Abstract
This article analyzes concept formation and its empirical and theoretical implications for the study of subnational undemocratic regimes. The paper argues that extant conceptualizations of subnational political regimes, which generally draw on a strategy of “conceptual expansion” have important drawbacks for the study of subnational undemocratic regimes (SURs). To overcome these shortcomings, the article claims for a strategy of “conceptual separation” that disaggregates political regimes into two orthogonal dimensions, i.e., the access to and the exercise of state power. Drawing on original evidence from Argentina and Mexico, the article demonstrates that the strategy of conceptual separation helps researchers to (1) avoid truncation of the universe of cases for analysis, (2) obtain new and more precise information about the actual magnitude of the uneven territorialization of democracy, (3) recognize the existence of two ideal type domains of SURs: patrimonial and bureaucratic, and (4) gain more analytic leverage to identify the causal mechanisms that explain regime continuity within and across SUR types. In-depth case studies of the state of Puebla (Mexico) and the province of San Luis (Argentina) demonstrate empirically the workings of the mechanisms that account for regime continuity in bureaucratic-like SURs. The article also demonstrates the potential of distinguishing between SUR types for the study of SUR origins and SUR change.
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Notes
Examples of the numerous attributes that scholars add to the procedural, minimal definition of subnational democracy include lack of control by local incumbents over the media, the local legislature, opposition parties, lower-tier governments, and state resources (Gibson 2005); freedom to form and join organizations and the existence of institutions for making policies dependent upon preferences (McMann 2006); lack of control by local incumbents over business opportunities, the local judiciary, and clientelistic networks (Behrend 2008; Durazo Hermann 2010); and the absence of control by incumbents over national legislators, the existence of autonomous labor unions, business organizations, and autonomous NGOs (Gervasoni 2010b).
Customarily, a political regime is defined as “the set of procedural norms, whether formal or informal, that determine the number and type of actors who are allowed to gain access to the principal governmental positions, the methods of access to such positions, and the rules that are followed in the making of publicly binding decisions” (Munck 1996, p. 8).
Patrimonial and bureaucratic administrations are ideal types and, as such, are rarely found in practice. These ideal types simply serve as endpoints in a continuum and indicate that, at least conceptually, nothing can be more ideal. However, they draw attention to the fact that state administrations can be polar opposites.
The decision to adopt a subminimal Schumpeterian (rather than a Dahlian) definition of democracy is due mostly to problems of data availability. The lack of systematic, comparable subnational data to measure, for instance, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, or human rights violations makes impossible an operationalization of democracy according to minimal standards.
Appendix (Section I) discusses indicators of democracy and aggregation procedures.
This dimension is used as a proxy for rulers' attachment to established rules and procedures. For a justification of its selection, see the Appendix (Section II). This secondary-level dimension captures rulers' capacity to discretionally allocate fiscal transfers among lower-tier levels of government (municipalities).
Appendix (Section II) discusses indicators of patrimonialism and aggregation procedures.
The exercise of state power is not calculated for the cities of Buenos Aires and Mexico City because, unlike other provinces/states, they do not possess lower levels of government (municipalities). Due to the absence of this lower-tier level of government, the “(subnational) rulers' fiscal discretion” dimension cannot be computed, thus preventing comparability with other districts. Data on judicial independence were unavailable for Catamarca and Chaco, which is why the exercise dimension was not computed in these provinces.
The onset of democratization in Argentina is set in 1983, when military rule was replaced by a democratically elected civilian government. In Mexico, it is set in 1997, since, according to prominent Mexican scholars, this year marked the onset of democratization in the country at the federal level (see, for instance, Magaloni 2005). In 1997, the PRI lost its majority in the lower chamber of Congress, and consequently its hegemony in the legislative arena.
Significance levels are 0.27 and 0.15, respectively. The low correlations, however, do not rule out the possibility that one dimension is necessary for the other. Future studies should explore this possibility.
Cluster analyses were employed to separate the cutoff points between states and provinces that rank zero or near zero from those ranking higher on the democracy scale. In a scale that ranges from 0 to 1, the cutoff point was set at 0.17 in Argentina and at 0.08 in Mexico. SURs in Argentina include: La Rioja, San Luis, Santiago del Estero, Santa Cruz, Formosa, La Pampa, Río Negro, and Neuquén (see Fig. 7, Appendix). SURs in Mexico include: Oaxaca, Puebla, Baja California, Coahuila, Colima, Hidalgo, Tabasco, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Jalisco, Guanajuato, and Yucatán (see Fig. 8, Appendix). The results of these cluster analyses are available from the author.
Economic dependence, as McMann (2006) demonstrates, is another mechanism of SUR continuity. Yet this mechanism is a more adequate explanation of regime reproduction in patrimonial SURs, since inhabitants in these settings are more dependent on the state and its handouts.
Manuel Bartlett was a prominent federal minister during the presidential administrations of Miguel de la Madrid (1982–1988) and Carlos Salinas (1988–1994), and was a PRI presidential nominee on numerous occasions.
