Decentralization, Democratization, and Informal Power in Mexico

Decentralization, Democratization, and Informal Power in Mexico PDF Author: Andrew Selee
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271075325
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
In the last two decades of the twentieth century, many countries in Latin America freed themselves from the burden of their authoritarian pasts and developed democratic political systems. At the same time, they began a process of shifting many governmental responsibilities from the national to the state and local levels. Much has been written about how decentralization has fostered democratization, but informal power relationships inherited from the past have complicated the ways in which citizens voice their concerns and have undermined the accountability of elected officials. In this book, Andrew Selee seeks to illuminate the complex linkages between informal and formal power by comparing how they worked in three Mexican cities. The process of decentralization is shown to have been intermediated by existing spheres of political influence, which in turn helped determine how much the institution of multiparty democracy in the country could succeed in bringing democracy “closer to home.”

Decentralization, Democratization, and Informal Power in Mexico

Decentralization, Democratization, and Informal Power in Mexico PDF Author: Andrew Selee
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271075325
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
In the last two decades of the twentieth century, many countries in Latin America freed themselves from the burden of their authoritarian pasts and developed democratic political systems. At the same time, they began a process of shifting many governmental responsibilities from the national to the state and local levels. Much has been written about how decentralization has fostered democratization, but informal power relationships inherited from the past have complicated the ways in which citizens voice their concerns and have undermined the accountability of elected officials. In this book, Andrew Selee seeks to illuminate the complex linkages between informal and formal power by comparing how they worked in three Mexican cities. The process of decentralization is shown to have been intermediated by existing spheres of political influence, which in turn helped determine how much the institution of multiparty democracy in the country could succeed in bringing democracy “closer to home.”

Decentralization, Democratization, and Informal Power in Mexico

Decentralization, Democratization, and Informal Power in Mexico PDF Author: Andrew D. Selee
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780271055398
Category : Decentralization in government
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
"Explores the democratization and decentralization of governance in Mexico and finds that informal political networks continue to mediate citizens' relationships with their elected authorities. Analyzes the linkages between informal and formal power by comparing how they worked in three Mexican cities: Tijuana, Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, and Chilpancingo"--Provided by publisher.

Decentralization, Democratization, and Informal Power in Mexico

Decentralization, Democratization, and Informal Power in Mexico PDF Author: Andrew Selee
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271056789
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
In the last two decades of the twentieth century, many countries in Latin America freed themselves from the burden of their authoritarian pasts and developed democratic political systems. At the same time, they began a process of shifting many governmental responsibilities from the national to the state and local levels. Much has been written about how decentralization has fostered democratization, but informal power relationships inherited from the past have complicated the ways in which citizens voice their concerns and have undermined the accountability of elected officials. In this book, Andrew Selee seeks to illuminate the complex linkages between informal and formal power by comparing how they worked in three Mexican cities. The process of decentralization is shown to have been intermediated by existing spheres of political influence, which in turn helped determine how much the institution of multiparty democracy in the country could succeed in bringing democracy “closer to home.”

Barrio Democracy in Latin America

Barrio Democracy in Latin America PDF Author: Eduardo Canel
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271037334
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
The transition to democracy underway in Latin America since the 1980s has recently witnessed a resurgence of interest in experimenting with new forms of local governance emphasizing more participation by ordinary citizens. The hope is both to foster the spread of democracy and to improve equity in the distribution of resources. While participatory budgeting has been a favorite topic of many scholars studying this new phenomenon, there are many other types of ongoing experiments. In Barrio Democracy in Latin America, Eduardo Canel focuses our attention on the innovative participatory programs launched by the leftist government in Montevideo, Uruguay, in the early 1990s. Based on his extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Canel examines how local activists in three low-income neighborhoods in that city dealt with the opportunities and challenges of implementing democratic practices and building better relationships with sympathetic city officials.

