ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PARADOX OF LOCAL EMPOWERMENT: DECENTRALIZATION AND DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE IN MEXICO Andrew D. Selee, Doctor of Philosophy, 2006 Dissertation directed by: Professor David A. Crocker and Professor I.M. Destler Maryland School of Public Policy This dissertation examines whether decentralization to municipal governments in Mexico has improved democratic governance. The research examines the effects of decentralization on democratic governance in three Mexican cities: Tijuana, Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, and Chilpancingo and draws on key national indicators. The findings indicate that decentralization has significantly increased the authority and autonomy of Mexican municipalities, but that these changes have not necessarily led to local governments that are responsive and accountable to citizens or allow for citizens’ active engagement in public affairs. Further analysis of these findings suggests that municipal political institutions create few incentives for public authorities to be responsive and accountable to citizens. The use of closed party lists, prohibitions on independent candidacies, guaranteed supermajorities for the leading party, and the prohibition on reelection all combine to undermine accountability and responsiveness. In this environment, public authorities tend to be more concerned about party leaders than citizens. As a result, citizens continue to be linked to local governments through political brokers within the principal political parties and there are few real opportunities for citizen engagement outside of these mediated channels despite the nominal existence of elaborate participatory planning processes. Nonetheless, the study also finds marked differences in the way that citizens are linked to the political system in different cities. Where strong social organizations existed prior to decentralization, citizens are more likely to have effective, albeit indirect, channels for voice in public affairs. Where these social organizations are linked closely to the principal political parties, they are even more likely to influence public policy than where these organizations are highly autonomous. Strong social organizations provide a necessary basis for ensuring citizen voice, but their linkages to the political process ultimately determine whether they are effective in influencing policy decisions. In other words, horizontal linkages in civil society—social capital—are a necessary precondition for good democratic governance, but vertical linkages between citizens and political actors are equally important. THE PARADOX OF LOCAL EMPOWERMENT: DECENTRALIZATION AND DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE IN MEXICO by Andrew D. Selee Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 2006 Advisory Committee: Professor David A. Crocker, Co-Chair Professor I.M. Destler, Co-Chair Professor Jonathan A. Fox Professor William A. Galston Professor Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz Dr. Joseph S. Tulchin © Copyright by Andrew D. Selee 2006 Acknowledgements My interest in issues of local governance in Latin America began shortly after college when I spent several years living in Tijuana, Mexico. I witnessed many of the extraordinary yet often challenging changes happening in that city in the mid-1990s as the municipal government assumed a new role in public life and citizens took advantage of the openings this created. This sparked a long-term interest in political change and the role of local changes within broader debates about democratic governance. In this dissertation project I have been fortunate to be able to return to many of the questions that seemed most interesting over a decade ago as a resident in one of the hundreds municipalities in Mexico where relationships between citizens and the state were being renegotiated. I am grateful to my dissertation committee that has guided me through this research project. Professor David Crocker read and commented on countless versions of this dissertation, offering constant guidance along the way. Professor I.M. Destler provided a critical eye and sage advice to me on this research and helped me throughout the Ph.D. program. Jonathan Fox read has read almost everything I have written on decentralization since I first started years ago and has shaped much of my thinking. I began my formal research of these topics with Joe Tulchin at the Wilson Center and he graciously agreed to participate as an external member of the committee, as did Fox. Professors Bill Galston and Patricio Korzeniewicz provided insightful comments that forced me to revise many of my assumptions. Mary Kay Vaughan, who served on the initial committee for the prospectus defense, has