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Abstract

The main theories of the thriving field of study of public policies have been formulated at institutions of developed countries, mostly by the American academy, based on the particular conditions of policy-making processes of their own country. However, its heuristic premises are considered, initially, as universal and are used extensively in teaching and academic studies around the world.

This paper examines the complexities derived from the application of such predominant theoretical approaches to the study and teaching of public policies that are implemented in Latin American countries. Based on an extensive use of specialized literature, 10 public policy variables are identified and organized into two dimensions, one institutional and the other procedural. It is argued that the values of these variables in the countries of this region differ significantly from those observed in the United States, which reveals the explanatory shortcomings of those approaches to account for the particular modalities of public policymaking in these countries.

Keywords

Public policies teaching of public policies Latin America theories of public policies

Introduction: In search for better explanations for public policies in Latin America

The studies of public policies carried out at universities and other research centers in Latin America are based on analytical approaches and frameworks formulated mainly by American institutions and social scientists. This assertion is valid both for the teaching of public policies and for its research and academic production (Bentancur et al., 2021; Cardozo, 2020; Rodríguez Escobedo and Fonseca López, 2018; White, 2022).

The finding is not surprising by virtue of the prestige, resources, and global influence of universities in the United States, which were also pioneers in this scientific field and have a remarkable academic production, both in qualitative and quantitative terms. As Luna (2015) has argued, the (North) American paradigm of political science as a whole is becoming globalized as a result of the ability of American programs and scholars to build and fund relationships with foreign scholars and the volume of global political production that is influenced by what this author calls “the American ivory tower.”

The assimilation of the predominant approaches is not only explained by the force of attraction generated by the American academy. It also responds to an incipient but still insufficient scientific production focused on the analysis of the particular characteristics of public policies in the region. In the same way, it is explained by the fact that a good part of the scientific production in this field of study is outside the most widespread publication and dissemination circuits, and by the scarce connection between Latin American institutions and researchers, which contributes to the lack of awareness and use of Latin American production, regardless of the university system of the country in which it originated.

This dissociation between the centers of production and the application of knowledge has been traditionally problematized (Horowitz, 1989). However, it gains greater relevance due to the characteristics of our field of study. The frameworks of analysis coined in the field of public policy can be categorized as “middle range theories”, in a Mertonian sense, as theoretical support for empirical research that, however, do not attempt to explain the uniformities observed in societies under any circumstances. Hence, compared to macro theories or “unified theories”, they are particularly sensitive to regional conditions. Regarding the topic that concerns us, such conditions are appreciably different in Latin America and in the more developed countries.

It is not surprising, then, that when the analysis is focused on units that belong to a specific country (in case studies) or to several Latin American countries (in comparative studies), inadequacies are identified between the assumptions of those approaches and the characteristics and functioning of their political systems. To put it simple, it does not add up. This frequently forces Latin American professors and researchers to give ad hoc explanations in their courses and scientific communications when referring to the public policies of their own countries or, even worse, to avoid mentioning the particularities of their case studies so that these fit into the dominant theoretical models.

In this paper we intend to contribute to that search, by outlining the topics in which the region’s policies clearly deviate from those produced and studied in the North. In this way, the purpose is to identify the areas that require greater theoretical and interpretive effort by Latin American scholars of the field.

In the following section, “Comparison of theoretical approaches in specific contexts. Premises and limitations”, we will explain the main challenges inherent to that search. Then, we will proceed to outline the most relevant differences between the American political system, on the one hand, and those corresponding to Latin American countries, on the other hand, organized according to their institutions (Differences in the Institutional Dimensions of Public Policy) and processes (Peculiarities of the Policy-Making Process in Latin America). The paper concludes with our final thoughts (Conclusion).

Comparison of theoretical approaches in specific contexts. Premises and limitations

In numerous studies by Latin American authors, the importance of contextual variables has been argued to justify the validity and applicability of explanatory theories of policies in situated experiences (Bentancur and Mancebo, 2013; Cabrero Mendoza, 2000; Muñoz del Campo, 2022; Roth Deubel, 2018; Valenti Nigrini and Flores Llanos, 2009).

It is essential to have national case studies that account for the main features and specificities of the institutional variables and public policy processes of each country, individually considered. As an example, Brazilian policies cannot be studied without a proper understanding of its federal regime characteristics; the Colombian cannot be interpreted without references to the legacy of decades of armed confrontation; the Bolivian cannot be understood without taking into consideration the ethnic and cultural plurality of their population; and the Uruguayan need to account for their comparatively high institutional quality. These conditions distinguish their vicissitudes from those of northern countries, but also from those of other countries in the region.

