Participatory governance practices in urban Mexican municipalities: Does bureaucratic capacity matter for their adoption and stability?1

Dionisio Zabaleta-Solís2

Abstract

The introduction of formal mechanisms of citizen participation, as a part of governments’ activities in Mexican municipalities is an increasingly frequent practice. However, the adoption process and the stability of these participatory instruments is embedded in an institutional context that gives elected authorities a broad margin of political discretion to determine which mechanisms would be implemented and maintained in time. As a consequence, the level of consolidation of participatory governance practices has been quite limited. With this, in this paper some institutional and political determinants of participatory governance instruments’ adoption and stability in urban Mexican municipalities are discussed and analyzed. It is paid particular attention to the effect that bureaucratic capacity attributes (procedural and input features) might have to induce Mexican local politician’s calculations to implement and to sustain this kind of democratic innovations. Using information from the 2011 and the 2013 National Census of Municipal Governments, the 387 Mexican municipalities with 50,000 inhabitants or over are studied. The results of the analysis seem to confirm the relevance of politicians’ personal attributes in the adoption and the stability of participatory practices (specially their political orientation), although input attributes of bureaucratic capacity also seem to be modestly relevant in the explanation of this phenomenon. Despite there is a positive association, procedural attributes of bureaucratic capacity do not necessarily induce the adoption of participatory practices, but rather their implementation seems to follow the same explanatory logic of democratic innovations.

Introduction

The introduction of formal mechanisms of citizen participation at the local level has become a frequent

practice, particularly in developing countries. As a consequence of sound processes of democratization

and decentralization that these nations have experience in the last decades – and in a context of

managerial reforms and increasing social pressure – participatory mechanisms have emerged as

instruments that can potentially expand citizen involvement in policy production and management, as

well as tools that may strength social control and democratic accountability systems. Due to their

proximity to citizens, subnational governments have become ideal spaces for the implementation of this

type of initiatives, as it can be seen in the notoriously famous cases of Kerala, India or in the Brazilian

municipalities (Heller and Harilal 2007; Avritzer and Wampler 2004).

Urban Mexican municipalities has not been blind to this participatory trend and, as a result of

profound processes of decentralization and local democratization initiated in the late 1970s, these 1 Paper prepared for the 4th Young Scholars Workshop in Public Policy and Administration Research. 2 PhD Student in Public Policy at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), Mexico City.

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governments have become ‘laboratories’ of democratic and governmental innovation. In the political

terrain, for instance, most of these municipalities have experienced intense electoral competition

reflected in the fact that, in the last six electoral cycles, 90 percent of the 387 urban local governments

with 50,000 inhabitants or over have had at least one process of political alternation in the composition

of the municipal authorities (ayuntamiento) and, of those cities, one third were governed by a leftist and

a rightist political party at least one time in the same period. Besides, urban municipalities have been

active spaces of governmental innovation in multiple institutional and policy fields, as it can be observed

by the amount and the variety of innovative experiences annually collected by the “Local Government

and Management Award” coordinated by the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE).

Notwithstanding the above, Mexican municipalities are still embedded in an institutional context

that induces the formation of artificial political majorities, in an ambiguous intergovernmental fiscal

system that favors municipal passivity to collect local taxes and fees, and in authoritarian and

corporatists practices that limit the consolidation of local administrative structures based on merit or

professionalism. Thus, despite decentralization reforms, electoral competition and the innovative public

action of local governments have certainly influenced the implementation of a vast diversity of

participatory mechanisms, the effect that institutional constrains and political legacies has had on these

governments seems to be pushing against the consolidation of these devices.

With this idea in mind, in this paper I try to deepen the analysis of the determinants for the

introduction and the stability of participatory governance instruments in urban Mexican municipalities in

the last years. Besides some recurring factors that the literature have identified, and that will be

discussed latter on, I try to advance the idea that, in contexts like the Mexican, bureaucratic capacity –

understood as the combination of procedural and input attributes that enable an effective action of the

governments – is an important factor to understand the adoption and the consolidation of governance

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innovations at the local level, in this case participatory instruments. Bureaucratic capacity attributes, as I

will discuss later, may shape the institutional incentive structure that local politicians face by endowing

administrations with a minimum set of tools and practices that, simultaneously, might restrict political

discretion and might bring new ideas, managerial skills, and financial resources necessary for the

adoption and the maintenance of participatory innovations.

The analysis presented here will be limited to the 387 urban Mexican municipalities with a

population of 50,000 inhabitants or over according to the 2010 National Census. The governments of

these cities, according to the literature, may have a higher degree of bureaucratic capacity in comparison

to rural or semi-urban municipalities and, for that reason, it would be possible to observe more clearly

the effect of these attributes on the introduction and the consolidation of participatory governance

instruments (Arellano et al. 2011; Cabrero and Zabaleta 2011). Most of the information to carry out this

analysis comes from the 2011 and 2013 National Censuses of Municipal Governments (NCMG) and

other official sources. Although the usage of government census information may potentially bias the

results, this is the only systematic source of information that offers a comprehensive picture of

municipal administrations in Mexico.

The paper is organized into six brief sections, besides this introduction. In the first part some

working definitions of participatory instruments and systems are presented, as well as quick overview of

the situation of participatory governance practices in urban Mexican municipalities in 2011 and in 2013.

Hereafter, in the second section are succinctly described four schools of thought that put forward some

factors that may influence the introduction of participatory instruments at the local level. Additionally,

in this subsection it is discussed the concept of bureaucratic capacity and its attributes, as well as the

form this factor may affect the adoption and the stability of participatory governance practices at the

local level. In the third section the institutional incentive structure that may limit the adoption and

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consolidation of participatory practices in Mexican municipalities is described, along with some

methodological precisions about the variables and the models that will be used in the empirical analysis.

In the fourth section the results of the statistical analysis are presented, in the fifth part the main findings

are discussed and, finally, in the last section some conclusions and future lines of research are outlined.

The Mexican Ladder of Citizen Participation: An Overview of Urban Municipalities

In the last couple of decades, Mexican municipalities have advanced in the adoption of a greater amount

and diversity of participatory practices. The implementation of these initiatives is a consequence of the

autonomous action of these governments, which have adapted democratic innovations created elsewhere

to their particular contexts. The diversity of the participatory practices implemented in Mexican

municipalities is so ample that, for an adequate analysis, requires some conceptual landmarks. With this,

I suggest a descriptive analysis of the situation of participatory practices in the 387 most populated

urban municipalities in Mexico based on four criteria: 1) the existence of at least one participatory

mechanism, 2) the classification of participatory instruments according to the expected type of authority

that citizens may potentially exert, 3) the definition of participatory systems based on the diversity (or

amplitude) of participatory instruments, and 4) the temporal stability of participatory systems in time.

As a first step in this conceptual clarification, nine participatory instruments reported in the 2011

and the 2013 NCMG were selected and later categorized, depending on the expected level of authority

that citizens may exert through each one of them. The participatory designs model proposed by Fung

(2006) was partially used to define this hypothetical level of citizen authority, as well as to outline other

general characteristics of these participatory instruments. As a result, three categories of participatory

designs were defined, each one containing an equal number of instruments, as it is shown in Table 1.

Afterwards, four participatory systems were defined depending on the diversity of participatory

instruments in operation in each municipality. Thus, municipalities with comprehensive systems of

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participation are those who have at least one participatory instrument of each category (aggregation of

preferences, advise and consult, and social control), whereas municipalities with two-dimensional

systems are those who only have at least one participatory instrument of two categories, and so on.3

Finally, the amplitude of participation systems was defined, simply, as the count of all participatory

mechanisms in operation in every municipality.

Table 1. Types of Participatory Instruments in Mexican Urban Municipalities

Expression and Aggregation of

Preferences

• Goal: Allow the expression and aggregation of citizen’s preferences and petitions.

• Citizen influence: Limited to particular or personal benefits

• Selection of participants: Self-selection or random selection.

1. Visits of authorities to communities and boroughs.

2. Communication mechanisms (phone line, e-mail) dedicated to capture citizen’s petitions.

3. Public Surveys.

Advise and Consult

• Goal: Consult or receive advice from particular subsets of the population about governmental activities and initiatives.

• Citizen influence: Communicative and consultative influence in specific policy issues.

• Selection of participants: Targeted selection of lay and professional stakeholders.

1. Public Assemblies. 2. Citizen and Consultation Committees. 3. Municipal Councils (except Public Safety

and Municipal Planning Councils).4

Social Control and Co-

governance

• Goal: Engage stakeholders in specific decision-making processes or in social control activities.

• Citizen influence: Consultative and direct influence in specific issues.

• Selection of participants: Targeted selection of lay and professional stakeholders.

