Who controls the system? Recursive effects of decentralization in Argentina and Colombia

• In Event: Latin America’s education policy from the mid 2010s to today: A fourth wave of educational reforms?

Proposal

uring the 1990s, most Latin American countries experienced a wave of decentralization reforms, argued to boost government efficiency, increase school autonomy, and make policymakers more accountable towards improving educational outcomes. However, while these goals have not been fulfilled, decentralization reforms produced significant changes in the State organization, opening room for new constituents and political bargaining over education (Vargas, 2022). Far from linear, decentralization processes took different shapes depending upon their sequence –whether political, fiscal, or administrative authority was devolved– and territorial interests of intergovernmental coalitions (Falleti, 2009). More importantly, due to the shifts they bring about and the live forces interwoven in it, decentralization reforms should not be seen as static but rather as an evolving phenomenon, rendering new effects and power configurations over time.
In particular, Argentina and Colombia decentralized their education services during the mid-1990s. Whereas the former initially resulted in a politically controlled system at the national level with limited subnational capacity, the latter, arguably, increased local power at the expense of central authority (Falleti, 2009). Nonetheless, this setup has weakened over time due to unpredictable political and institutional developments (Romualdo & Wilkins, 2025; Esper, 2024). Hence, this study analyzes how the original path of education decentralization in Argentina and Colombia was subverted since the mid-2000s, focusing on three core education policies: school curricula, national large-scale assessments, and teacher appraisal. These policies, which belong to the dominant ‘quality assurance’ paradigm in education (Moschetti & Verger, 2025), are pivotal to education system governance. In doing so, the paper follows a comparative and historical approach to understand the evolution of intergovernmental power relationships and the political usage of education as a key factor explaining the recursive effects of decentralization.
Data for this study come from the analysis of policy documents and interviews (n=68) with decision-makers and key informants in Argentina and Colombia. This presentation concentrates on how intergovernmental power relationships shaped the outcomes of each policy reform between 2002 and 2023. Delving into policy feedback (Daugbjerg & Kay, 2020) and policy coalitions literature (Henry et al., 2022), the paper unpacks the role of teachers’ unions and political coalitions, the constraints imposed by institutional settings –i.e., federal vs. unitary government–, and the self-reinforcing or self-undermining effect of decentralization policies over time in reform outcomes. In brief, Argentina’s federal authority over its education sector has waned, producing a highly desarticulated education system with powerful and weak subnational governments. In contrast, Colombia’s national government was capable of regaining control over the school system, subtracting power from local governments and other political actors, like teacher unions, rendering a highly compartmentalized education system. The study contributes to the analysis of state reforms in education by bridging political science and policy studies literature in education.

Author

• Tomas Esper, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona