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ABSTRACT
Argentina exhibits an overall trend toward centralization, although not linear across time or policy areas, accompanied by strong centralization in the fiscal sphere, and greater politico-institutional autonomy for the provinces. These findings arise from a unique dataset gathered by 22 research assistants and curated by 18 experts for 22 policy areas, 5 fiscal dimensions, and 3 politico-institutional autonomy areas. In 1862, the country was very decentralized, but state building soon consolidated the federal government’s role in policymaking and fiscal relations, while provinces struggled to keep their politico-institutional autonomy until the 1960s, when challenges to their autonomy started to decrease. A centralization peak is observed in 1949, while decentralization junctures took place after the military coups of 1955 and 1976, and during the 1990s. Regime change cannot explain these changes. Instead, policy and fiscal de/centralization is best explained by the state-building process, the strength of presidents, and the economic trends.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the three anonymous referees, the participants of the IPSA Conference in 2021 and LASA 2022 and the other academics involved in the de/centralization project (particularly Paolo Dardanelli and John Kincaid) for their valuable feedback and suggestions on previous versions of the paper.
The authors thank Florencia Alcaín, Gonzalo Barrientos, Romina Briones, Gisela Cánovas Herrera, Ángelo Cattone, Agustín Colque, Rita Cuevas, Guadalupe De la Paz Rolón, Micaela Escalona Bianchi, Esteban Filippa Ocampo, Lautaro García Alonso, Delfina Godfrid, Bianca Leonangeli Pont, Jimena Malerba, Iñaki Martínez Soria, Juana Montes Gadda, Melina Morales Sumay, Bernardo Pérez, María Luz Romero, Rebecca Ruiz Rivadeneira, Tomás Seré, Dan Sokolowski and Juan Enrique Torres Barry for providing outstanding research assistance.
The authors are also very grateful to Carlos Acuña, Hugo Arce, José Barbero, Laura D'Amato, Martín Böhmer, Magdalena Chiara, Alberto Föhrig, Noemí María Girbal-Blacha, Ricardo Gutierrez, Mirta Lobato, Mariana Luna Pont, Camila Perochena, Alberto Porto, Santiago Marino, Julieta Nicolao, Ana Paula Penchazade, Jorge Puig, Axel Rivas, Valeria Serafinoff, Emilia Simison, Ana Wortman and Eduardo Zimmemann for their expert gaze, insightful comments and suggestions for the codebooks and the paper.
All errors are the authors’ own.
We also thank the Leverhulme Trust (grant number IN-2013-044), FAPESP – The Sao Paulo Research Foundation, the James Madison Charitable Trust, and the Forum of Federations for funding the project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 Static decentralization refers to the state of the affairs between levels of government at a given point in time over a given policy area, while dynamic de/centralization refers to its change over time. Whenever we refer to de/centralization without any further clarification we are referring to static de/centralization.
Administrative de/centralization refers to the ability to deliver or implement policies in a given area. Legislative de/centralization refers to competences to pass laws in a given policy area.
2 Features are Direction (centralizing or decentralizing), Magnitude (how large the change is), Form (if the changes were legislative or administrative) and Tempo (includes frequency, pace, timing, and sequence) (Dardanelli et al. CitationForthcoming). Frequency is the number of times of a certain change in a given period of time. Pace refers to the incremental or acute nature of change. Timing relates to the point in time of the changes. Last, sequence is the order of the changes. See section V (Overview of dynamic de/centralization) for a detailed analysis of these features.
3 Whenever policy is mentioned, we refer to both legislative and administrative dimensions of public policy unless otherwise clarified.
4 Constitutional and institutional autonomy are categorized from 1 to 7, where 1 means no autonomy and 7 means the largest possible autonomy for each variable. Electoral autonomy is codified as 1, 3, 5 or 7, following the same incremental logic.
5 Both subdimensions are categorized from 1 to 7, with 1 being fully centralized, and 7 fully decentralized.
6 Although higher levels of expenditure at the subnational level have been understood as higher levels of decentralization, already in 2004 Rodden stated that this indicator should be combined with others. Expenditure does not automatically translate into more policy delivery since it is many times used to compensate for the underdeveloped provincial markets, the rise of poverty and/or the lack of employment in the private sector. As a result, in many provinces, the state is the first or second biggest employer (Calvo and Murillo Citation2004; Gervasoni Citation2010). Moreover, a high dependence on the federal government transfers could imply the opposite of autonomy (Bonvecchi and Zelaznik Citation2012). There are also long-term effects that discourage investment and perpetuate stagnation and political dominance in those provinces (Meloni Citation2016; Gervasoni Citation2010, Citation2021). As a result, higher expenditure at the subnational level may not be taken as a valid proxy of higher decentralization.
7 Each category is measured on a 1–7 scale where 1 corresponds to no autonomy and 7 to full autonomy.
8 Gonzalez (Citation2008) also uses party discipline as proxy, we opted not to use it due to the lack of reliable data for all of the cases.
9 We owe Carlos Acuña this conceptualization, who generously discussed it with us during several personal communications.
10 The time dictated by the government’s statute or, when there is none, at least half of what the constitution dictates for a presidential term (three years at that time).
11 The federal constitution sanctioned in 1853 was not accepted by the province of Buenos Aires, which seceded and remained as an independent country between 1853–1860 and the Argentine Confederation was governed by General Urquiza from Entre Ríos province. In 1860 the 1853 constitution with few amendments was approved by all the provinces. In 1862, Bartolomé Mitre was the first president to be elected under this constitution.
12 In 1951, Perón provincialized national territories corresponding to La Pampa and Chaco, calling them Eva Perón province and Presidente Perón province respectively (changed during the coup that deposed Perón). Later Misiones (1953), Neuquén, Río Negro, Formosa, Chubut and Santa Cruz (1955), and Tierra del Fuego (1990), were Provincialized as well. Buenos Aires City became autonomous after the 1994 constitutional amendment.
13 Buenos Aires (containing the later federalized Buenos Aires City), Catamarca, Córdoba, Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Jujuy, La Rioja, Mendoza, Salta, San Juan, San Luis, Santa Fe, Santiago del Estero and Tucumán.
14 Delegated competences are fully described in articles 67, 86 and 100–137 of the 1853–1860 Constitution.
15 As in the previous cases, 1 accounts for = exclusive control of the central government and 7 for = exclusively control of the provinces. See Dardanelli et. al. (forthcoming).
16 Since our coding accounts for interventions by the end of the year, those that ended before December 31 were not captured by our coding rules.
17 It is worth noticing that from 1966 till 1983 there were 9 years of the facto governments that eliminated both electoral and institutional autonomy of the provinces.
18 In this regard, see footnote 6.
19 Mendoza et al. v. National State et al. (2004).
20 Farmacity S.A. v. Tax Authorities of the Province of Buenos Aires and others (2021).
21 Government of the City of Buenos Aires v. Argentine State (2021).
22 Unión Cívica Radical Intransigente, a fraction of the original UCR.
23 Confidence rating: *low, **medium, ***high. In all the cases 1 accounts for less autonomy and 7 for full autonomy. For more details see Dardanelli et. al. (forthcoming).
24 On this regard, see footnote 6.