1. Mechanisms of Citizen Oversight of Public Works and Services.

2. Social Comptroller Offices. 3. Instruments of citizen engagement in the

allocation of the Municipal Infrastructure Federal Grant (FISM).

Based on these definitions, it was compared the level of adoption of participatory instruments

and the frequency of articulation of participatory systems in the selected municipalities in 2011 and in

2013 (Table 2). Albeit a two-year span is short period of time to observe significant changes, this

comparison may offer some insights about how participatory governance is understood and implemented

in urban Mexican municipalities. A first fact that can be deduced from this analysis is that the

introduction of participatory instruments in urban municipalities in Mexico is a widespread 3 Municipalities with one-dimensional systems are those who have at least one participatory instrument of one category and, finally, the residual category is defined with those municipalities with any participatory mechanism in the analyzed years. 4 Public Safety and Municipal Planning Councils were excluded of the analysis because the implementation of these mechanisms is mandated by federal and state regulations. In order to keep some level of parsimony, the study was limited to those participatory mechanisms that depend on the autonomous action of municipal governments.

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phenomenon. Only 17% of the 387 analyzed municipalities in 2011 – and 16.2% in 2013 – do not have

at least one of the nine types of participatory instruments selected. In fact, most of the cities included in

this study have comprehensive systems of participation; this is to say, they have one participatory

instrument of each of the three categories above define. For this reason, it is not unusual to observe that

urban municipalities in Mexico have, on average, 4 participatory instruments in operation in 2011 and

also in 2013.

Table 2. Radiography of participation instruments and systems in Mexican urban municipalities

Participatory Instruments and Systems (n=387) 2011 2013 Expression and Aggregation of Preferences

77.26%

77.26

Visits of Authorities to Communities 72.61% 72.86% Communication Channels 45.99% 40.83% Public Surveys 28.68% 27.39% Average Amplitude 1.47 1.41

Advise and Consult

74.93%

74.93%

Public Assemblies 40.57% 40.31% Citizen and Consultation Committees 55.81% 54.52% Policy Councils 53.49% 50.60% Average Amplitude 1.49 1.45

Social Control and Co-Governance

68.48%

66.14%

Public Works and Services Oversight 58.13% 54.01% Social Comptroller Offices 40.05% 38.76% FISM Allocation 34.37% 31.01% Average Amplitude 1.32 1.23

No participation 17.05% 16.28% One-dimensional Participation 5.68% 5.94% Two-dimensional Participation 16.80% 20.93% Comprehensive Participation 60.47% 56.85% Average Amplitude of Participatory Systems 4.2 4.1

Source: 2011 and 2013 NCMG

Not surprisingly too, instruments for the expression and the aggregation of citizen’s preferences

(particularly the visits of authorities to communities and neighborhoods of the municipality) are more

frequently implemented in comparison to advise and consult, and social control mechanisms. The

predilection for this particular type of instrument may be due to their lower cost, the lesser levels of

institutional and organizational formality that requires its implementation, and the greater political

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returns that municipal authorities may gain thanks to their direct contact with specific groups of

population within the city.

Consultation mechanisms are also frequently implemented in these municipalities and, indeed,

citizen committees and policy councils have higher implementation rates in comparison to

communication channels and public surveys in 2011 and also in 2013. Social control and co-governance

instruments have, in this sample, the lowest implementation rate and, when they are adopted, there is a

clear predilection for the introduction of schemes of public works oversight that, in comparison to Social

Comptroller Offices or budgetary mechanisms, tend to restrict citizen influence in government’s

decisions and daily activities. By combining the implementation rates of individual participatory

instruments, the type and the average amplitude of participatory systems, it is to expect that the typical

city in Mexico implements routinely a scheme of visits of authorities to catch up citizen’s preferences,

two types of consultation mechanisms (one committee and one council) in order to get advice from

specific segments of the population, and system of public works oversight that endows citizens with a

certain level of control over government’s activities.

The change in the implementation rates between 2011 and in 2013 may erroneously lead to the

conclusion that participatory governance practices are sufficiently consolidated in most of urban

Mexican municipalities. Although the average adoption rate of participatory instruments decreased

marginally between these two years, almost 30 per cent of the analyzed municipalities move to a lower

participatory system category in this period and, most importantly, 45 per cent of these cities had a

reduction in the amplitude of citizen participation instruments (Table 3). These fluctuations may reveal a

more dynamic – and difficult – scenario for the consolidation of participatory practices in Mexican

municipalities that deserve a deeper analysis.