The inadequacy of the available theoretical approaches gives focus to their function and conditions of application, in line with the lucid reflection of a Mexican author, published more than two decades ago:

“The school of public policies should not be a model that to be uncritically incorporated in different contexts, in an effort that has not been very successful until now. In contrast, it should be understood as a method of analysis to be built in order to answer the question of what are the uses and customs in the making of public policies in diverse realities” (Cabrero Mendoza, 2000: 221).

Nevertheless, the different streams of this critical literature have not been successful in identifying the principal variables of the context of policy-making in Latin America that should be taken into consideration.¹ The main theoretical assumptions of this field’s mainstream that would be questioned or relativized have not even been identified. Next, we will present a first approach with such objectives.

This is a complex task for at least three reasons. First, the contextual variables to be identified vary across the different Latin American countries. It is evident that our policy-making systems differ in their creation process, institutional constitution, participating parties, agenda of problems, capacities, etc. Acknowledging those variety and asymmetry, the narration of the disagreements between theoretical models and the regional context must be inevitably general and not necessarily equally relevant for each country. However, these differences do not trivialize the promotion of situated studies. They support the need for comparative research across Latin American countries that can highlight and explain both similarities and contrasts in the wake of a long tradition in comparative studies that dates back to Stuart Mill (2004/1843).

The second challenge for our task results from a certain vagueness in specialized literature in regard to naming the theoretical constructs related to the public policies that we study. In different passages of this paper, we use the terms “current”, “frameworks”, “theories”, “models” or similar terms interchangeably, although with greater precision, we refer to what Ostrom (1999) understands as “frameworks”. These identify relevant concepts and collaborate in structuring the analysis and theoretical comparison, unlike the “theories” in a strict sense, which establish causal relationships between concepts.

Third, it is not easy to identify the paradigmatic statements of political science formulated mainly in the North, which would be compared with the particular conditions of our political systems. The dispute of multiple approaches is evident. Twenty years ago, the state of the art of the subdiscipline was represented by this image: “mountain islands of theoretical structure, intermingled with, and occasionally attached together by foothills of shared methods and concepts, and empirical work, all of which is surrounded by oceans of descriptive work not attached to any mountain of theory” (Schlager, 1997, cited by Sabatier, 2007:323).

This theoretical landscape has not changed much in recent years. As an attempt to respond, it has led to various mappings and classifications to better understand it (among many others: Ayres and Marsh 2013; Cairney and Heikkila, 2014; Nowlin, 2011, Roth Deubel, 2010), or to explorations of the conditions of its elaboration and combination (Cairney, 2013; John, 2003; Sabatier, 2007), generally confirming the fragmentation of the field.

Even with this safeguard, it can be argued that the main theoretical constructions on public policies share some assumptions that derive from the structures and practices of the political systems of the most developed countries, particularly from the experience of the United States. Thus, these approaches assume the existence of a relatively autonomous State, with its power divided between the different branches of government and endowed with sufficient capacities (in principle) to fulfill its objectives. They privilege the study of formal institutions, of institutionalized and pragmatic political parties, and of leaders who operate constrained by the rules of the system. The policy-making process is presented as a product of the interaction and competition of multiple civil society organizations, over which governments do not hold preeminence, and which is formalized through representative democracy mechanisms (with an emphasis on congresses or legislative bodies). Except in exceptional situations, the general spirit of this process is one of stability and incremental changes, compatible with the necessary mutual partisan adjustments, within a framework that is poorly defined by external restrictions on the nation.

If the predominant theoretical approaches on public policy are based on these factual assumptions, for them to also be applicable to Latin America there should be certain fundamental correlates in their political structures and processes. We will dedicate the rest of this paper to discussing the point above, using the available bibliography extensively both to denote the aforementioned assumptions of the theoretical approaches formulated in the North and to contrast them with the current situation in the countries of the Southern continent.

Differences in the institutional dimensions of public policy

Two dimensions in the study of policies will be examined. On the one hand, institutions, understood as the arena in which policies are formulated, include both the organizations and the fundamental laws and rules of the political system that condition the decision-making process (John, 1998). On the other hand, the policy-making process refers to the procedures, rationalities, and influences in the definition of public problems, decision-making, and their implementation. Indeed, both dimensions are closely interconnected, so the distinction is made for analytical purposes.