Information about interviewees' names, positions, and date/place of interviews can be found at the end of this article.
Claiming the state's sovereignty, Governor Bartlett altered the formula to distribute earmarked federal funds among municipalities. Less populated municipalities (not coincidentally, those ruled by the PRI) were disproportionally favored by the new coefficients.
The PAN went from holding 44.44 % of Puebla's seats in the federal lower house in 2000 to 70 % in 2006, along with two thirds of its senators.
Unlike his predecessor, who had a more ambivalent relationship with local PRI politicians, technocrats, and party bosses, Morales sought to minimize conflict with them. One way in which he enticed these figures, and thus managed to expand his power over the local PRI branch, was by appointing them as secretaries of state (interviews 2, 7).
Margins of victory for the Rodríguez Saá brothers over runners-up in gubernatorial elections were as follows: 3.26 in 1983, 19.20 in 1987, 12.32 in 1991, 55.03 in 1995, 10.44 in 1999, and 84.56 in 2003. Between 1983 and 2003, the Rodríguez Saás controlled an average of 55.34 % of the provincial legislators (Giraudy and Lodola 2008).
Forty percent of the provincial population resides in San Luis City (Dirección Provincial de Estadísticas y Censos [DPEyC], Gobierno de San Luis). With the exception of the 1990s, the city has been ruled by opposition parties: the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) from 1983 to 1987, and the local dissident PJ in alliance with different parties from 1999 to 2007.
In 2003, when Kirchner took office, the national PJ was split into three different factions: the Frente por la Lealtad (Front for Loyalty), led by former President Menem; the Frente Movimiento Popular—Unión y Libertad (Popular Movement—Unity and Liberty), headed by San Luis' former governor, Adolfo Rodríguez-Saá; and the Alianza Frente para la Victoria (Front for Victory), led by Kirchner and his immediate predecessor, Eduardo Duhalde. Relying on their respective party (faction) organizations, each of these Peronist leaders controlled and wielded power over different parts of the country.
These bills included: the alteration of the Consejo de la Magistratura's composition (the agency responsible for appointing lower court judges), which allowed Kirchner to control the greatest share of counselors; the law regulating the use of presidential decrees, which further enlarged presidential legislative authority; the ley de Administración Financiera [Financial Management Law], which granted the chief of cabinet prerogatives to reassign budget items without congressional consent; and the extension of the “economic emergency law,” which granted extraordinary powers to the president (Bonvecchi and Giraudy 2007).
By law, Mexican states are obliged to pass 20 % of the transfers that they receive from the Ley de Coordinación Fiscal to the municipalities.
A detailed description of each of the indicators and sub-indicators presented below are available from the author.
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Acknowledgments
I thank Todd Eisenstadt, Carlos Gervasoni, Jonathan Hartlyn, Evelyne Huber, Matt Ingram, Noam Lupu, Jenny Pribble, Lars Schoultz, John D. Stephens, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Part of this research was funded by the Inter-American Foundation and the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy. Paula Bonessi and Mercedes Sidders provided superb research assistance.
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Appendix
Appendix
Section I: Access to State Power
Following Goertz (2006), the definition of democracy adopted in this study utilizes the “necessary and sufficient condition” concept structure. Accordingly, in order for a subnational political regime to be conceived of as democratic, a number of conditions must be present (i.e., they are necessary), and these conditions, in turn, are jointly sufficient to classify a given polity as democratic. If any of these conditions is absent, the subnational polity cannot be considered democratic. To translate a necessary and sufficient concept structure into mathematical terms without violating concept–measure consistency, this study follows Goertz's (2006) suggested aggregation procedure of multiplying (rather than adding) individual indicators. Accordingly, as Fig. 7 shows, contestation (for both executive and legislative posts), clean elections, and turnover i.e., the necessary conditions, are “connected” via the logical AND, a first cousin of multiplication (denoted with the * symbol). Finally, it should be stressed that the necessary and sufficient structure inevitably assumes equal weighting of all dimensions.
A necessary and sufficient concept structure of subnational democracy
Aggregation of Indicators
As Fig. 7 shows, democracy is made up of seven indicators. Each of these indicators is described in detail in Table 2. The necessary and sufficient concept structure of democracy provides the justification for why the secondary dimensions of democracy are not added together, and it also provides the justification for why indicators are added together. At the indicator level, addition (rather than multiplication) is a desirable option because indicators are substitutable. Substitutability is normally associated with the logical OR, which in turn is closely connected with arithmetic addition.
A final clarification on the “clean elections” measure is in order. The concept of “clean elections” is perhaps one of the most difficult to operationalize and measure at the subnational level, as it demands a retrospective review of every gubernatorial election held in 32 states and 24 provinces over a period of 25 years. I chose to measure this indicator only in the case of Mexico, where electoral fraud has been ubiquitous. In Argentina, in contrast, little fraud or manipulation of the vote-counting processes has occurred since 1983 (Levitsky and Murillo 2005; Gervasoni 2010a).