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In fact, this decline in the amplitude of participatory systems and their oscillation in a short

period of time may reveal one facet of the institutional life of municipal governments in Mexico: the

high instability and volatility of local political agendas and governmental initiatives that limit the

consolidation of public policies and government instruments, even in brief periods of time. While some

determinants of the adoption of participatory governance instruments already discussed in the literature

may offer some arguments to explain this phenomenon, I consider that bureaucratic capacity (a

determinant that it has not been sufficiently analyzed by this literature) may play an important role to

understand the adoption and the stability of participatory instruments and systems, particularly in

developing countries with authoritarian legacies, like Mexico.

Table 3. Variations of participatory systems and their amplitude between 2011 and 2013

Participatory System Amplitude of Participation System Remained the same 181 46.7% Remained the same 60 15.6% Moved forward 96 24.8% Increased 152 39.2% Moved backwards 110 28.5% Decreased 175 45.2%

Determinants of the Adoption and the Stability of Participatory Instruments and Systems at the Local Level: The Potential Relevance of Bureaucratic Capacity Attributes

The adoption and the stability of participatory governance instruments, as any other instrument of

government, are political processes that reflects the way state and societal actors interpret and take

advantage of the institutional context and the underlying incentive structure (Andersson and van

Laerhoven 2007; Lascoumes and Le Galès 2007). Also, as Voß points out, any governmental instrument

requires during its gestation of a protection space that buffers it from political pressures, allowing the

configuration of positive feedback cycles that may ensure its consolidation in time (Voß 2007). This

protection space is shaped by coalitions of actors that provide political support to the instrument, but

also by an adequate institutional environment that delivers financial, organizational and managerial

resources that allow its further development and institutionalization.

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In respect of participatory instruments, the existing literature has advanced in the specification of

some determinants related with the institutional context and with the configuration of the supporting

coalition that might facilitate the adoption and the maintenance of participatory governance instruments.

Andersson and van Laerhoven sum up these factors in three main schools of thought: the modernization

and political culture literature, the “New Left” perspective, and the “Democratic Decentralization”

school (Andersson and van Laerhoven 2007). Firstly, modernization and political culture literature

stresses the importance of structural and social attributes (improvements in income levels or in literacy

rates) as triggers that pressure political authorities for the establishment of participatory practices. This

perspective does not pay attention to local institutional contexts or to specific state-society interactions

that might foster the introduction of this type of instruments.

Secondly, the “New Left” literature considers that the adoption and consolidation of participatory

governance mechanisms – particularly in Latin America – depends on the electoral success of leftist

political parties and leaders that, in post-authoritarian regimes, introduce this type of instruments with

the intention to offset traditionally elitist or corporative political scenarios, and to enhance political

accountability and responsiveness of municipal governments (Wampler 2007; Avritzer and Wampler

2004; Avritzer and Navarro 2003). Finally, the “Democratic Decentralization” perspective considers

that, in addition to the previous attributes, local political institutions and dynamics play an important

role in the establishment of broad and effective participatory arrangements at the local level.

Particularly, this literature argues that the existence of open and competitive democratic local elections,

and the effective devolution of substantial institutional powers to municipalities may enhance the

possibilities of articulation of stable participatory settings (Fung 2004; Fung and Wright 2003).

Andersson and van Laerhoven suggest a fourth approach, and they add three more elements that

shape the local incentive structure that local politicians face and that influence the adoption of

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participatory practices. These determinants are, firstly, a high density and a demanding group of local

Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), secondly, the support and the supervision of federal authorities that

promote or induce the introduction of this type of mechanisms at the municipal level and, thirdly, the

continuity in office of elected local politicians that may reduce turnover rates of the administrative staff

and of the political appointees in charge of the implementation of participatory practices at this level of

government (Andersson and van Laerhoven 2007).5

Although these perspectives suggest sound arguments to understand the adoption and the

stability of participatory governance instruments, this literature has tended to underestimate the

importance that the bureaucratic capacity of local governments may have in the explanation of this

phenomenon, particularly in developing countries where capacity-building is still a pending issue in

administrative reform agendas (Manning 2001; Polidano 1999). Just as the existence of open and

competitive elections, the contentious capacity of CSOs, and the political will of leaders with specific

ideological positions, bureaucratic capacity is a relevant factor that shapes the local institutional context

and it defines a specific set of opportunities and restrictions that political actors may confront while

selecting or eliminating specific instruments of citizen participation.