In this section, we will pay attention to the differences in the variables of an institutional nature. In the next Peculiarities of the Policy-Making Process in Latin America, we will focus on the policy-making process.

State: Relative autonomy versus “Brown zones”

Autonomy can be understood as the capacity of states to formulate and pursue goals that are not simply reflective of the demands or interests of social groups, classes, or society (Skocpol, 1985). That autonomy would have materialized in contemporary democracies under a model referred to as “bureaucratic” in one of the most influential essays (Mann, 2007). For this author, social powers need to hand over control of their resources to state elites because, unlike the latter, they lack territorial control. The State can make use of the resources conferred upon them to produce their own new power resources, which will generate a significant degree of autonomy in relation to the most influential social actors. It is not about absolute independence from the state elite, but in principle, it is not less absolute than the power of any other major group.

Do these images reflect the relationship between the state and social powers in Latin America? At least half a century ago, the dominant political model in the region was categorized as corporate, either by emphasizing its historical and cultural determinants (Wiarda, 1974) or on account of its institutional practices and the structures of interest representation (Schmitter, 1974). What characterized the Latin American version of corporatism was, according to O'Donnell (1977), the subordination of certain social groups to the interests of more powerful groups, thus becoming a device for reinforcing the inequalities of society.

These historical trends continue to this day. The subcontinent has recently been described as a “living museum of lobbying techniques and attitudes of society groups”, with no current correlates in developed countries. It is an order characterized by the power of groups, influential or even dominant individuals or lobbyists, and they constitute the main force in the governmental affairs of the region (Thomas and Klimovich, 2017). For this reason, capitalism in the region has been categorized as “hierarchical”, considering the great power unlawfully held by economic groups, which impacts the institutional framework and the key variables of development (Schneider, 2013). It is not bureaucratic capture that threatens these states, but corporate capture, frequently associated with kleptocracy (Durand, 2019).

In addition to the dimension derived from particularistic practices, O'Donnell points out another dimension of the weakness of Latin American states: the ineffectiveness of enforcing the law in a homogeneous manner throughout their territory. There are “brown zones” in state domains as a consequence of the gravitation of autonomous local powers in regions far from the main urban centers (O’ Donnell and Wolfson, 1993).

Therefore, undisputed territorial control, which—according to Mann—is the origin of the autonomous power of the contemporary state, is in question in Latin America.

State capacities: Strengths versus precariousness

We are referring here to the capacities of states to perform their tasks. Fukuyama (2004) refers to two manifestations of state power: the scope, relative to the number of functions and objectives they assume, and strength, associated with their capacities and the quality of their policies. While the first responds to policy options and historical contingencies, we will now focus on the second component, which is necessary to fulfill these functions, regardless of their scope and purposes. Ultimately, and as defined by Grindle, state capacity is nothing more than “the ability to perform appropriate tasks effectively, efficiently and sustainably” (1997:34).

Looking at our region, a comparative study ranked Latin America last—along with Sub-Saharan Africa—as regards its governmental capacities (Franco Chuaire and Scartascini, 2014). Evidencing the same phenomenon, the “functioning of government” dimension obtained the lowest score in Latin America among those considered in the abovementioned global comparative report, obtaining only 5.21 points out of a maximum of 10 (The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2021). Another study that focused on the question of the quality of bureaucracies, showed that in most countries of the region public officers have little protection from the free will of the political power. Their recruitment is predominantly patronal, there are significant salary inequalities, and there is a lack of performance assessment systems (Echebarría, 2006). Zuvanic and Iacoviello (2010) present a similar diagnosis, highlighting the scarce development of bureaucracies in the region to assume an active role in the policy-making process as a consequence of their low merit indexes (objective guidelines for recruitment and promotion) and functional capacity (influence of established procedures on the practices of public officers).

Some essays have identified patterns of historical development that help to explain these dysfunctions. Among them, a colonial legacy of ritualistic bureaucratic formalism and strong patrimonial practices and patronage (Ramos and Milanesi, 2021), and the political game between national rulers and subnational or corporate leaders (Méndez Martínez, 2020).

These findings suggest paying special attention to the availability of state capacities when studying public policies in Latin America. It is not exclusively a matter of detecting “gaps” between what has been decided and what has been effectively implemented as a consequence of the political game (Pressman and Wildavsky, 1998) but rather of accounting for structural reasons that inhibit the fulfillment of state functions.

