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\"From the racially segregated 'Jim Crow' US South to the many electoral but hardly democratic local regimes in Argentina and other federal democracies, the political rights of citizens around the world are often curtailed by powerful subnational rulers. Hybrid Regimes within Democracies presents the first comprehensive study of democracy and authoritarianism in all the subnational units of a federation. The book focuses on Argentina, but also contains a comparative chapter that considers seven other federations including Germany, Mexico, and the USA. The in-depth and multidimensional description of subnational regimes in all Argentine provinces is complemented with an innovative explanation for the large differences between those that are democratic and those that are 'hybrid', complex combinations of democratic and authoritarian elements. Putting forward and testing an original theory of subnational democracy, Gervasoni extends the rentier-state explanatory logic from resource rents to a more general concept, such as 'fiscal federalism rents', and from the national to the subnational level\"-- Provided by publisher.

The resurgence of the Left in Latin America over the past decade has been so notable that it has been called “the Pink Tide.” In recent years, regimes with leftist leaders have risen to power in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela. What does this trend portend for the deepening of democracy in the region? Benjamin Goldfrank has been studying the development of participatory democracy in Latin America for many years, and this book represents the culmination of his empirical investigations in Brazil, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In order to understand why participatory democracy has succeeded better in some countries than in others, he examines the efforts in urban areas that have been undertaken in the cities of Porto Alegre, Montevideo, and Caracas. His findings suggest that success is related, most crucially, to how nationally centralized political authority is and how strongly institutionalized the opposition parties are in the local arenas.

What drives the uneven distribution of democratic practices at the subnational level? Within subunits of a democratic federation, lasting political practices that restrict choice, limit debate, and exclude or distort democratic participation have been analyzed in recent scholarship as subnational authoritarianism. Once a critical number of citizens or regions band together in these practices, they can leverage illiberal efforts at the federal level. This timely, data-driven book compares federations that underwent transitions in the first, second, and third waves of democratization and offers a substantial expansion of the concept of subnational authoritarianism. The eleven expert political scientists featured in this text examine the nature and scope of subnational democratic variations within six large federations, including the United States, India, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Russia. Illiberal Practices makes the case that subnational units are more likely to operate by means of illiberal structures and practices than as fully authoritarian regimes. Detailed case studies examine uneven levels of citizenship in each federal system. These are distributed unequally across the different regions of the country and display semi-democratic or hybrid characteristics. Appropriate for scholars and students of democratization, authoritarianism, federalism, decentralization, and comparative politics, Illiberal Practices sheds light on the uneven extension of democracy within countries that have already democratized. Contributors: Jacqueline Behrend, André Borges, Julián Durazo Herrmann, Carlos Gervasoni, Edward L. Gibson, Desmond King, Inga A.-L. Saikkonen, Celina Souza, Maya Tudor, Laurence Whitehead, Adam Ziegfeld

This article considers the political situation of an authoritarian province in a nationally democratic country. The objective is to uncover strategies that incumbents (in this article, governors) pursue to perpetuate provincial authoritarian regimes, as well as dynamics that can undermine such regimes. A central insight is that controlling the scope of provincial conflict (that is, the extent to which it is localized or nationalized) is a major objective of incumbents and oppositions in struggles over local democratization. Authoritarian incumbents will thus pursue “boundary control” strategies, which are played out in multiple arenas of a national territorial system. The articlefleshesout these processes via comparative analysis of two conflicts over subnational democratization in 2004: the state of Oaxaca in Mexico and the province of Santiago del Estero in Argentina.

Democratization studies initially focused on processes at the national level, but in recent years, there has been a growing interest in the spatially uneven nature of democracy at the subnational level. This article draws on examples from Argentina and develops an analytical framework of closed games to analyze the functioning of subnational democracy. It argues that the less democratic provinces or states of nationally democratic countries are not necessarily authoritarian and that the concept of subnational authoritarianism prevents us from seeing political dynamics that may arise in the context of a reasonably well-functioning electoral democracy and may result in subnational closed games. The article takes into account the role of political families, media ownership, control of access to business opportunities, and control of the provincial state. Los estudios sobre la democratización inicialmente se centraron en los procesos a nivel nacional, pero en los últimos años, ha habido un mayor interés en la naturaleza espacialmente despareja de la democracia a nivel subnacional. Este trabajo se basa en ejemplos de la Argentina y desarrolla el marco analítico del juego cerrado para analizar el funcionamiento de la democracia subnacional. Argumenta que las provincias o estados menos democráticos en países democráticos a nivel nacional no son necesariamente autoritarios y que el concepto de autoritarismo subnacional no nos permite ver las dinámicas políticas que pueden surgir en el contexto de una democracia electoral que funciona razonablemente bien y que puede resultar en juegos cerrados a nivel subnacional. El trabajo toma en cuenta el rol de las familias políticas, la propiedad de los medios de comunicación, el control del acceso a oportunidades de negocios y el control del estado provincial.

