Introduction: Looking for Governance: Latin America Governance Reforms and Challenges

ABSTRACT

Governance scholarship is particularly positioned to propose reforms in public administration to improve the work of governments. The papers in this mini-symposium focus on governance reforms in Latin America, presenting results related to the processes of institutional change that shaped public administration. Governance reforms in Latin America have created different realities and currently face the challenge of institutionalization as a central element. The pattern of institutional change in public administration in Latin America was politically shaped in contexts of democratic instability. Just as democracy represented an essential element for institutional changes in public administration, its instability and institutional weakness make it challenging to institutionalize governance mechanisms in Latin America. Thus, governance reforms in Latin America reinforce the path-dependent characteristic of public administration reforms.

KEYWORDS:

• Governance reforms
• Latin America
• institutionalization
• institutional change
• path dependence

Reforming governance

Governance reforms comprise institutional changes to transform government activities that produce and deliver publicly supported goods and services. The premise of governance reforms is that changes in institutional frameworks for the production and delivery of public goods and services are oriented towards increasing efficiency and effectiveness, expanding society's parameters of legitimacy and trust in the functioning of governments. Institutional changes respond to complex processes, involving choices shaped by different political dynamics, ideas (Béland, 2019; Peters et al., 2005), and political mobilization.

Ideas justify institutional choices and help solidify associated structures that guide the actors' behaviors in the process of change. In many respects, governance reforms respond to institutional changes guided by reform paradigms, reaching different patterns of interaction between the State and society (Stoker, 1997). Governance is a political theory that guides reforms in public administration and public policy to expand capacities and build fair and more effective policies (Peters, 2011). The fact that ideas are fundamental to the process of change does not mean that these ideas are unique, or that “one size fits all.” Ideas are objects of dispute, involving conflicts and critical perspectives that guide change and institutionalization. The governance paradigm does not represent a single solution or a unique set of ideas and institutions that will produce a particular result in public services and public policy. The theoretical assumption of governance reforms is that they increase government trust and the legitimacy of the decision-making and policy implementation, expanding society's support for government actions.

International organizations have successfully disseminated ideas for reform through science diplomacy, guided by a governance paradigm. However, governance reforms tend to fall into the temptation of one-size-fits-all reforms. In three decades, organizations such as the World Bank and the Organisation for Co-operation for Economic Development (OECD) have guided reforms by creating building blocks for an expected universal standard as a model for institutional change (OECD, 2017). The expectation regarding governance reforms is that different countries can achieve institutional stability to produce standard measurable parameters that reflect governments' improved stability and legitimacy. The problem is that the concept of governance is disputed in the literature, with different definitions and processes.

Perhaps a broader and more ambitious notion of governance characterizes this temptation for one-size-fits-all reforms. For Lynn et al. (2000, p. 235), governance represents the “regimes of laws, administrative rules, judicial rulings, and practices that constrain, prescribe, and enable government activity, where such activity is broadly defined as the production and delivery of publicly supported goods and services.” The problem with broad definitions is that they will seek a normative orientation for reforms without looking at historical, economic, and political-institutional paths.

The governance perspective that international organizations disseminate is shaped by the concept of good governance. Good governance is an association of globally defended values to measure governance according to global ideas and forces such as technological innovation, combating corruption, measurement, comparison of development, and financial governance. Good governance has a global value requirement for the performance of governments, including effectiveness, equity, and impartiality (Rothstein, 2012). On the other hand, anti-globalization movements fight transnationalism, emphasizing that governance must follow more national standards and focus on the administrative culture, placing it between populism and technocracy (Rockman, 2019). Finally, the role of international organizations in disseminating governance can have a critical perspective that enhances citizen engagement in building government capacities and legitimacy. Concepts such as sound governance require the engagement of citizens to face the growing complexities, challenges, and global threats. Citizens are part of the process of innovation in administration and policy, and should be considered as core elements of governance (Farazmand, 2017a).

