Eight - Policy analysis in state governments in Mexico

Summary

Introduction

State governments have become relevant actors in the policymaking process in Mexico during recent decades because of both decentralization and democratization processes. As a consequence of the former, subnational authorities have gained responsibilities and prerogatives in the provision and delivery of public services, while as a result of the latter, governors have emerged as political actors with their own legitimacy. Unlike the years of hegemony under the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI), governors no longer owe their positions to decisions made at the center but to votes in their own constituencies.

These changes have redefined the way in which public policies are proposed and implemented in the country and have forced subnational units to develop their own capacities to fulfil their new responsibilities.

However, we still know little about how policymaking takes place in the Mexican states and to what extent policy analysis has become a factor in the design and implementation of better governmental programs.

This chapter attempts to fill this gap by providing an overview of how policies are crafted at the subnational level in Mexico, the main actors taking place in the process and the way in which professional knowledge and advice influence policymakers.

In order to achieve this goal, the chapter is organized as follow. The first section analyzes the recent evolution of Mexican federalism in order to make clear the responsibilities of state governments. The second section identifies the main actors that contribute to the policymaking process at the state level, portrays the relationships between them and describes the type of policy analysis that informs main decisions. The third section builds on this conceptual framework to analyze how a particular subnational government, the Ciudad de México, operates in concrete terms. The chapter ends with a conclusion.

The evolution of Mexican federalism or how state governments became relevant actors

Mexico is a federal republic, composed of 32 subnational units (31 states and the Ciudad de México [Mexico City, formerly Distrito Federal], where the capital of the country is located), and even though Mexican governors are still less influential than their peers in other Latin American federations, such as Argentina and Brazil, they have progressively gained power since the mid-1990s as a result of extensive decentralization and democratization (Rodríguez, 1999; Flamand and Olmeda, 2008; Falleti, 2010).