Formal versus informal Regulatory institutions

By “regulatory institution”, we refer to, in a broad sense, the promulgation of a mandatory set of rules, accompanied by mechanisms to monitor and promote compliance therewith (Baldwin et al., 2012).

Institutionalist approaches highlight the incidence of institutions as a regimentation factor in public policies. In its influential aspect of rational choice, it started from the study of the functioning of the US Congress (Hall and Taylor, 1996) to conclude that institutions are the game rules that provide differential incentives to political actors, grant varied power resources, and set the context within which individuals and groups define their interests, thus shaping their strategic options (Steinmo and Tolbert, 1998: 168). Therefore, the study of these state configurations is considered essential to explain the orientation of the policies.

However, formal institutions do not determine policies by themselves; instead, they need to be supported by an informal matrix of rules, beliefs, values, traditions, and habits (Fukuyama, 2008). The rules sanctioned by the States coexist, then, with other guidelines for the organization of social life and, more particularly, with the cycle of public policies and their effective implementation.

By virtue of the above, several Latin American countries can be considered to have “fragile institutions”, among other factors due to their endowment with game rules that have been subjected to the interests of private logics and political factions (Medellín Torres, 2004, 2006).

In parallel to these weakened formal institutions, dense networks of informal institutions have developed as an alternative form of social organization. These networks can be of different natures and relate in various ways to formal institutions, a diversity that has given rise to various typologies: corruption or criminal networks, which can be integrated, superimposed, or decoupled from democratic institutions (Mascareño et al., 2016), or complementary, accommodative, competitive or substitute networks (Helmke and Levitsky, 2006).

These insights are supported by quantitative analyses: of all the variables considered to measure governance in Latin America, the one that gathers the worst perceptions among the interviewees is precisely corruption control (Ruiz Porras and García Vázquez, 2020). Under these circumstances, the Latin American State looks like a “paper leviathan”: theoretically endowed with very broad powers and competencies but incapable of applying them effectively (Centeno and Ferraro, 2013).

The weakness of formal regulation and the validity of nonlegitimized parallel regulations is evidenced in several key factors that make public policies effective: in the high rates of tax evasion, in the informality of the labor market, in the repression of organized crime, in state contracting, just to name a few.

In short, and as stated by Levitsky and Murillo (2010: 49–50), “if the new institutionalism in political science aims to develop theories that are truly comprehensive, that are applicable not only to advanced capitalist countries but also to those in development, then the strength of formal institutions cannot be taken for granted”.

The balance of powers: Presidentialism versus hyperpresidentialism

There is profuse literature that considers that the competencies with which the two “political” branches of the State—Executive and Legislative—are endowed and the relationships established between them constitute first-order explanatory factors of the main policy decisions (Linz, 1997; Shugart and Carey, 1992; Siavelis, 2015).

At first glance, there is a fundamental coincidence between the US and the Latin American governmental system: they are all presidential, and the former was the historical reference for the formation of the latter. However, after that apparent communion, both systems followed very different paths. While in the North American system the considerable powers of the presidency are carefully balanced by those vested in Congress, the Judiciary branch, and the territorial powers, in Latin America, presidents have no counterparts of similar force. Undoubtedly, Latin American presidents are institutionally more powerful (Fukuyama, 2008; Shugart and Carey, 1992). Generally, in the south, the executive branches are the ones who effectively define the course of policies, either by preconfiguring the legislation (pursuant to the interests of their colegislative powers, which include powers of legal initiative that do not exist in the North American presidency) or directly issuing resolutions by decree. Guillermo O'Donnell (1994) coined the term “delegative democracies” to conceptualize the extreme cases of this trend.

The general trend has deepened in recent years through the granting of more presidential powers, mainly aimed at controlling the legislative agenda, by means of constitutional reforms (Negretto, 2014). This empowerment of presidencies has been a factor of the rising conflicts between the executive and the legislative branches, which frequently led to political-institutional crises. Between 1978 and 2008, 15 presidents saw their terms interrupted, a figure that is close to 20% of all presidential terms completed in the same period. Given that these displacements did not formally cause institutional ruptures such as those that characterized the region until the 1980s, the transit experienced was categorized as a passage “from the regime’s instability to government instability” (Negretto, 2014). According to recent research, 26 episodes of this nature took place between 1986 and 2020, half of which originated in a conflict between powers (Sposito, 2021).