Over time, the concept of governance is accompanied by several adjectives, making its conceptual operationalization difficult. Concepts such as good governance (Rothstein, 2012), participatory governance (Fischer, 2012), collaborative governance (Ansell & Gash, 2008), corporate governance (Williamson, 2002), regulatory governance (Levi-Faur, 2011), or international governance (Rosenau, 1995) attribute thematic specificities or conceptual aspects, specifying more fully the concept of governance. What identifies the governance paradigm is not precisely a consensus of the academic and epistemic communities about its concept, which can take on concurrent or even antagonistic meanings. Instead, what identifies the governance paradigm is a new set of practices that change the way of governing (Peters, 2010; Stoker, 2018). Changes in the way of governing mean the constitution of complex institutional arrangements that go beyond a traditional model of public administration, which is based on organizational hierarchies. Thus, the governance paradigm does not have a conceptual unity (Farazmand, 2017b). However, the governance paradigm does shape the proposition of institutional changes in which governing is performed by a complex relationship between hierarchies, markets, and networks.

The first wave of governance reforms came in the trajectories of globalization, adding market-oriented performance standards and institutional attributes to public administration (Barzelay, 1992). Market-driven reforms have added New Public Management standards to governance by moving through inter-agency competition, performance measurement, decentralization, and efficiency attributes. The second wave of governance reforms prioritized the governments' ability to coordinate different social actors to build public policies. Network governance means the constitution of institutional mechanisms to coordinate social actors in a network, change the decision-making process, and influence policy construction. The network perspective tends to delink governance from governments, assuming that networks represent the central actors in this process (Klijn & Koppenjan, 2012; Rhodes, 1997). The actors' coordination in a network depends on informal mechanisms changing the patterns of interaction between state and society (Powell, 1990).

More recently, governance reforms are oriented towards rebuilding hierarchies and the State's administrative apparatus, given the need for regulatory improvement and the complexity of policy problems (Olsen, 2006; Pierre & Peters, 2005; Roberts, 2020). The governance paradigm supports the idea that markets and networks influence the formulation of policies and public administration activities, aiming at the legitimacy of the outcomes and the government's capacities to face the different challenges of society (Peters & Pierre, 1998). However, recent reform trends point to the need for state reconstruction to face the complex problems of globally formulated policy and crisis contexts.

Governance reforms tend to assume that governments will create interactive processes with society involving markets, networks, and hierarchies in complex ways. The government is a central actor in this process and maybe more or less open to the participation of markets and networks in constructing public policy and services (Torfing et al., 2012). These waves of reform represent ideal types driven by patterns of institutional change. These ideal types make real governance complex, creating patterns of interaction between society and the State permeated by forms of coordination directed by markets, networks, and hierarchies (Cavalcante & Lotta, 2021). However, governments tend to take the lead in the reform process, absorbing ideas and guidelines for institutional change concerning the interaction with society and citizen engagement (Farazmand, 2017a).

The point is that the reforms respond to patterns of institutional change that reflect situations of path dependence (Peters & Pierre, 1998). Path dependence means that initial institutional choices tend to persist over time because positive feedbacks tend to reinforce them through routines and paradigms, with change being driven by critical junctures adding new layers but reiterating the initial choices (Pierson, 2004). Institutional changes can also occur incrementally through layering, drift, displacement, or conversion (Mahoney & Thelen, 2010). Layering changes occur when an institution has the addition of new layers without subtracting its initial functions. Drift changes occur when there is a gradual revision of rules through reinterpretation or misinterpretation. Displacement changes occur when there is a gradual replacement of an existing institution, implying institutional formation. Finally, conversion changes occur when the impact or enforcement of rules changes, especially in the implementation dimension.

Understanding public administration reforms as path-dependent means that the objectives and design of the reform mirror historical, social, and political conditions that shape the role and performance of public administration. Path-dependent reforms mean that the reforms are complex, involving consolidated institutional dynamics related to the role of political agents and society in constructing the reform design. Reformers need to convince political actors about the design of the reform, that often assume an incremental dynamic, where functions are being extracted or added in a complex puzzle or more disruptive dynamics, involving strategies for the empowerment of technocratic actors but find it challenging to adhere to the broader dynamics of society.

Latin American countries comprise an interesting case for analyzing governance reforms. Since the democratization process throughout the 1980s, Latin American countries have carried out several reforms in governance, changing traditional and dynamic roles of public administration in society. The objective of these reforms is to face the historical dilemmas of the formation of public administration and consolidate a state apparatus capable of providing public services more inclusively and formulating policies aimed at the region's development. Thus, contrary to what Fukuyama (2013) proposes, democracy was essential for Latin American countries to incorporate the governance paradigm, and reformers and entrepreneurs could act to change the institutional arrangement of public administrations.

