The Emerald Handbook of Public Administration in Latin America

B. Guy Peters, Carlos Alba Tercedor, Conrado Ramos

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781839826788
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Affairs & Administration
• Index: Politics & International Relations

While most scholarship on public administration in Latin America has taken an overtly legal approach, this handbook examines the subject from a political and public management perspective. In so doing, this handbook brings the study of public administration in Latin America more in line with studies conducted in other parts of the world, providing a basis for much more fruitful comparison.
The handbook is divided into two parts. The first section contains chapters that explore a range of administrative systems in existence across Latin America, including the major representative types of public administration. The second portion of the book presents comparative examinations of important issues relating to public administration across the region, including accountability, public personnel management, policy coordination and the politics of bureaucracy.
In providing an in-depth examination of public administration in contemporary Latin America, this handbook is a vital resource for scholars interested in the fields of public administration in both a Latin American and comparative context, as well as practitioners in government.

Chapter 1

A Brief Story of Latin American Public Administration: A Particular Model

Conrado Ramos and Alejandro Milanesi

Abstract

Identifying a single model of public administration in Latin America entails a simplification due to the variety of countries with different governance structures, administrative systems, historical legacies, and ways of addressing public sector reforms over time. Nevertheless, an extended feature among Latin American public administrations is the coexistence of Weberian models with patrimonialism and large-scale patronage practices. Although at first sight public administrations can formally contain all or most of the typical characteristics of a modern bureaucratic system, some of their practices are extraneous to everyday management. In this context, the waves of administrative reforms have sought, with different approaches, to strengthen the public machinery. An important point is that administrative reforms in Latin America largely followed a center–periphery pattern. Firstly, through the imitation of practices of the colonialist countries and later by importing reform packages from the central countries. Thus, this chapter goes over the main historical characteristics in the construction of the Latin American public administration, the reforms paradigms that have marked it and their consequences.

Keywords: Latin America; public administration; reforms; models; trends; traditions

1. Introduction

Talking about a model of public administration in Latin America entails a simplification effort in view of the variety of countries with different governance structures, administrative systems, historical legacies, and ways of addressing public sector reforms over time. Also, it is not clear how one can define a Latin American “model” of public administration as a particular set of administrative principles (Hood, 1991) that goes beyond its connections with other international experiences or reflects a domestic development of its own. However, it is possible to identify a set of structural dimensions that, although with different features and graduations, have constituted the grounds for models of public management and successive efforts for administrative reform.

An extended feature among Latin American public administrations is the coexistence of bureaucratic–Weberian models, with patrimonialism and large-scale patronage practices. Although at first sight public administrations can formally contain all or most of the typical characteristics of Weberian systems – such as career systems inspired by meritocratic principles, separation of private and public means of administration, and systems of registration for administrative acts – these practices are in many occasions extraneous to everyday management. It is not uncommon to find systems of recruitment, promotion, and remuneration of officials outside meritocratic principles, as well as informal administrative practices inspired by secrecy and subjectivity rather than the impartial application of regulation. In general, this means that the presence of legal-formal characteristics is not a sufficient condition to evaluate the degrees of institutionalization of public administration models, and even less their performance (Nef, 2003). This type of bureaucratic “facade” is, moreover, especially frequent at subnational levels of government where the presence of local “caudillos” and weaker controls reinforces the patrimonialism.

However, this coexistence is not only expressed through the presence of two rooted management logics (one formal and one informal) but also in some cases reflects a heterogeneous landscape depending on the area looked at. While a State may contain agencies or offices with Weberian characteristics only in form, other areas may represent real “islands” where meritocratic appointment (whether under a career system or not), transparency in management, evaluation, and focus on results are the norm.

State reform processes from the 1990s onward have accentuated this institutional schizophrenia, in which areas of the State understood as strategic (i.e., Ministries of Economy, Central Banks, state procurement agencies, etc.) underwent reform processes inspired by meritocratic principles, which “shielded” them from the typical evils of Latin American bureaucracies.

