro l 0.577 0.667Fiscal con tro l 0.729 0.469Constitut ional reform 0.670 0.551

Eigenvalue 4.157Proportion explained 0.82Chi2(28) = 8024.51 (prob>chi2=0.0000)

Note: Factor analysis (principal factors, one factor) based on polychoric correlations. N=1512 (scores for 27 countriesfor 1950-2010.)

Polychoric correlations

institutionaldepth

policyscope

fiscalautonomy

represen-tation

lawmaking

executivecontrol

fiscalcontrol

constitutionalreform

institutional depth 1

policy scope .677 1

fiscal autonomy .458 .700 1

representation .749 .824 .555 1

law making .332 .384 .544 .340 1

executive control .332 .556 .513 .388 .196 1fiscal control .317 .553 .657 .439 .474 .585 1

constitutional reform .268 .430 .614 .373 .725 .232 .593 1


26/34

Page | 26

Figure 1: Country Trends 1950-2010

0

5

10

15

20

0

5

10

15

20

0

5

10

15

20

0

5

10

15

20

0

5

10

15

20

1950 1970 1990 2010 1950 1970 1990 2010 1950 1970 1990 2010

1950 1970 1990 2010 1950 1970 1990 2010 1950 1970 1990 2010

Argentina Bahamas Barbados Belice Bolivia Brazil

Chile Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Dominican Republic Ecuador

El Salvador Guatemala Guyana Haiti Honduras J amaica

Mxico Nicaragua Panam Paraguay Peru Suriname

Trinidad and Tobago Uruguay Venezuela

RAI

YearGraphs by country_name


27/34

Page | 27

Figure 2: Evolution of regional authority in Latin America from 1950 to 2010

Note: Average RAI across the 20 Latin American countries with continuous data for 1950-2010. Thevertical lines represent +/- 1 standard deviation of the mean.


28/34

Page | 28

Figure 3: Evolution of self rule dimensions 1950-2010

Note: Average scores across 20 Latin American countries with continuous data for 1950-2010. Scales

differ: institutional depth (0-3), policy scope (0-4), fiscal autonomy (0-4), and representation (0-4). Theseare the empirical ranges for a regional tier or individual region. Country scores can be higher if there ismore than one tier. Only Chile (since 1976) and Peru have two tiers (Peru had three tiers for 1989-1992).Hence the scores above provide fairly precise estimates of the evolution of regional authority across these

dimensions for the average region in Latin America.


29/34

Page | 29

Figure 4: Evolution of shared rule dimensions 1950-2010

Note: Average scores across the 20 Latin American countries with continuous data for 1950-2010. Scalesdiffer: law making, executive control, and fiscal control (0-2), and constitutional reform (0-3). These arethe empirical ranges for a regional tier or individual region. Country scores can be higher if there is morethan one tier. Only Chile (since 1976) and Peru have two tiers (Peru had three tiers for 1989-92). Hence thescores above provide fairly precise estimates of the evolution of regional authority across these dimensionsfor the average region in Latin America.

.


30/34

Page | 30

Table 4: Asymmetric arrangements in Latin America

Capital regions* Internal colon ies Ethnic or geographicaldifference*

Argentina Buenos Aires(1950/1996)

until 1990

Bahamas City of Freeport(1996/1996)

Bolivia Territorios Autnomos Indgenas(1990/2010)

Gran Chaco (2010/2010)Brazil Distrito Federal

(1950/1996)until 1987

Colombia Bogota(1950/1976)

until 1991 Provincia St Andres, Providencia &

Documents

Chapman.niedzwiecki.marks.hooghe Regional+Authority+in+Latin+America.2012