Addressing public administration reforms in Latin America, of course, is not an easy task. Latin American countries respond to different historical paths and structural problems that mirror many common issues related to development but maintain different dynamics. The main question that moves this symposium is to what extent public administration reforms in Latin America could break with the historical patterns that associate the problems of corruption, patronage, inefficiency, cronyism, clientelism, and underdevelopment to existing institutional dynamics.

Governance reforms in Latin America – an overview

Governance reforms comprise patterns of institutional change that aim to transform structural aspects of public administration, and the capacity to implement policy. In different parts of the world, reforms are carried out in different ways, depending on the institutional dynamics that link the action of the public administration and the political system. In Latin America, a series of problems are endemic when implementing the reforms. Combating systemic corruption, diverse forms of patronage and privilege structures, management problems, and the functioning of managerial instruments such as budgeting, personnel, and planning mobilize reformers who seek to shape patterns of institutional change and convince politicians about the direction of change.

In Latin America, the perspective of governance reforms meant an incremental institutional building, which began with democratization. The third wave of democratization resulted in the liberalization of the political regime through regular elections, the party system's autonomy, and government systems' institutional frameworks – presidentialism supports different countries' institutional frameworks. Given the particularities, almost all Latin American countries are presidentialists (O'Donnell, 1999). Democratization was essential to initiate liberalization, but agency conditions to governance were not immediate (O'Donnell, 1996).

Latin America has a tradition of delegative democracies. Delegative democracies are majoritarian political systems based on political leaders. (O'Donnell, 1994). The liberalization of the political regime with free and regular elections was the first transition to democracy. The second transition is to change the conditions of the agency by adopting governance reforms. The second transition is more complex, incremental, and subject to further progress and setbacks. The second transition signifies state liberalization, moving from a bureaucratic-authoritarian state to a plural state and ending populist presidentialism in Latin America (O'Donnell, 1994). Further, transition reforms had to mix with individualistic political authority and in a problematic institutional context. Governance reforms take place in the context of delegative democracies and are difficult for institutionalization. Governance reforms adopted institutional changes in a weak institutional environment, where changes in state structure and governance are nested with changes in political regimes (Brinks et al., 2019).

Latin America has a long tradition of public administration reforms. According to a discourse of permanent modernization, Latin American countries tend to make state reforms as strategic for the political regime (Olavarría-Gambi, 2018). Political leaders advocate changes in public administration to gain political support from citizens. In Brazil, Getúlio Vargas introduced changes in public administration in 1938, adopting the Weberian bureaucracy model. Peronism in Argentina created a Weberian bureaucracy to transform the foundations of political power. In Chile, Pinochet established liberal reforms in the administrative State to legitimate himself in power. Governance reforms are strategic to legitimize governments. Thus, modernization in Latin America can take on a progressive bias towards conservative modernization (Moore, 1966).

Governance reforms in Latin America over the past three decades have faced a double challenge. First, to organize the political regime's conditions into a system of democratic government (Ames, 1987; Mainwaring & Scully, 2008). Second, modernizing the administrative State to promote reforms ensuring a greater capacity to deliver better public services and better public policies (Bersch, 2019). The conditions of governance in Latin America arose along with the reforms in the political regime, being a direct attribute of democratization and liberalization. Few attempts were made to break the regime at the political regime level, except for Peru in 1994 and Haiti in 2000 (Mainwaring & Scully, 2008). However, in some cases, such as Honduras, Venezuela, and El Salvador, hybrid regimes have emerged that maintain electoral procedures typical of democracy, but that are fraudulent or allow for the reiteration of authoritarian practices in governments. On the other hand, in Latin American countries that made the transition to democracy, the mechanisms and practices of New Public Management have been adopted since the 1990s to modify the structure of hierarchies, the relationship with markets, and policy networks. (Grindle, 2004).