How do fiscal institutions shape the ability of presidents and state governors in a federation to manipulate federal money with coalition building goals? This article proposes a two-level theory of intergovernmental transfers based upon variation in the level of discretionality over the use of federal money that fiscal institutions grant to national and subnational executives. We use subnational level data in Argentina to show that not taking discretionality into account leads to wrong inferences about the electoral returns of intergovernmental transfers. We find that presidents extract different political utility from discretionary and nondiscretionary transfers. While discretionary transfers enable them to directly target voters bypassing opposition provincial governors, nondiscretionary transfers pay off more to co-partisan governors by guaranteeing security in the reception of transfer monies.

Why might social movements be highly contentious at one point in time and demobilize shortly after? Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the dynamics of demobilization of popular movements in a context of patronage politics. I argue that demobilization in these contexts results from relational processes creating a \"dual pressure\" stemming \"from below\" and \"from above.\" In social environments where patronage is pervasive, poor people develop survival strategies relying on clientelistic arrangements. They participate in a social movement organization (SMO) to voice their rights, but also to address pressing survival needs by gaining access to resources. These expectations of constituents create a pressure \"from below\" on leaders of an SMO, which respond by securing resources obtained through alliances with national political actors. In turn, these alliances create a pressure \"from above,\" because local leaders reciprocate this national support by eschewing the organization of collective actions. Drawing on data culled from 12 months of fieldwork on an Argentine peasant movement, this article inspects the interconnections between popular movements and patronage politics to refine our understanding of demobilization processes; contribute to discussions regarding the role of culture on contentious politics; and shed light on current demobilization trends in Latin America.

This book provides a new institutional economics perspective on alternative models of local governance, offering a comprehensive view of local government organization and finance in the developing world. The experiences of ten developing/transition economies are reviewed to draw lessons of general interest in strengthening responsive, responsible, and accountable local governance. The book is written in simple user friendly language to facilitate a wider readership by policy makers and practitioners in addition to students and scholars of public finance, economics and politics.

To what extent does public support for subnational officials fluctuate in response to local rather than national performance? Are the policy failures of subnational officials reliably punished by voters? Drawing upon both individual and aggregate level data, this article attempts to shed new light on these questions about the politics of decentralization by exploring electoral outcomes and public opinion at the subnational level in Argentina. Consistent with referendum voting models, this analysis suggests that the fate of candidates in both national and subnational elections is shaped by the performance of the incumbent presidential administration. Moreover, to the extent that subnational performance has an electoral impact, voters do not necessarily respond in ways that enhance electoral accountability. Voters not only blame and reward subnational officials for national performance, but also attribute responsibility for subnational performance to national authorities. The implications with respect to the impact of decentralized decision making on democratic accountability are decidedly mixed and anything but consistent with the argument that decentralization results in a closer match between citizen preferences and the allocation of public resources.

Several scholars have argued that decentralization benefits states and municipalities, granting them more autonomy for managing their budgets and more resources to deliver their services. Others have questioned this assertion, claiming that decentralization makes subnational units more fiscally dependent on central governments. This article argues that the fiscal impact of decentralization must be differentiated across states. It theoretically specifies and empirically demonstrates which states benefit during periods of decentralization and centralization. It argues that powerful presidents who centralize resources have imposed greater costs on more developed and fiscally independent districts (which prefer to administer their own resources and can be serious challengers to presidential power), thus relying mainly on support from less developed and more fiscally dependent provinces, which prefer more redistribution. I present empirical evidence for Argentina (1983—2004), a developing federation with strong governors and high cross-regional inequality, and discuss some implications for comparative studies on the topic. Varios investigadores han argumentado que la descentralización beneficia a las unidades subnacionales, otorgándoles más autonomía para gestionar sus presupuestos y más recursos para cumplir sus funciones. Otros han cuestionado esta afirmación, alegando que la descentralización hace que las unidades subnacionales sean más dependientes fiscalmente de los gobiernos centrales. Este trabajo sostiene que debemos diferenciar el impacto fiscal de las políticas de descentralización en los distintos estados. Para ello, el trabajo especifica teóricamente y demuestra empíricamente cuáles son los estados que se benefician durante períodos de descentralización y centralización. Argumenta que los presidentes crean apoyo para las reformas centralizadoras compensando a los gobernadores que prefieren un gobierno nacional capaz de recaudar impuestos de los distritos más ricos y de redistribuir esos fondos entre ellos, imponiendo mayores costos a los que tienen mayor autonomía fiscal y que prefieren más competencias descentralizadas para administrar sus propios recursos. En el trabajo se presenta evidencia empírica para Argentina (1983—2004), una federación en desarrollo con grandes desigualdades interregionales y gobernadores fuertes, y se discuten algunas implicancias para los estudios comparados sobre el tema.