Bureaucratic capacity is closely related to Mann’s definition of state infrastructural power, which

can be conceived as the capacity of the state to infiltrate civil society in order to effectively implement

political and policy decisions (Mann 2008; 1984). As Mann and Fukuyama separately point out,

bureaucratic capacity has to do with the development of specific ‘power technologies’ (institutional

attributes or administrative structures, for instance) that strengthen the autonomous power of the state

and increases its ability to enforce rules and to deliver public services (Fukuyama 2013; Mann 2008).

With this, in this paper bureaucratic capacity is understood as the set of procedures, strategies, and

5 CSOs density is also an important explicative factor that has been explored by the New Left perspective, particularly in the Brazilian academia. See for example the works of Avritzer (2004) and Donaghy (2013).

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practices that shapes the structure and the dynamic of administrative agencies and that, potentially, may

allow governments the implementation of policies and the accomplishment of their goals.

Bureaucratic capacity, I suggest, may provide governments a balance between rigidity and

flexibility, necessary to maintain a minimum level of administrative coherence and to provide

reasonable and bounded discretionary margins for the adjustment of existing policies and instruments, or

for the creation of new ones. As part of the concept of bureaucratic capacity, I include two types of

attributes: 1) procedural practices that give resistance and coherence to administrative agencies, and 2)

input features that may enhance the capacity of adjustment and of innovative action of government

organizations.

On the one hand, procedural practices are related with the existence of a minimum set or rules

that regulate the recruitment and the promotion of public servants under conditions of equity,

professionalism, and merit (Fukuyama 2013; Cejudo and Zabaleta 2009). As Cejudo and Zabaleta

mention, the presence of these ‘weberian’ attributes may limit excessive discretionary influence of

political and bureaucratic actors in the administrative process, it may increase the professionalism of

public office, and it may secure a minimum level of neutrality of the public action (Cejudo and Zabaleta

2009). At the same time, as Rauch and Evans suggest, the existence of these procedural qualities in

public agencies – particularly, meritocratic recruitment mechanisms and long-term career expectations –

may increase corporate coherence of bureaucratic structures and, potentially, it may enhance stability of

governmental actions and strategies (Rauch and Evans 2000; 1999).

On the other hand, input attributes and practices grant authorities and public servants with a

certain degree of flexibility to push new goals and initiatives. As proxies of input attributes, it could be

considered two elements: the tax collection capacity of governments, and the professional attributes of

political appointees and top-level bureaucrats that are not recruited through meritocratic mechanisms

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(Fukuyama 2013). Firstly, extractive capacity may broaden government’s margin of action by expanding

the amount of available budgetary resources that could be used to implement new policies and

instruments. Meanwhile, the appointment of top-level bureaucrats with robust professional antecedents

(education, seniority, and a governmental track record) might potentially bring to local public agencies

innovative ideas and managerial skills necessary to impulse political agendas and policy priorities.

It must be noted that bureaucratic capacity attributes do not influence directly the adoption of

specific participatory governance practices or they automatically secure the stability of these instruments

in time. Similarly to the social, electoral, and political factors discussed above, bureaucratic capacity

shapes the institutional and political contexts where state and social actors interact and decide the

introduction – and the maintenance – of participatory governance. Bureaucratic capacity attributes may

influence local politicians’ calculations in the multiple ways. On the one hand, the existence of strong

procedural attributes in municipal administrations may shape an adequate institutional environment for

the implementation of participatory initiatives promoted by politicians who include this type of devices

as part of their political agendas. Likewise, positive procedural attributes may secure greater stability of

these initiatives, thanks to their potential incorporation into the routines of professional and merit-based

bureaucratic agencies.

Favorable input attributes, on the other hand, may foster the configuration of broader

participatory systems, due to the expansion of resources, innovative ideas, and managerial skills that

these factors may bring to public administrations. Similarly, positive input attributes – specially

seniority and the professional antecedent of political appointees – may increase the stability of

participatory instruments and systems, due to the previous experience that these public servants may

have with this type of instruments in other governmental contexts.

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In short, procedural and input attributes of bureaucratic capacity set the stage for the

establishment of participatory governance practices at the local level. In contrast to social, political and

electoral determinants, bureaucratic capacity elements do not push politicians to adopt these

mechanisms but they have a more subtle effect by securing conditions for the stability of the

participatory instruments already adopted, and by potentially providing innovative ideas and managerial

skills to expand the repertoire of participatory practices implemented by local governments.