Associated with democratization, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank influenced governance reforms adopted in Latin America. International financial institutions have played an essential role in defining which path to adopt for governance reforms (Weiss, 2000; Zurbriggen, 2014). These institutions have been changes in budget management, financial management, the professionalization of the civil service, and delivery capacities. These changes were incremental throughout the 1990s and 2000s, with subsequent state capacity gains (Filgueiras, 2018). Organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have conditioned the standards of governance reform, especially in the economic area and in social policies aimed at combating inequalities.

International organizations designed various elements of fiscal policy based on the renegotiation of countries' foreign debts. For example, the agreement with the IMF implied the conduct of fiscal policy based on a design that prevents government expenditure bias, imposes restrictive rules, discourages countercyclical economic policies, depoliticizes the management of fiscal and monetary policy, and targets the control of inflation (Kopits, 2001). The depoliticization of fiscal policy is the main objective, with the prospect of reducing party actors' incentives to increase government spending (Crivelli et al., 2016). Associated with this, the design of fiscal policy in Latin American countries associates the establishment of clear fiscal and budgetary management rules with punishments for national and subnational political authority, promotion of fiscal transparency, surveillance, and budgetary sanctions. This institutional change strategy produced different results. For example, in Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, and Colombia, advances were made in debt management and fiscal policy, producing positive outcomes and feedbacks that affected economic policy. On the other hand, countries like Argentina and Peru had difficulties with this agenda of reforms and unstable contexts that hamper the progress of economic governance.

Reforms conditioned by international organizations also operated in social policies, with a particular focus on reducing inequalities. For example, programs such as Bolsa Família in Brazil and Oportunidades in Mexico received credit from the World Bank, conditioning standards of governance, design of social policies, impact analysis, policy evaluation, and regulation. In public administration, several reforms related to spending on personnel, the definition of careers, models for selecting people and leaders, organizational structures, adoption of information and communication technologies, and public procurement were widely disseminated by institutions such as the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank.

Governance reforms in Latin America have a double dimension – changes in the political regime to strengthen democracy associated with public administration changes to strengthen delivery capacities. The change in governance in Latin America is rooted in the political regime and public administration, making the conditions to the democratic legitimacy of governance reforms more dramatic. Governance reforms in Latin America have adopted essential changes in the previously established meta governance mechanisms. These changes mean a complex set of ideas aimed at democratizing public administration, with a special focus on strengthening transparency and accountability, breaking the patrimonialist past and patronage and clientelism systems, improving delivery capacity, and creating modern standards of public management.

In the decision-making process, several experiments were implemented in Latin America. Within the political regime's scope, the institutions adopted the liberalization of political parties and robust electoral procedures (Mainwaring & Scully, 2008). Different political participation experiments were also implemented in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, and Central American countries (Avritzer, 2002). These democratic experiments strengthened civil society's participation in the policy process and public administration (Boulding & Wampler, 2010). The results, however, are mixed. First, democratization in Latin America presents a problem regarding the institutionalization of political parties. Second, political parties are fluid and produce uncertainties in electoral outcomes (Mainwaring, 2018; Mainwaring & Scully, 1996). The problems of representative democracy in Latin America are common. Regarding participatory democracy, the results indicate that there has been progressed in civil society participation. However, participation is not always horizontal and inclusive (Zaremberg, 2012), and the causal relationship between participatory institutions and quality decision-making remains unclear (Montambeault, 2015; Silva & Cleuren, 2009).

Latin American countries have made progress in accountability and transparency. In the area of transparency, the countries of Latin America have adopted freedom of information acts. In addition, the pressures from international organizations have made Latin American countries adopt transparency legislation within the political system and public administration (Michener, 2015). Regarding accountability, several control mechanisms of elected politicians and bureaucrats were strengthened, especially the mechanisms for auditing and dealing with corruption (Arellano-Gault, 2019; Mainwaring, 2003). The performance of accountability institutions, however, also presents mixed results. Corruption continues to characterize public policies despite audit and control institutions' advancement and electoral control (Guerzovitc & Michele, 2011; Rotberg, 2019). One example is civil construction companies' tentacles in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, and Colombia. The persistence of corruption undermines the policy implementation process and erodes stability. Public administration loses legitimacy, and political effects are evident.

