Search results for ""Author Merilee S. Grindle""

Audacious Reforms examines the creation of new political institutions in three Latin American countries: direct elections for governors and mayors in Venezuela, radical municipalization in Bolivia, and direct election of the mayor of Buenos Aires in Argentina. Diverging from the usual incremental processes of political change, these cases marked a significant departure from traditional centralized governments. Such "audacious reforms," explains Merilee S. Grindle, reinvent the ways in which public problems are manifested and resolved, the ways in which political actors calculate the costs and benefits of their activities, and the ways in which social groups relate to the political process. Grindle considers three central questions: Why would rational politicians choose to give up power? What accounts for the selection of some institutions rather than others? And how does the introduction of new institutions alter the nature of political actions? The case studies of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Argentina demonstrate that institutional invention must be understood from theoretical perspectives that stretch beyond immediate concerns about electoral gains and political support building. Broader theoretical perspectives on the definition of nation and state, the nature of political contests, the legitimacy of political systems, and the role of elites all must be considered. While past conflicts are not erased by reforms, in the new order there is often greater potential for more responsible, accountable, and democratic government.

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Many developing countries have a history of highly centralized governments. Since the late 1980s, a large number of these governments have introduced decentralization to increase democracy and improve services, especially in small communities far from capital cities. In Going Local, an unprecedented study of the effects of decentralization on thirty Mexican municipalities, Merilee Grindle describes how local governments respond when they are assigned new responsibilities and resources under decentralization policies. She explains why decentralization leads to better local governments in some cases--and why it fails to in others. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, Grindle examines data based on a random sample of Mexican municipalities--and ventures into town halls to follow public officials as they seek to manage a variety of tasks amid conflicting pressures and new expectations. Decentralization, she discovers, is a double-edged sword. While it allows public leaders to make significant reforms quickly, institutional weaknesses undermine the durability of change, and legacies of the past continue to affect how public problems are addressed. Citizens participate, but they are more successful at extracting resources from government than in holding local officials and agencies accountable for their actions. The benefits of decentralization regularly predicted by economists, political scientists, and management specialists are not inevitable, she argues. Rather, they are strongly influenced by the quality of local leadership and politics.

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Despite the Odds poses an important question: How can we account for successful policy reform initiatives when the political cards are stacked against change? Theories of politics usually predict that reform initiatives will be unsuccessful when powerful groups are opposed to change and institutions are biased against it. This book, however, shows how the strategic choices of reform proponents alter the destinies of policy reforms by reshaping power equations and undermining institutional biases that impede change. In many countries, the political path to reform can be daunting. Antireform interests are powerful and support for change is, at best, lukewarm. Centrally important institutions strongly defend the policy status quo. Despite these political odds, reformers have seized the initiative in promoting reform, weakening and marginalizing opposition groups, and marshaling political patrons and networks to advance their initiatives. Despite the Odds opens the "black box" of decision making in five initiatives designed to enhance the quality of education services in Latin America. The book addresses the strategies used by reformers to manage the political process of change and those adopted by opposition groups and institutions resisting their efforts. Individual chapters consider how leaders set national policy agendas for education, how policy design teams created the content of reform initiatives, how they dealt with the messy and public confrontations that greeted reform proposals when they were announced, and the carryover of political conflict when they were implemented.

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