Institutional Context and the Limits of Citizen Participation in Urban Municipalities in México: Arguments and Empirical Design

Although decentralization and democratization processes have created opportunities for the autonomous

action of local governments and the introduction of participatory governance practices in Mexican

municipalities, it has to be acknowledged that there are some features of the institutional incentive

structure of Mexican federalism that increase the instability of political agendas and governmental

initiatives at this level of government. In particular, four elements have to be taken in consideration in

the analysis, besides the political determinants already discussed in the previous section: 1) the electoral

rules that regulate the integration of municipal governing bodies, 2) the structure of the

intergovernmental fiscal system, 3) the lack of interest and support of federal authorities to strengthen

municipal administrations, and 4) the persistence of informal practices for the recruitment of public

servants at the local level.

First of all, electoral rules in Mexico (at least those in force until 2014) favor a political scenario

of short-term political time horizons at the municipal level, with a clear predominance of the agenda of

the winning party. The existence of constitutional restrictions for the reelection of local authorities

(presidentes municipales), joined to short periods of government, introduces institutional distortions to

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Mexican municipalities that have to reinvent themselves every three years, with clear consequences over

the stability of bureaucratic structures and governmental initiatives.6

Besides, the first-past-the-post municipal election system – that induces the configuration or

artificial majorities of the winning party in the municipal legislative bodies (ayuntamiento) – encourages

the dominance of the political agenda of the majoritarian party or coalition during its administration that,

after three years, it can be easily removed or modified (Rojo 2013). Thereupon, despite high levels of

electoral competition may increase the probability of having leftist or rightist governments in the

municipalities (that, in Mexico’s case, it would facilitate the introduction of participatory governance

practices in comparison to PRI governments), high rates of alternation in power may play against the

stability of participatory instruments.

Secondly, the institutional design and dynamics of Mexico’s intergovernmental fiscal system

clearly plays against the consolidation of local administrative structures, as well as the stability of

governmental innovations. Since the late 1970s, it has been articulated an ambiguous fiscal system in

Mexico that, contradictorily, is highly centralized in the revenue side and highly decentralized in the

expenditure side (Cabrero 2008).7 Although municipalities have institutional jurisdiction to collect some

local taxes and fees (mainly, the property tax and public services fees), these governments do not have

the incentives to enforce the raising of these levies, due to the fresh flow of resources that municipalities

receive every year from the federal government in the form of block and categorical grants (Sobarzo

2009; Cabrero and Orihuela 2002).

This distortion in the intergovernmental fiscal system limits the articulation of solid bureaucratic

structures in all Mexican municipalities (even for basic activities, like tax collection) and narrow the

6 The electoral reform approved in 2014 allows only one consecutive reelection of municipal authorities. The effects of this reform on the institutional incentive structure exceed the temporal limits of this paper and they will have to be evaluated in the following years. 7 On average, the Mexican federal government collects 95% of the total national revenue, while subnational authorities (state and municipal governments) spend almost half of the total national expenditures (Cabrero 2008).

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margin of action of local administrations that spend most of the resources that they receive from the

federal government in payroll or in federal labeled projects (Cabrero and Orihuela 2002). It would be

expected, then, that those Mexican municipalities that, for any reason, collect a greater amount of local

taxes (as a proportion of their total budget) would be in better position to implement and to sustain

instrumental innovations with these resources autonomously collected.

Thirdly, and in clear contrast to other Latin-American countries where federal induction has been

a critical factor in the consolidation of participatory governance practices at the local government,

Mexico’s federal government efforts to induce the strengthening of municipal administration or the

introduction of innovative practices have been modest, if not absent. Since the 1980s – when the

decentralization reforms began – there has been very few federal initiatives oriented to reform municipal

administrative processes (for example, accounting systems) or to introduce participatory components in

some municipal activities (with the creation of the Planning Municipal Councils in the 1980s or the

Public Safety Committees more recently). Besides, these strategies of federal induction have lacked of

appropriate enforcement mechanisms that would ensure their correct and complete implementation.8 For

this reason, the federal promotion of participatory practices at the local level is not a relevant factor, and

it will not be included in the statistical analysis.

