Recentralization in Mexico: Reconfiguring Intergovernmental Relations

• In Event: Multilevel Governance and the Subnational Turn in Latin America

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of political coalitions on the design of recentralization. Scholars often assume that recentralization is closely linked to its main beneficiaries: presidents or officials in the executive branch who are appointed by the president. Likewise, the literature has tended to conflate the center with the president. However, there are important recentralization processes in which presidents have occupied a less leading role because their main promoters have been civil society actors, partisan opponents or local authorities. How does the composition of different advocacy coalitions affect recentralization? Through the comparative historical analysis of recentralization in Mexico over the last three decades, this paper argues that greater pluralism in the national coalitions promoting recentralization results in an institutional design with a greater dispersion of power among central authorities. In Mexico, we show how recentralization has led to the empowerment of a whole series of new autonomous constitutional organs at the center (organos constitucionales autónomos) that are not under the control of the president.

Authors

• Kent Eaton, University of California, Santa Cruz

• Omar Baez, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)