Therefore, in contrast with a “checks and balances” presidentialism such as the North American one, our region proposes a contrary version, which is as widely empowered as politically unstable. As concluded after a study of the evolution of 18 Latin American countries between 1925 and 2016, presidential hegemony has been consistently one of the main destabilizing factors of Latin American democracies (Pérez Liñan et al., 2019).²

Pragmatic versus ideological political parties

Traditionally, it has been assumed that the hegemonic political parties in the United States have kept very little ideological distance from each other by virtue of a centripetal political competition and their nonprincipled nature and barely distinguishable ideologically (Hartz, 1955). Instead, the political dynamics were explained by pragmatic exchanges, frequently settled in the negotiation of spending programs that benefited the electoral basis of political representatives (Fenno, 1966; Stein and Bickers, 1995). Although this characterization has become more nuanced in recent years (Layman et al., 2006), in rough terms, it well represents the trajectory of its party system.

The party tradition in Latin America is very different. Following Alcántara Sáez (2004a), it can be stated that in the first half of the 20th century, parties of all ideological signs were established. In the 21st century, the same author conducted empirical research on the programmatic principles of the parties around economic policy, social values, and the international scene. Except for the latter, in the other two axes, the parties’ identities are clearly identified, which allows them to be categorized as “right wing parties”, “centrist parties” and “left wing parties” (Alcántara Sáez, 2004b). Another study that applied the categories of the Manifesto Project to the analysis of the electoral platforms of the political parties of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico reached similar conclusions (Ares and Volkens, 2017). Finally, a study based on surveyed experts indicates that Latin American party systems exhibit low programmatic structuring but also identify differentiated ideological profiles and divergent national structures of competition (Altman et al., 2009).

Therefore, the ideology of the parties does matter in the Latin American political scene, which makes it essential to consider it seriously when studying the public policies of the region.

Institutionalized versus personalistic leadership

Although this category is related to the previous one because both refer to political parties, we prefer to differentiate it to properly focus on a nonideological phenomenon: the role of the leader or “caudillo” in the political systems of the region, vis-à-vis the influence of party structures.

The United States appears as the paradigm of the institutionalized party system, understood as that which has the following characteristics: “… stability in the competition between parties, the existence of parties that have more or less stable roots in society, the acceptance of parties and elections as legitimate institutions that determine who governs, and party organizations with reasonably stable rules and structures” (Mainwaring and Scully, 1995). The institutionalization of a party system can be measured through the V-DEM index, from which it appears that the United States approached the maximum possible score until 2015 (0.94 out of a maximum of 1), although it fell to 0.88 in 2020.³ In this scheme, the role of the leader is delimited by party structures.

On the other hand, the same index for Latin America and the Caribbean shows a score of 0.65, without showing any significant improvement in the last 30 years.

As Mainwaring and Torcal point out, the connections between voters and political parties tend to be more personalistic in the democracies of less developed countries, and the election of candidates depends to a greater extent on their personal characteristics than on the party to which they belong, their ideology or programmatic proposals. To verify their assertion, these authors compared the percentage of votes obtained by “outsider” presidential candidates in elections held over 20 years (1983–2002) in the United States, on the one hand, and several South American countries, on the other. On average, the former obtained just 6% of the votes. Meanwhile, the averages for the South American countries reached 32% (Peru), 28% (Colombia), or 26% (Venezuela) (Mainwaring and Torcal, 2005).

In addition to deriving from a more caesarist historical tradition than that of the United States, the trust in the leader or “caudillo” represents, like the other side of the coin, the contemporary disenchantment of citizenship with political parties. This phenomenon has been confirmed by various public opinion polls. According to data from LAPOP, in 2018 only 28.2% of Latin Americans trusted the parties; and conforming to the Latinobarometro, the confidence indicator has progressively deteriorated since 2011 and is currently close to the minimums registered in 2003 (Ruiz Rodríguez, 2021).

In this context, it is not surprising that in most countries of the region, the leader outweighs the party. Paradoxically, in a region where presidents experience increasing difficulties in completing their mandate, re-election or subsequent periods of government have become commonplace in recent decades (Alcántara Sáez, 2018: 78).⁴

Therefore, the exclusive consideration of political parties is not enough to explain the policy trends of the region. Individuals in leadership positions can generate appreciable differences that are beyond the most conventional analysis.

Peculiarities of the policy-making process in Latin America

This section focuses on the other analysis dimension selected: that related to Latin American particularities in the modalities and formats of policy-making.

