To Oppose or Not to Oppose? Recentralization and Governors in Mexico

• In Event: Recentralisation and Electoral Preferences at the Subnational Level

Abstract

While decentralization was prominent in most of the world during the 80s and 90s, recentralization policies have gained momentum more recently. It is not a surprise that a growing literature on recentralization has begun to appear in order to explain this new phenomenon.

Most of the theoretical efforts have been devoted to understand when national authorities are prone to recentralize and to highlight the conditions that guarantee their success. In so doing, most conceptualizations embrace a common basic assumption: national actors (i.e. the president) will always favor recentralization as a way to increase their power, and subnational actors (i.e. governors) will always resist recentralizing attempts, which are perceived as a threat to their prerogatives and resources.

In this paper we argue that this assumption overlooks two sources of variation: the type of recentralizing reform and subnational politicians’ interests. When these two factors are taken into account, subnational actors cannot be expected to always oppose recentralization.

Building on existing literature we elaborate a model to understand governors’ different positions when facing recentralization attempts. As we argue, governors’ responses vary according to the type of recentralization the national government is promoting. In order to explore the empirical plausibility of our argument we analyze recent recentralization policies observed in Mexico during Peña Nieto’s presidency (in office since December 2012). We show the divergent positions assumed by Mexican governors vis-à-vis administrative recentralization in the educational realm, which they favored, in comparison to their response to political recentralization, which they strongly opposed.

Authors

• Juan C Olmeda, El Colegio de Mexico

• Alejandra Armesto, FLACSO-Mexico