challenged many of my assumptions about state-society relations in Mexico and pushed me to think about these as dynamic, contested, and ever changing. Over the past few years, I have benefited from ongoing discussions with several researchers who have shared a common concern with the relationship between decentralization and democracy and have profoundly shaped my thinking in this research; Jonathan Fox, Tonatiuh Guillén, Stephanie McNulty, Jesse Ribot, Tomila Lankina, Leticia Santín, and Philip Oxhorn deserve special mention and all have been a constant source of ideas. In addition, Ariel Armony, Enrique Perruzzoti, Peter Smith, and Steven Friedman have improved my understanding of democratic theory. To Peter Smith I owe the inspiration for the title of this dissertation. I have also benefited immensely from ongoing conversations about Mexican democracy with Raúl Benítez, Arturo Alvarado, Lorenzo Meyer, John Bailey, Roderic Camp, Jacqueline Peschard, Peter Ward, Rossana Fuentes-Berain, Alfredo Corchado, Steve Wuhs, and Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez. In Tijuana, I am grateful to Tonatiuh Guillén and Sandra Dibble for their help in understanding municipal and state politics; to Lilia León, a friend and former colleague, for her expert research assistance and analysis; to Maricarmen Hernández and Hector Vindiola for their suggestions and ideas; and to José Luis Pérez Canchola, José Negrete Mata, Martín de la Rosa, Antonio Cano, Cristina Franco, and Oscar Escalada for insightful analysis of local political developments since I moved away from the city. ii Above all, my friends Carlos Mendoza and Concepción Aguilar, along with their son Andrés, provided a home away from home in Tijuana, and also shaped my understanding of the city in countless ways. In Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, I have benefited immensely from my conversations with Gerardo Salazar, Alliet Bautista, and Alma Aquino; from the expert research assistance of Jessica Hernández; from research and advice generously shared by Marta Schteingart, Socorro Arzaluz, Ramón Rivera, and Gerardo Salazar; and from the companionship and insight of Arturo Alvarado and Alison Rowland, who began research in the city around the same time. My sister-in-law Adriana Vallejo, who lives in Mexico City only a short distance from Neza, kindly shared her home and was a constant source of both ideas and moral support. In Chilpancingo, I have appreciated the opportunity to exchange views with Julio Cesar Aguirre, Homero Castro, Silvia Alemán, and Silvia Castillo; the research assistance of Osiel Humberto González; the historical insight of Pety Acevedo; and the constant hospitality of Elsa Romero and Edgar Pavía who provided a home away from home when visiting the city. To understand Mexico’s decentralization process, I benefited immensely from conversations with Enrique Cabrero, Luis Pineda, Carlos Gadsden, and Octavio Acosta. This research was made possible by a summer appointment as a research scholar at the Centro de Estudios Sociológicos at El Colegio de México. I am grateful to Gustavo Verduzgo, then director of the Center, and especially to Arturo Alvarado, who suggested I pursue this. Raúl Benítez kindly offered his home while I was at the Colegio. I also benefited from a fellowship from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy during my first two years at the University of Maryland. Professors Bill Galston, David Crocker, and Judith Lichtenberg made this fellowship possible. Peter Levine at the Institute helped shape my thinking on deliberation. Finally, my colleagues at the Woodrow Wilson Center, where I have worked, including Cindy Arnson, Joe Tulchin, Heidy Servin-Baez, Kate Brick, Elizabeth Bryan, Trisha Fields, Jessica Varat, Kelly Albinak, Luis Bitencourt, and Meg Ruthenburg, were a source of constant support. I owe thanks to friends and family, not mentioned above, who supported me through this endeavor: my mother, Bente; my sister, Anne; and my father, Charles, now deceased, who started me down the road of academic inquiry; my uncle Jim and aunt Lonie; my suegros, Bernardino Vallejo and Pety Acevedo, and cuñadas, Adriana and Angélica Vallejo; and my friends Jonathan Schorr, Steve Reising and Kathleen Zaleski, Robert and Danielle Nkojo, Danna Livstone, Ramón Escudero and Stephanie McNulty, and Patrick White and Rebeca Sánchez de Tagle. Most of all, I owe thanks to my wife, Alejandra Vallejo, the center of my life, who offered not only moral support but also intellectual guidance to this project. This dissertation is dedicated to her. iii Table of Contents List of Tables List of Figures Part I: Theory and Methods Chapter 1: Introduction: Democracy Close to Home? Chapter 2: The Conceptual Link between Decentralization and Democratic Governance