The actors of the policy process: Pluralism versus government leadership

Pluralist theories in particular but also more refined subsequent approaches to governance and networks, place governments just as another actor in a political game played out by multiple governmental and social actors. The “power game” typical of the American political system is characterized by the multiplicity of decision-making institutions and the existence of highly professionalized competing groups and lobbyists. For the already classic developments of this perspective, governments—the political power per se—predominantly fulfill the role of arbitrators, compounders, or facilitators of agreements between groups in an effort to manage conflicts within acceptable margins for the functioning of the system (Lindblom, 1968). More recently, it refers to the concept of “governance” to account for a form of coordination based on processes constituted by interorganizational networks of actors (Mayntz, 2001; Rhodes, 1997).

However, these conceptions of strong societies and weak governments, which are very characteristic of Anglo-Saxon liberalism, do not seem fully applicable to Latin America.

As argued by Valenti and Flores Llanos, “… unlike what happens in liberal-democratic contexts, in the Latin American region, the State is an actor that hinders or contributes to the policy process to a great extent, i.e., it is not possible to conceive an analytical model or a proposal from public policies without considering the conditional intervention of the State…” (2009: 181).

The governments of these countries, and more precisely their presidencies, generally play central roles in defining public problems and making decisions, which goes far beyond the composition of social interests. The political and social transformations generated from the so-called “turn to the left” (Cleary, 2006; Panizza, 2005), which began in the early years of the 21st century, testify that the ideology, programs, and interests of those who govern do matter in Latin America as an expression of the aforementioned ideological and programmatic identities of political parties. However, and as anticipated above, this governmental activism in its relationship with social actors is not always guided by programmatic motives, often giving rise to political patronage relationships (Zurbriggen, 2011).

Decision-making: Representative democracy versus societal or hybrid formats

Even without the need to make it explicit, the most employed approaches for the study of public policies assume that these are developed within a framework of representative liberal democracies. Although it is considered that the decision-making process involves a network of actors of the most diverse categories, public policies only acquire the character of such actors when they are legitimized by formal government bodies (executive, legislative, subnational governments, etc.). This assertion can be verified in any list of definitions proposed for the concept of “public policy” (for example: Cairney, 2012: 25) and is best illustrated in Dye’s classic minimalist formulation: public policy is “whatever governments choose to do or not to do” (Dye, 1976:1).

In contrast, Falleti (2014: 24) points out the limits of a restricted analysis of decision-making processes pursuant to canonical standards: “the study of this relatively new participatory institution, in turn, confronts scholars with questions that are impossible to answer within the conceptual framework of liberal or representative democracy”.

The departure in Latin America from the classical decision-making patterns of representative democracies has occurred in two spheres: individual-citizen and collective-social.

First, in recent years, different experiences of direct democracy have developed in the region, experiences that shift the center of gravity of certain fundamental decisions for the political system from the legislative branch to citizens. This transit materializes in multiple formats: plebiscites, referendums, popular initiatives, or similar instruments (Altman, 2010; Lissidini, 2011); by the way, not unknown in the American system, but endowed in the south with greater relevance due to the catalog of issues in question.

Second, even more relevant is the fact that other original spaces for mediation of interests and popular participation in the making of public policies tend to be constituted in the region, which have been categorized as “democratic radicals”. These do not deny the institutional circuits of representative democracies but combine them with new channels for popular participation and the mobilization of relatively autonomous social groups (Goldfrank, 2011; Levitsky and Roberts, 2011). The experiences of participatory budgeting illustrate this trend.

Third, some parties of the governments with an ideological sign of the left and center-left have tried in the last two decades to overcome the traditional dichotomy between politics and civil society, typical of liberal democracy, by creating spaces where social groups not only pressure decision makers, but they are also an effective part of the process of drafting regulations through mechanisms such as “forums”, “social dialogs”, “citizen assemblies”, etc. (Vargas Cortes, 2006). In some cases, the incorporation of social actors extended to the execution and monitoring of the implementation of policies in both traditional and novel policy areas. Although these novelties are related to the neo-corporate formats with the longest history, they differ from them by promoting the opening of the negotiation to a larger group of organizations and favoring the visibility of the procedure to all citizens (Author and Busquets, 2019; Ellner, 2016; Hernández Baqueiro, 2016).