Public administrations in Latin America can be identified with what Ziller (2003) calls the “European continental model,” as opposed to the Anglo-American model. The continental model is based on the normative principles of the German Rechtsstaat and the French principe de légalité. This model not only places the State in a central place in society but also in the implementation of laws and procedures as a means of providing regulation for the public sector and a good part of social relations. Under this legalistic model, bureaucracies develop a strongly hierarchical administrative culture associated with strict adherence to rules and procedures. In cases where this type has expanded negatively, examples of bureaucratic ritualism can be noted, such as the irrational application of rules and procedures regardless of their validity or utility. In any case, these types of models may present difficulties in generating public administrations reform processes, to the extent that changes can only be made through the normative modification that regulates them. The same phenomenon is observed in the transition to management models that privilege or incorporate components of performance evaluation over the classical management of procedures. All this presents a panorama of historical construction or path dependence that has not been conducive in shaping the reform processes experienced by countries, particularly in the twentieth century.

2. Some Notes on the Historical Construction of the Latin American Public Administration Model

The characteristics mentioned above need to be understood within a historical perspective. Nef (2003) points out that public administrations have undergone transformations since the very creation of Latin American States, whose stages could be divided into four: centralized construction of the state apparatus (1810–1850), limited institutionalization (1870–1930), early bureaucratization (1930–1970), and authoritarianism (1970–mid 1980). To these periods, we could add a boom in neoliberal policies and application of models of new public management (NPM) type (1980s–2000s). Finally, at the beginning of the new century, a recent stage associated with an emphasis on a management by results trend and other innovations, all of them placed in a broader context of reforms inspired by the principles of transparency and access to public information.

2.1 First Configurations of the Public Administration Model

The Latin American colonial legacy is characterized by the transplantation of mechanisms and structures from public administrations of colonizing countries, especially Spain and Portugal. This created an initial moment of imitation and ritualistic adaptation of rules and administrative patterns as an image of modernization. Associated with this, patrimonialism and patronage logics also originated in this period (Painter & Peters, 2010). State positions did not respond to a meritocratic or neutral logic of state apparatus construction but were rather reserved for specific social groups or used as bargaining for political loyalties and other compensations (Nef, 2003). This created a civil service reserved for the elites, especially in the higher layers, and an entry into public administration that was strongly dependent on the existing power correlations at the time. However, all this coexisted with strongly formalist and legalistic attitudes.

Looking further ahead, it can be pointed out that processes of administrative reform in Latin America largely followed a center–periphery pattern. This not only refers to those pointed out by Nef (2003) regarding the imitation of practices of colonialist countries but also during the twentieth century relating to the import of reform packages or management practices from central countries. Even international cooperation (with USAID, United Nations, ECLAC, Ford Foundation, etc.) played a key role in the mid-twentieth century as a support for the creation of research centers and public administration reform processes. This derived largely from externally induced reforms based on the idea of “administrative modernization” and later the “Washington Consensus” (Pérez Salgado, 1997; Ramírez, 2009).

The 1960s saw the rise of the New Public Administration models influenced by the trends in the American public administration (Oszlak, 2013). This approach to “administrative reform” predates the “managerial reforms” of the 1980s and 1990s and, although sharing some of the critique to state functioning and performance, it is not based on the idea of imitating the private sector business operative within the state apparatus.

This era was characterized by ideas on the growing inefficiency of the public sector due to excessive administrative rigidity and the high number of procedures that slowed down the public administration. This paradigm led to management innovations that sought to simplify processes to increase efficiency and productivity. This is how Organizing and Methods Offices, Planning Offices, program budgeting, and other areas aiming to incorporate “science” into public management were originated. However, these were not always able to break the rooted bureaucratic ritualism of Latin American administrations. At the same time, the strongly legalistic approach in some cases added an additional step to established procedures, instead of simplifying them (Pérez Salgado, 1997).

2.2 Public Management Reforms of the 1980s

Since the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, most countries around the world embarked on public administration reform programs with different degrees of ambition. The main feature was a reduction of the state apparatus through policies of deregulation, decentralization, privatization, outsourcing, and reduction of personnel endowments. These reforms were called by the World Bank as “first-generation reforms,” predicting that a “second generation” of reforms would focus on the pending task of improving the state apparatus and its institutional weaknesses (Oszlak, 2001).