The Politics of Local Participatory Democracy in Latin America

The Politics of Local Participatory Democracy in Latin America PDF Author: Françoise Montambeault
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804796572
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Participatory democracy innovations aimed at bringing citizens back into local governance processes are now at the core of the international democratic development agenda. Municipalities around the world have adopted local participatory mechanisms of various types in the last two decades, including participatory budgeting, the flagship Brazilian program, and participatory planning, as it is the case in several Mexican municipalities. Yet, institutionalized participatory mechanisms have had mixed results in practice at the municipal level. So why and how does success vary? This book sets out to answer that question. Defining democratic success as a transformation of state-society relationships, the author goes beyond the clientelism/democracy dichotomy and reveals that four types of state-society relationships can be observed in practice: clientelism, disempowering co-option, fragmented inclusion, and democratic cooperation. Using this typology, and drawing on the comparative case study of four cities in Mexico and Brazil, the book demonstrates that the level of democratic success is best explained by an approach that accounts for institutional design, structural conditions of mobilization, and the configurations, strategies, behaviors, and perceptions of both state and societal actors. Thus, institutional change alone does not guarantee democratic success: the way these institutional changes are enacted by both political and social actors is even more important as it conditions the potential for an autonomous civil society to emerge and actively engage with the local state in the social construction of an inclusive citizenship.

The Oxford Handbook of Mexican Politics

The Oxford Handbook of Mexican Politics PDF Author: Roderic Ai Camp
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195377389
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 839

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Book Description
A comprehensive view of the remarkable transformation of Mexico's political system to a democratic model. The contributors to this volume assess the most influential institutions, actors, policies and issues in the country's current evolution toward democratic consolidation.

Boosting Competitiveness Through Decentralization

Boosting Competitiveness Through Decentralization PDF Author: Aylin Topal
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317173236
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Decentralization is accepted as one of the defining features of the third wave of democratic transitions in Latin America and commonly understood as an index and an agent of democratization. This rather optimistic perspective is inherent in the literature which is dominated by two theories. The liberal-individualist approach, especially as advocated by the World Bank, promotes decentralization policies on the premise of their efficiency, equity, and responsiveness to local demands. Similarly, the statist approach claims that decentralization can be the route to greater accountability, transparency and participation in governance; they add that this path should be guided by political elites and institutions. These dominant views nevertheless understate the extent to which certain decentralization policies have been implemented in lockstep with neoliberalization. This book examines the relationship between global economic processes and decentralization. It argues that through decentralization policies, the imperatives of neoliberal rules of competitiveness have been diffused into local governments and economies, generating different local development models. Whether decentralization produces democratic opening at the local level is contingent on how the local economy is integrated into global economic processes, and which social and economic groups are empowered, and disempowered, in that transition.

Informal Metropolis

Informal Metropolis PDF Author: David Yee
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496241177
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description


NAFTA and Democracy in Mexico

NAFTA and Democracy in Mexico PDF Author: Pablo Calderón Martínez
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351110330
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
After describing NAFTA as ‘the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere’, Donald Trump’s election seemed to represent the final nail in the coffin for North American economic integration. Following a decade of stagnation, however, Trump’s victory presents a timely opportunity to reconsider North American integration and evaluate NAFTA’s democratic track record in Mexico. In this book, Pablo Calderón Martínez presents a detailed analysis of NAFTA’s influence as a political tool for democracy in Mexico. Extending beyond a mere economic or social exploration of the consequences of NAFTA, Calderón Martínez uses a three-tiered analysis based on causality mechanisms to explain how the interactions between internationalisation and democratisation unfolded in Mexico. Calderón Martínez’s analysis demonstrates that Mexico’s internationalisation project under the framework of NAFTA gave shape to, if not made, Mexico’s democratisation process. An original and timely resource for scholars and students interested in understanding how – in cases like Mexico where transitions to democracy are characterised by a finely poised balance of power – small influences from abroad can make significant long-lasting differences domestically.

Waiting for Democracy

Waiting for Democracy PDF Author: Jesse Craig Ribot
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
References pp. 115-132.