In reference to these societal formats, it is necessary to highlight the presence of a type of actor characteristic of the Latin American social and political map: Social Movements. These have been defined as excluded collectivity in sustained interaction with economic and political elites seeking social change (Tarrow, 2011). Leadership and participation acquire here a disinterested component—at least from strictly individual rationality—and its relationship with formal power is external. They are also distinguished by their practices, which incorporate nonconventional demonstrations in public spaces, and by the representation of unstructured social groups around the formal labor market (unemployed, indigenous population, Afro-descendants, “landless”, etc.) (Almeida, 2020; Martínez, 2011).

As can be observed, the logic of embedding these actors and participatory practices in the policy-making process generates forms of governance that differ substantially from the competitive dynamics between interest groups within the framework of representative democracies.

Stability and change: Incrementalism versus instability

One of the most established postulates in the field of public policies is related to the logic of their construction. According to the incremental model, policy decisions generally continue the course of their precedents, since they are decided by virtue of a broad consensus among all the relevant actors and, for that same reason, they only experienced gradual transformations (Lindblom, 1959). Other theories try to refine the argument but ultimately do not question this dominant pattern and limit themselves to identifying the alternation of normal cycles of continuity with others of paradigmatic shifts (Baumgartner and Jones, 1991), or recognize radical changes exclusively at critical junctures (Pierson, 2000).

On account of the ideological distance between the parties—to which we have already referred—and the characteristics of the political game in the region, the most widespread pattern of policy-making in Latin America is, however, very different: instability prevails over continuity.

Proof of the above are the results of a comparative study that found that, out of 26 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, only eight deserved a “high” rating in an indicator of policy stability. Collectively, the policies of the region are much less stable than those implemented in developed countries (Franco Chuaire and Scartascini, 2014).

Pursuant to the above, the need for state policies—or at least a certain fundamental continuity in policy orientations—has been claimed by some Latin American analysts, who have advocated a “democracy of institutions” that favors gradualism (Walker, 2009).

The problem of explaining change, a central aspect of all the predominant theoretical approaches, is characteristic of highly institutionalized systems composed of ideologically close parties, solid institutions, and effective states. In most Latin American countries, on the other hand, the main challenge for policy study is to identify the institutional arrangements capable of explaining policy stability phenomena.

The incidence of external variables: Centrality versus dependence

Although globalization is a phenomenon that has affected the sovereignty margins of all governments, it is well known that its incidence is asymmetric. While developed countries and the United States in particular preserve a strategic role in the new world order (Hardt and Negri, 2002; Stiglitz, 2002), the situation is very different for developing countries.

These are constrained in their economic and fiscal policy decisions (Haggard and Maxfield, 1996; Lerda, 1996), in the design of their retirement systems (Brooks, 2005; Huber and Stephen, 2000), and in the management of their educational systems (Tarabini Castellani and Bonal Sarró, 2011; Verger et al., 2018), among many other policy arenas. Indeed, the subordinate status of these countries in the world context is not a new fact, as dependency theory coined in the 1960s and 1970s shows. Decades later globalization has led to a much more intense and direct penetration of external factors, and has reduced the margins of state autonomy and the capacity of governments to mediate between the local and the international sphere (Held and McGrew, 2003). This statement is particularly true when applied to countries that are highly dependent on international capital flows and with little political weight in supranational financial and regulatory institutions.

The mechanisms of influence of external variables in domestic decisions are varied. They include both explicit conditionalities imposed on countries by means of agreements with international financial institutions and “soft power” modalities linked to the circulation of ideas and paradigms on policies connected with the interests of local elites, to which the need for coordination with global capital markets is added (Stallings, 1992).

This circumstance requires the availability of theoretical tools that allow for the incorporation of a thorough analysis of international variables into the process of policy-making in the subcontinent. It is evident that the mere consideration of domestic factors is insufficient to explain political decisions in a world increasingly interconnected in its political, economic, and cultural spheres and notoriously asymmetric in the distribution of formal and material power resources.

Conclusions

We believe that we have adequately substantiated that the most prestigious theoretical approaches coined in the global North implicitly carry a series of institutional and procedural assumptions that significantly differ from those corresponding to Latin America. Therefore, they are not satisfactory to fully explain the public policies of the subcontinent, and, as a consequence, for the teaching of its public policies.

If so, it is worth proposing some bases from which to advance in the construction and arrangement of more appropriate theoretical constructions.