Coordination mechanisms find it difficult to make public policies and public services more effective. There is insufficient evidence on policy coordination in Latin American countries, but the results, especially in countries requiring multilevel structures such as Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, are sparse. Nevertheless, governments assume political coordination roles and exercise public policies' transversal and strategic leadership (Alessandro et al., 2013). For example, several coordination initiatives were carried out in Brazil's case, producing results in the implementation process (Cavalcante, 2018).

If, on the one hand, public administration reforms show sparse results, political instability is an essential issue explaining the failure of governance reforms. Latin American countries, except Uruguay and Costa Rica, have a long tradition of political instability, making it challenging to adhere to the transformed institutional parameters of public administration. Studies on democratic backsliding and public administration have revealed how the relationship between democracy and bureaucracy is complex and permeates processes of institutional change (Bauer et al., 2021). In Latin America, coexisting with political instability makes the results of public administration reforms more fluid and subject to constant turbulence.

These mixed results within the scope of governance reforms in Latin America have fostered permanent turbulence. Turbulence is “a situation where events, demands, and support interact, and change is highly variable, inconsistent and unexpected and unpredictable ways” (Ansell & Trondal, 2018, pp. 44–45). Turbulence is not a transitional anomaly. Nor is it confused with the idea of crisis. Crises represent threat, urgency, and uncertainty (Boin et al., 2005). Turbulence can be a constitutive situation of organizations that defy governing capacities. Turbulence imposes changes, tests resilience, and promotes coupling or dissociation to public organizations (Ansell & Trondal, 2018). The constant turbulence in Latin American public administration stems from a context of deep distrust of society concerning institutional performance, creating permanent political instability and lack of social cohesion, political polarization, and populist solutions.

This turbulence promotes political instability and a high rate of presidential impeachment in Latin America (Perez-Liñan, 2009). This turbulence in Latin America occurs through corruption scandals and problems of government effectiveness and public administration performance. The turbulence context did not promote ruptures in governance structures of Latin American countries, but it promotes the context of instability and governance failures. Countries like Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic faced corruption and unstable contexts. Governance reforms in Latin America present the dual challenge of changing agency conditions in public administration, shaping more professionalized bureaucracies with expanded delivery capacities, associated with the political challenge of producing stability and democratization of the state.

The challenges of change and institutionalization in Latin America

Governance reforms involve a complex puzzle between the dimensions of politics and public administration. On the one hand, convincing the representative system of the increasing returns of reform is essential to create legitimacy and influence over institutional changes in public administration. On the other hand, convincing bureaucrats about institutional changes and the various ambiguities that emerge about the institutional design is challenging for successful reforms. In Latin American countries, this puzzle becomes dramatic if we consider that reforms necessarily imply breaks in privilege systems embedded in the institutional design of public administration. The main challenge, perhaps, is that of the State's authority to direct change and transformation.

This puzzle may suggest that the relationship between politics and bureaucracy is dichotomous, with idealized controls of the representative system over bureaucracy (Lupia & McCubbins, 1994; Weingast, 1984). However, this relationship between politics and bureaucracy is not dichotomous. Usually, reforms are negotiated and based on complex interactions between politicians and bureaucrats. Moreover, different variations can be found in this process of conducting governance reforms. On the one hand, politicians create general approaches to reforms, steering administrative reform strategies centered on structure, resource allocation, personnel system, norms, and accountability. However, on the other hand, these strategies imply a reaction from the bureaucracy, implying possibilities of working, shirking, and sabotage (Bauer et al., 2021).

The transition to relative or semi-democracy in Latin America incorporated the challenge of creating policies that would reduce fundamental social inequality and make political elites engage in more equitable, less manipulated systems and based on the rule of law principles, as disseminated by many international organizations through the concept of good governance. The institutional building of democratic regimes and governance in Latin America is marked by a constitutive tension between the promise of political equality and the reality of social and economic inequality. This tension is a permanent source of political instability. The result of this constitutive tension is the creation of volatile institutional environments that are subject to recurring political instability (Brinks et al., 2019). The process of institutional change resulting from the transitions to democracy, necessary to modify the public administration institutions and policy, tends to reproduce strong instability and follow a pattern of serial replacement, making it challenging to create an equilibrium (Levitsky & Murillo, 2014). The political dynamics of democratic transition and the context of instability that alternate pluralist and populist regimes challenge governance reforms and alter how public policy is steered (Calvo & Murillo, 2013; Wigell, 2017).

