Decentralization and Co-participation in the Public Sector: A Historical Feature of Uruguayan Pluralist Democracy

ABSTRACT

Through a case study of administrative decentralization in Uruguay, this article illustrates how political considerations and historical paths influence the structure of the public sector. This article thus shows how beyond technical needs, public sector development is an answer to political power plays and thus the result of long-standing political structures. Tracing the political factors and historical trends influencing the development of administrative decentralization features in two types of bodies within the Uruguayan public sector, we argue that the shape of the twentieth century Uruguayan administrative machine is a product of elite-driven political projects and compromises. We focus on how these two types of decentralized institutions have developed pluralist features such as representative political co-participation, which historically acted as limits to the concentration of power in the executive branch, and corporatist co-participation, which led to public sector expansion through a “grey zone” of relations with the private sector.

KEYWORDS:

• Decentralization
• co-participation
• government organizations
• pluralist democracy
• uruguayan Public Administration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Olavarría-Gambi (2018, p. 259) applies this thinking to the Chilean case: “The study of government as an organization in a historical perspective allows understanding processes that occurred in the past which led to the shaping of the modern State, a topic rarely studied in business or management history.”

2. This report by the CERES, a Uruguayan Economic Think Tank, illustrates these debates. https://ceres-uy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/ReformaEEPP.pdf.

3. The Uruguayan state structure is comprised of two types of decentralised institutions: autonomous entities and decentralised services. We do not differentiate between them for the purposes of this study, although we mostly focus on autonomous entities. The key difference between these types of bodies is the degree of autonomy granted. Autonomous entities are given considerably more autonomy vis a vis the central administration. Several laws and the constitution dictate what activities of the state can be under said decentralization schemes.

4. Due to conflicts of political competencies – of party and trade unions veto players – the reforms of this period were gradualist and moderate, with actions that limited liberalization and privatization ex ante or ex post, preserving the economic and social functions of the State to a greater degree than other countries in the region, and further preserving most autonomous entities (Lanzaro, 2000; Ramos & Milanesi, 2018; Ramos Larraburu, 2009). The IADB Privatization Index (Lora, 2001), ranks Uruguay last in terms of privatization as a proportion of Gross National Product (less than 0.1%) for the 1985–1990 period.

5.  See, as an example of this perspective, Ziller and Brouant (1993) historical analysis on the subject of European political-administrative systems, as well the works on State building by Kurtz (2013) and Ertman (1997).

6.  See Chester’s (1953) classification and Wettenhall’s (2003) typology.

7.  We don’t analyse the variety of agencies with regulatory and control functions, having different institutional and juridical status.

8.  See, for instance, Cosculluela Montaner’s (2006) catalogue of state agency models, in particular autonomous institutions in Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and the United States. In Latin America, the Uruguayan case can be compared to autonomous institutions in Costa Rica.

9.  “The result was a spiral of populist institutional expansion and anti-populist retrenchment – tied to cycling periods of democratic and authoritarian politics” (Kurtz, 2013, p. 176).

10.  The traditional biparty system – consisting of the Nacional and Colorado parties – was born with the independent State in the early decades of the nineteenth century and dominated political life until the end of the twentieth century. The party system experimented a huge transformation due to the development of the Frente Amplio (Broad Front), a conglomerate of left fractions which in 2005 rose to the presidency and since then has become the predominant party (J. Lanzaro, 2015). In this transformative period, the party system proved its institutional strength, since it managed to undertake a significant change without breaking, and still maintaining its consistency, pluralism, and competitiveness.

11.  The first “batllismo” is the period in which José Batlle y Ordoñez had a direct national influence, between 1902 and 1929. Batlle y Ordoñez has been the major historical leader of the Colorado Party and was president two times. He is associated with the founding of Uruguay as a “model country” and has been considered “the Creator of his Times” (Vanger, 1963, 1980). The period of “second batllismo” – associated with his nephew Luis Battle Berres – began in the early 1940s and spanned until the 1960s.