An increasing number of papers from the academies of these countries describe and analyze national public policies. However, this effort—although necessary—is insufficient. Frequently, the study of national particularities inhibits the identification of regional processes. Comparative studies that would shed light on these broader trends are still scarce, either due to inbreeding vices of the subdiscipline’s practitioners, the lack of financial resources to undertake larger-scale research, or due to the greater recognition and circulation that publications can obtain by inscribing the national case in global currents, more closely related to the constructions of the discipline’s mainstream. In any case, the perspectives that try to limit the region as an object of analysis should face multiple difficulties. However, they should not limit themselves a priori based on recognized national specificities, at least not before testing whether these are a necessary and sufficient explanation for the orientation of their policies.

The attempts that manage to overcome these obstacles and effectively compare policy matrixes or specific policies of several Latin American countries usually exhibit another weakness in regard to building theories, or critically dialoguing with existing ones. It is an approach to comparison that is usually limited to the identification of similarities and differences, but that rarely proposes analytical approaches or frameworks that transcend the knowledge of the cases addressed and allow valid inferences to be generated for the region as a whole. There is a not insignificant accumulation there, but unfortunately it is partially wasted by not generating the conditions for its reproduction in other studies. In some cases, they are a-theoretical examinations; in others, texts reveal theoretical assumptions, which, however, fail to be formalized.

Despite the above, there are valuable contributions generated in Latin America that do transcend their object of study and deliberately seek to generate analytical frameworks. Some of them were referred to throughout this text. They are useful for designing both teaching programs and research projects. In these cases, the challenge consists, first and foremost, of identifying them within a vast sample of diverse and disperse scientific publications and communications. In addition, then, in promoting its reception and dissemination in broad academic circuits, against the prevailing culture that limits the reference authors list and unavoidable bibliographic citations to those that belong to research centers in the global North.

In order to inform public policies curriculum, as well as research programs, some of the variables arise from the comparison made in this very same essay. Without claiming to be exhaustive, particular attention should be paid to variables such as the following: the scope and quality of state capabilities; the weakness of formal institutions and the role played by those of an informal nature; the asymmetrical balance between the executive and legislative branches; the ideologization of political parties and the caesarist component of the leaderships; the important function that governments and social movements fulfill in the construction of public policies; their instability; and the increased weight of variables external to the countries. In fact, this brief catalog needs to be expanded with the contemplation of other dimensions: political, social, and cultural. The topics presented and the bibliographical references included in this text are intended as a contribution in this direction.

In closing, and having pointed out all of the above, we wish to make it clear that this text does not intend to preach Latin American exceptionalism, to the point of abstracting it from any pretension of embedding it in more general approaches. We understand that the most influential theoretical constructions in the field of public policy exhibit a level of development and sophistication in this scientific field that cannot be disregarded and should be capitalized on, even from critical positions.

In contrast, this line of argument demands greater attention to the specificities of policy making in the region, which makes it necessary to focus on the incidence of particular contexts and demands that the most popular theoretical approaches explain the conditions necessary for them to be applicable. That is, the assumption of their contingent nature, which requires its enrichment with the contributions, visions, and findings of other geographies, including Latin America. This certainly implies assuming an epistemological stance that is difficult to accept by the most orthodox scientific views.

The availability of appropriate analytical resources is a necessary requirement for the development of a specialized literature capable of adequately describing, interpreting and teaching the policies that are formulated and implemented in the region. Beyond this academic reason, having relevant approaches to the realities of these countries is also essential for expert knowledge to effectively contribute to the understanding of the main public problems, and to the identification of the best policy alternatives available for their resolution.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I thank my colleagues Germán Bidegain and Rodrigo Martínez for their comments on a preliminary version of this text.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Nicolas Bentancur

Notes

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Northern theories and Southern policies. Why the most influential approaches are insufficient for teaching public policy in Latin America

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction: In search for better explanations for public policies in Latin America

Comparison of theoretical approaches in specific contexts. Premises and limitations

Differences in the institutional dimensions of public policy

State: Relative autonomy versus “Brown zones”

State capacities: Strengths versus precariousness

Formal versus informal Regulatory institutions

The balance of powers: Presidentialism versus hyperpresidentialism

Pragmatic versus ideological political parties

Institutionalized versus personalistic leadership

Peculiarities of the policy-making process in Latin America

The actors of the policy process: Pluralism versus government leadership

Decision-making: Representative democracy versus societal or hybrid formats

Stability and change: Incrementalism versus instability

The incidence of external variables: Centrality versus dependence

Conclusions

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

References