Political instability and alternation between more pluralist and more populist regimes make strategies for public administration reform a kind of constant with path-dependent characteristics. This dynamic that combines political instability and alternating patterns regarding the leadership of reforms creates a series of difficulties for advancing governance in Latin America. As a result, governance reforms in Latin America followed different patterns, which can be divided into two broader categories. First, a more incremental pattern, supported by more pluralist perspectives but subject to populist threats. Second, a more episodic and urgent pattern, but without breaking the trajectories of corporatism (Bersch, 2019; Oszlak, 2021).

On the one hand, countries such as Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, and Chile followed a more incremental pattern, whereby reforms involve bargaining, negotiation, and consensus-building, with broad stakeholder involvement (Ramos et al., 2021; Whittingham, 2021). On the other hand, countries like Argentina and Mexico followed a more episodic and politically oriented pattern. In Argentina, reforms were politically conducted in a more hierarchical way, creating reform strategies that move structures, personnel, and resources but without altering the corporatist aspects of governance. In Mexico, technocrats guided reforms within the dominant PRI party, aiming to adopt liberalization as an advantage for party policies to frame the power structure (Oszlak, 2021).

The main challenge of governance reforms in Latin America is to overcome the contexts of uncertainty, the ambiguities of institutional change that emerge with bargains between politicians and bureaucrats, and a tendency towards a technocratic pattern of driving change. As a result, governance reforms in Latin America are complex, encompassing unstable political dynamics with different patterns of leadership that compromise the reach, effectiveness, and increasing returns with the process of institutional change. The challenge of institutionalizing governance reforms in Latin America responds to the challenge of democratizing the state and building responses to the constitutive tensions of economic and social inequalities. Reforms tend to be path-dependent and respond to institutional designs that can strengthen or diminish the agency conditions of public administration.

Articles of the mini-symposium

This mini-symposium reflects on different issues of governance reforms in Latin America. Oscar Oszlak's article addresses different patterns and possible classifications of reforms in Latin America. More than varieties of State, Latin America reveals varieties of modernization projects of public administration, which can be explained in the context of legitimacy and viability. Governance reforms in Latin America have been carried out in different formats, but they all fall into a common point: the difficulties of institutionalizing and strengthening the state apparatus. As a result, the path of reforms in Latin America lacks institutionalization, creating a context of uncertainty for governments, which tend to produce mimetic patterns of change rather than a process of institutional strengthening.

Governance reforms also do not produce a single standard within governments. Instead, governance reforms result in complex patterns of interaction and coordination with society, where governance modes shape diverse dynamics between hierarchies, markets, and networks. The article by Pedro Cavalcante and Gabriela Lotta shows how governance reforms create diverse governance modes, where different policy sectors typically operate in distinct modes of coordination with society in terms of relationship and skills. Moreover, different governance modes will require different bureaucratic capacities, as revealed by the Brazilian federal government bureaucracy study.

Finally, this mini-symposium addresses the emergence and effectiveness of regulatory frameworks arising from governance reforms in Latin America. The article by Mónica Sinisterra Rodríguez shows how the development of governance frameworks is essential in building public-private partnerships, particularly in infrastructure policy. Using a comparative study based on process tracing, the author argues that the action of third actors, who watch directly or indirectly the public interest and becomes guarantors of the State when it gives tasks to the private sector, is essential in the causal process linking the regulatory framework with PPP effectiveness. This study addresses a central aspect of governance reforms, whereby a regulatory state depends on third-party actors to promote the effectiveness of public services built in market modes.

This mini-symposium does not exhaust the various analytical possibilities incorporated in the idea of governance reforms. It does not even allow us to point to a standard dynamic surrounding these reforms in Latin America. Latin America is looking for governance following different patterns, conflicting, unstable, and ambiguous political dynamics, which reinforce a path-dependent dynamic sustained by administrative reform strategies that show moments of advances and setbacks, reshaping, and continuities, which are difficult to grasp. When Latin America is looking for governance, it wants to participate in the modernization and advancement of liberal societies. However, with difficulties to break with their past, which insists on making the present.

Disclosure statement

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