12.  The fact that the traditional parties have actively participated in the foundation of the State, the establishment of democracy and the citizen franchise, along the nineteenth century and at the dawn of the twentieth century, has given greater consistency to the party system and to the quality of democracy in Uruguay.

13.  An example of this is Hood’s (1978) study on the theories explaining the development of the United Kingdom’s machinery of government and administrative agencies (especially NDPB: Non-Departmental Public Bodies, which are independent from ministries). Hood classifies these theories in four groups and ascribes a higher explanatory value to those management-type and political theory explanations.

14.  The specialization principle is one of the central components of Scientific Management (Gulick & Urwick, 1937), which inspired the study of public administration in the first decades of the twentieth century (Shafritz & Hyde, 2008).

15.  In Costa Rica, the 1949 Constitution established a system of autonomous institutions answering to similar reasons to the Uruguayan case and to favour the process of democratic building which came after the 1948 Revolution. Since then, and thanks to developmentalist pushes in the era of José Figueres and his Party of National Liberation, the increasing economic and social functions of the state (banks, insurances, education, health care, electrical energy, water, telecommunications, etc.) were left in the care of these autonomous institutions, establishing a broadly decentralized system, characteristic of the Costa Rican political system (Lehoucq, 2005, pp. 145–149). Several of these institutions have had similar experiences in co-participation to those of Uruguay. Co-participation was either regulated by law or established in practice, through boards integrated with political parties and corporatist representatives (See Romero Pérez, 1981).

16.  Frank Goodnow was the first president of the American Political Science Association and president of The Johns Hopkins University (1915–1929). He was one of the founders of the science of administration and had a distinguished career as a professor of Political Science and Administrative Law, after studying at the University of Columbia, the University of Berlin and the Ecole Libre de Sciences Politiques de Paris.

17.  A century later, and through a different lens, Ackerman (2000) discusses the “new separation of powers” in the US: the division between the two legislative chambers, the presidency, and the judicial courts – according to the traditional parameters of Montesquieu and Madison – has led to a more complex institutional structure and “new separationism”, including independent agencies in particular.

18.  As Demicheli (1924, pp. 46–47) highlights, the 1918 Constitution had three aims: “constitutionalization” of the autonomous principle; “strengthening” of the autonomy given by previous laws; and “systematization” of principles, making it so that all institutions fell under the same juridical regime”.

19.  Thus, there was no space for personalist leadership, in the style of the powerful “condottieri” in Italian and Mexican nationalized companies. However, the presidency of autonomous entities has been a strategic role in the management of their institutions and the relationship with the Executive. Indeed, some presidents of autonomous entities have been highly relevant in the founding processes and further periods of modernization and development.

20.  These entities can be compared to those dubbed quangos (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations): public institutions that present a certain degree of autonomy vis-à-vis the government (and sometimes parliament). Quangos carry out social services and regulatory functions in selective economic, political, or social fields (Greve et al., 1999; Van Thiel, 2017). This places them in a “grey zone” between the public and private sector. In the case of the UK, these go back to the 17th and 18th centuries, including the Board of Trade of the Victorian Era.

21.  Ruocco (2011) traces the legal debates over the definition of NSPIs, as well as the main historical trends undergone by them and in the literature.

22.  This is the case of the National Slaughterhouse (1928) and the National Milk Producers Cooperative (CONAPROLE, 1935).

23.  ASSE has become the largest public provider within the National Health System, competing against powerful private institutions.

24.  However, and perhaps paradoxically, the Government, the president, and ministers have opportunities to exert influence in sectorial policies, through their powers of authority designation, and formal and informal mechanisms of control.

25.  This is particularly severe given that the budgets of some of these institutions are sometimes bigger than the budget for the ministry they are related to, which is tasked with supervising the decentralized management.

26.  https://transparenciapresupuestaria.opp.gub.uy/inicio/personas-públicas-no-estatales.