A good way to grasp the cleanness of elections is to measure the occurrence and intensity of postelectoral conflicts. Postelectoral conflicts as well as their intensity reflect the extent to which official electoral results fail to correspond to reality as perceived by opposition parties. Following one of the leading works on postelectoral conflicts in Mexico, it was assumed that postelectoral mobilizations were provoked by high perceptions of electoral fraud (Eisenstadt 2004, pp. 135–140). Thus, the occurrence of postelectoral conflicts is considered to be a proxy for electoral fraud, while the intensity (duration and severity) of post electoral conflicts is considered a proxy for how “damaging and detrimental” the rigging was for the “defeated” party.
To code the existence and intensity of postelectoral conflicts in gubernatorial races, state-level newspapers were reviewed for a period of four consecutive weeks beginning the day after the election. Postelectoral conflicts are defined as instances of social mobilization following gubernatorial elections in which protestors demand a vote recount. The intensity of postelectoral conflicts was coded as follows: a score of 1 was given to states in which there was no postelectoral conflict; a score of 2 was given to states in which postelectoral conflict lasted less than a week and where there were no deaths and/or human or material casualties; a score of 3 was given to states where postelectoral conflict lasted more than one week (8 to 30 days) people were held in custody, and/or there were human or material casualties; and a score of 4 was given to states in which postelectoral conflict lasted more than 1 month and/or where there were deaths.
Section II: Exercise of State Power
As noted by Mazzuca (2010, p. 343): “[F]ollowing Weber, extreme forms of appropriation and particularism in the exercise of state power define the patrimonial type of administration, or patrimonialism.” A typical patrimonial state administration thus enables rulers to appropriate state resources (such as power, money, information, and material goods) for themselves, and to exercise authority in ways that benefit some groups and citizens over others. There is no single type of appropriation or particularism that a patrimonial state administration must (necessarily) perform in order for an administration to be regarded as patrimonial. If there are multiple ways of appropriating resources and/or imparting discretional authority, the state administration is generally conceived of as patrimonial.
Underlying this conception of patrimonial state administration is a family resemblance concept structure. Unlike the necessary and sufficient concept structure, the family resemblance structure “is as a rule about sufficiency with no necessary condition requirements” (Goertz 2006, p. 36). Accordingly, the presence of any of the constitutive dimensions (see Fig. 8) places any given state/province in the category of patrimonial state administration. It should be emphasized that, unlike the necessary and sufficient concept structure, concepts within the family resemblance structure can be assessed by identifying attributes that are present to varying degrees, rather than simply being present or absent (Collier and Mahon 1993). This is the reason why it is not necessary that all four secondary dimensions be present (i.e., measured), as in the societal accountability dimension, which, due to data availability constraints, could not be measured in the Argentine provinces. Finally, because the family resemblance concept structure allows the absence of any given characteristic to be compensated for by the presence of another characteristic, the secondary dimensions are “connected” via the logical OR, and aggregated through addition (rather than multiplication) (Goertz 2006, p. 39–44).
A family resemblance concept structure of subnational patrimonialism
Aggregation of Indicators
To capture historical, cultural, and contextual diversity, and thus ensure measurement equivalence, some of the secondary-level dimensions of patrimonialism were operationalized using system-specific indicators. For instance, “rulers' fiscal discretion” in Argentina is measured using the “rules of fiscal allocation” indicator. This indicator accumulates the number of years the law regulating the distribution of fiscal resources between the provincial and municipal governments has been in existence. By contrast, “rulers' fiscal discretion” in Mexico is measured with the “appropriation of municipal funds” indicator, which reflects the percentage of fiscal funds that governors did not transfer to the municipalities.Footnote 27 This latter indicator ensures greater concept–measure consistency. Yet given the lack of a similar law in Argentina, a functional equivalent measure was needed.
The horizontal accountability indicators are also system-specific. In the case of Argentina, horizontal accountability was measured using indicators that operationalize the level of judicial independence (from the executive). In Mexico, the indicators used to measure horizontal accountability operationalize the effectiveness of the state-level agencies (i.e., agencies of fiscal control) responsible for controlling the executive branch's use of fiscal resources. Indicators of the judicial system in Mexico were not employed because state-level judiciary systems there are more homogenous than in Argentina. Unlike other subnational judicial systems, in Argentina, each province dictates its own constitutional and statuary rules for selecting, appointing, and determining the number of provincial court justices. This variation is not present in Mexico, where the rules regarding state-level judiciaries are very similar across states.
Tables 3 and 4 present a description of the indicators that made up each of the four secondary-level dimensions of patrimonialism. The tables also reflect the mathematical operations conducted in order to transform these measures into single numbers.Footnote 28 A detailed description of each of the individual indicators and sub-indicators is presented below.
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Giraudy, A. Varieties of Subnational Undemocratic Regimes: Evidence from Argentina and Mexico. St Comp Int Dev 48, 51–80 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-012-9117-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-012-9117-4