Abstract
Since the 1980s, government decentralization has been one of the most important areas of reform in Latin America. Over the years, decentralizing processes have been developed at varying rates of speed and with different areas of emphasis and motivations. All of this has led to a regional variety that provides an interesting opportunity for comparative analysis.
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Notes
- 1.
Translation: “(…) the feeling that decentralization has failed to generate political, social, and economic inclusion processes”.
- 2.
Translation: “The tax-sharing arrangements were not prioritized (usually freely available), as in previous years. Preference was given to lead federal resources to sub-national governments for education and health, strengthening specific transfers”.
- 3.
Translation: “(…) existence of pre-colonial nations and indigenous people and their ancestral dominion over their territories, is guaranteed self-determination within the framework of the unity of the State, which consists in their right to self-government”.
- 4.
Translation: “The criticism focuses on this point, the endemic weakness of the Bolivian State has failed to consolidate its institutions in nearly two centuries of existence”.
- 5.
Translation: “Which is associated with harvesting practices of public agencies, corruption and clientelism”.
- 6.
Translation: “Ecuador is a constitutional State of rights and justice, social, democratic, sovereign, independent, unitary (…). It is organized as a Republic and is governed in a decentralized way”.
- 7.
Translation: “(…) democratic, social, independent and sovereign. The State is one and indivisible. Its government is unitary, representative and decentralized”.
- 8.
Translation: “(…) dependency on central level decisions, overlap of responsibilities, lack of regional strategic vision and management skills in technical and professional teams, loss of vitality of participatory component, among others”.
- 9.
The autonomous regions and rural indigenous territories are territorial units that were created once a series of requirements set out in the law were met. Bolivia currently has the autonomous region of Chaco Tarijeño, while there are 11 municipalities that have opted to become rural indigenous territories.
- 10.
The Ecuadorean regions do not yet exist, but according to COOTAD they must be created by 2018, grouping two or more geographically contiguous provinces together and meeting surface area and population criteria.
- 11.
In both Peru and Ecuador, the Executive Branch has a Vice President and Vice Prefect, respectively. In the latter case, he or she is elected at the same time as the Prefect.
- 12.
Translation: “(…) the allocation of expenditure responsibilities to sub-national governments is important, the way how sub-national finance such services is a key concern”.
- 13.
The following data were consulted in the documents of the Budgetary Execution Office of the Ministry of Economics and Public Finance of the Plurinational State of Bolivia (2012).
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
The following data were taken from the National Decentralization Plan for 2012–2015 (Consejo Nacional de Competencias and Secretaría Nacional de Planificación y Desarrollo 2012).
- 17.
The data for this section are from the Public Sector Budget Closure documents for the 2011 Fiscal Year (Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas 2012).
- 18.
By law, it is distributed in different percentages to all of the local governments in the departamento.
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Vial-Cossani, M.C. (2013). Political and Fiscal Decentralization in South America: A Comparative Analysis of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. In: Cuadrado-Roura, J., Aroca, P. (eds) Regional Problems and Policies in Latin America. Advances in Spatial Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39674-8_20
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