9 - Policy analysis in Argentine local governments: a growing, heterogeneous, and controversial field of study

Summary

Introduction

This chapter aims to identify and recognize the main milestones of studies on local government management in Argentina, from its rise in the 1980s to the present day. This is a recent field of study in national public policy and management studies. It has developed autonomously from the administrative studies, which were the dominant ones for the treatment of municipal affairs, since the return of democracy. It accompanies the historical processes of decentralization and complex management agendas up to the present day.

This field of study is particularly relevant in Argentina since it is a predominantly urban country where more than 90 percent of its population lives in more than 2,300 cities distributed in the 23 provinces, according to the 2010 national census, exceeding even the rate of the most urban region in the world, Latin America, where it is estimated that 80 percent of the population lives in cities. The Argentine municipal system is made up of 2,317 local governments among the various provinces. This universe is made up of municipalities, communes, development commissions, municipal commissions, rural communes, neighborhood councils, and autonomous government boards, according to the different municipal regimes (INDEC, 2019).

From this starting point, it is asked whether the production on the subject in Argentina has differentiated axes over time and whether a dynamic epistemic community has been built around it or, on the contrary, it is a poorly developed field of isolated productions.

The working perspective is the identification of the main milestones in the academic production of the period, its actors, and the central topics of discussion to recognize the existence or not of structuring lines of production and an active knowledge community. For this purpose, the chapter draws on contributions from the author's pre-existing works and a search in the Google Scholar search engine, in addition to systematizing the trajectory of the subject. This is not the production of an exhaustive catalog, but the construction of the most relevant aspects of the field over time, so it is possible that some works from this time may not appear.

The institutionalization of local governments

Each province has its own municipal regime, which defines the territorial, functional, and organizational structure. Regarding their functions, a common core of actions reserved to the level can be identified, mainly related to basic urban services such as waste collection and public lighting (Centrángolo and Jiménez, 2004).