First-generation reforms were being carried out in Latin America at the same time as they were built in the developed countries of North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania (Mascarenhas, 1993). A new management model for the public sector called NPM soon become the dominant paradigm worldwide. In its harder version (especially during the 1980s in countries of Anglo-Saxon tradition), this new paradigm, inspired by the neoconservative critique to welfare bureaucracies, promotes the shrinking of the State through privatization and outsourcing. At the same time – and based also on a visceral distrust of the public sector – it aims to incorporate into the public sector tools and logics of management imported from the private sector, the core assumption being that they are rationally superior to those of the public sector.

Latin America followed this trend associated with the rise of neoliberal policies and the “Washington Consensus.” Privatizations, as well as the policies of deregulation and de-monopolization of areas under state control, were also inspired by the idea that freedom to choose is the best remedy for the corporate capture suffered by Latin American States. While these reforms had success in stabilizing some key economic variables such as inflation and the reduction of the fiscal deficit that plagued several countries in the region, economic growth was lower than expected. The improvement of living conditions was very limited. On the contrary, there was an increase in the level of poverty and greater inequality in the distribution of income (Talavera & Armijo, 2007). Moreover, Talavera and Armijo (2007) cite a study carried out by Eduardo Lora (2003), in which through a series of indicators he verifies a certain “fatigue of the reforms” due to the growing distrust of the citizenship toward these promarket reforms that would lift people out of poverty.

In the mid-1990s, in good part because of insistence by the World Bank,¹ the second-generation reforms began to take shape. This second impulse did not contain the same level of orthodoxy as its predecessor; however, its common denominator was the need for sophisticated public management, in the context of a continent characterized by a strong presence of political patronage. A cohesive state action was advocated that begun by strengthening the administrative capacities of the public sector because, without an intense use of public agencies, the stability of market reforms would be at risk. Ramirez (2009) points out that, despite some ambiguity in the second set of reforms, it is possible to distinguish some fundamental characteristics: (1) legislative reforms; (2) restructuring of public administration, especially at the central level; (3) renewal of the judicial system; (4) updating of regulatory capacities; (5) second stage of privatizations; and (6) restructuring of relations between local and national governments.

Thus, this second wave of reforms has a strong emphasis on institutional capacities. It calls for a “reinventing” of the role of the public sector through the strengthening of its regulatory bodies, but also the Parliament, courts of justice, anticorruption institutions, among others (Santiso, 2001). The reform of the public apparatus is primarily concerned with economic adjustment. Institutional strengthening was seen as a way of maintaining macroeconomic stability and growth. Hence, the emphasis placed on institutions regulating the domestic economy such as Central Banks, collection agencies, and others of similar characteristics.

In terms of administrative reforms, a key milestone in the reform process of the 1990s is the document prepared by the Centro Latinoamericano de Administración para el Desarrollo (CLAD) in 1998, entitled “A New Public Management for Latin America” (Una Nueva Gestión Pública para América Latina). This document, very influential in its time, emphasizes the reconstruction of State capacities and the enactment of a management reform. While it was recognized that processes in Latin America could not be a carbon copy of the experiences of NPM in developed countries, it also argued that the region did not have Weberian administrations, but strong patrimonialist behaviors. It did not agree with the aforementioned stage vision of first realizing reforms of a Weberian type and then going toward the NPM. It was considered that bureaucratic–Weberian administrations, adapted to the new context of a globalized and dynamic world, would not be efficient but rather solipsistic, without the necessary capacity to adapt to citizen demands. It proposed, then, to develop a model of public management inspired by the NPM but adapted to the characteristics determined by the political and cultural particularities of the continent.

The proposal at that time was based on the need ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• About the Editors
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction: Focus and Book Outline: Conrado Ramos Larraburu and B. Guy Peters
• Chapter 1 A Brief Story of Latin American Public Administration: A Particular Model: Conrado Ramos Larraburu and Alejandro Milanesi
• Country Chapters
• Cross Country Chapters
• Index