Finally, it is still common to observe the persistence of informal practices for the recruitment and

the promotion of staff members of local administrations, most of them related to corporatist and

patrimonial legacies from the authoritarian regime (for example, negotiations with bureaucratic union to

distribute ‘quotas’, nepotistic practices like amiguismo or compadrazgo, etcetera). Besides, and as it

would be expected, the distortions that electoral and fiscal rules – as well as the lack of federal interest

to strengthen local administrations – introduce to Mexican municipalities (short periods of government,

8 According to the 2013 NCMG, and despite of being federally mandated, only 58 per cent the 387 urban municipalities analyzed in this paper include some participatory mechanisms as a part of Coplademun’s operations. Likewise, only 46 per cent of these local governments have participatory Public Safety Councils.

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no reelection, limited budgetary resources, and no federal induction) difficult the possibilities of

adopting – and sustaining – formal strategies that set minimum professional or merit standards for the

recruitment of public servants (Rojo 2013; Merino 2006).

Despite this fact, and as it is shown in table 4, some urban municipalities in Mexico have set (as

they reported it in the 2011 and 2013 NCMG) some strategies to adjust their recruitment processes, by

establishing open and public contests to occupy some administrative positions, as well as to put in order

their human resources management practices by introducing personnel evaluation mechanisms and

training schemes for public servants. Although the evaluation of the effectiveness of this type of

strategies to articulate more robust administrative structures exceeds the limits of this paper, this type of

administrative practices, and its permanence in time, might offer a proxy measure of the existence

procedural attributes of bureaucratic capacity in those municipalities that have implemented it.

Table 4. Professionalization measures undertaken by urban municipalities (2011 and 2013)

2011 2013 Open and Public Contests for Personnel Recruitment 13.95% (54) 9.30% (36) Capacitation Activities for Public Servants 59.43% (230) 39.79% (154) Evaluation Mechanisms 34.40% (133) 23.00% (89)

By combining all these formal and informal institutional distortions that persist in the design of

Mexican federalism – and that impact directly the calculations of local authorities – it is not surprising to

recognize that the adoption of governmental innovations in urban Mexican municipalities (for example,

participatory instruments) is mainly driven by the agenda of the presidente municipal that has broad

discretionary powers to implement new policies or instruments, or to remove those from previous

administrations. With this, the institutional scenario that, hypothetically, might secure a certain degree of

stability to participatory practices in profoundly weak, and it is reasonable to think that only those

municipalities that have advance in the construction of some levels of bureaucratic capacity (both

procedural or input attributes) would be better suited to adopt and to sustain participatory efforts.

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In methodological terms – and with the intention to evaluate if bureaucratic capacity attributes

are relevant factors to explain the adoption and the stability of participatory practices in Mexican

municipalities, despite these institutional distortions – I estimate several logit and ordered logit models

to identify the determinants of: 1) the existence of at least one participatory instrument, 2) the existence

of multiple participatory devices of the same category (aggregation, consultation, social control), and 3)

the existence of ample and comprehensive participatory systems in urban Mexican municipalities. These

models will be run both for 2011 and 2013, in order to contrast the results. Additionally, I estimate

another set of logit and ordered logit models with the intention to assess what factors are relevant to

explain the stability of participatory governance practices between 2011 and 2013.

In this models, and it is shown in Table 5, I include several independent variables that measure some

determinants suggested by the literature, some characteristics of the institutional incentive structure of

Mexican federalism discussed in this section, and some proxys that might suggest the existence of some

bureaucratic capacity attributes in the analyzed municipalities.

Table 5. Specification of the Independent Variables Variable Name Definition Expected Relation

Population Population of the Municipality, according to the 2010 National Census (Natural Logarithm) Positive

Poverty Percentage of the Municipal Population in an extreme poverty situation Negative

Municipal Budget Municipal budget per capita – Average of the three years previous to the analysis (Natural Logarithm) Positive

CSOs Number of registered local CSOs in 2013, according to the Federal Registry of Civil Society Organizations9 Positive

PAN Governments Number of times that a National Action Party candidate (rightist party) won the municipal election in the three electoral cycles previous to the analysis Positive

Leftist Governments Number of times that a leftist candidate (PRD, PT, Convergencia) won the municipal election in the three electoral cycles previous to the analysis Positive

Alternation in Power Number of times that there were electoral alternation in the municipality in the three electoral cycles previous to the analysis Negative

Weberian Attributes Number of procedural attributes (open contests, evaluation mechanisms or Positive 9 The number of registered CSOs per 1,000 inhabitants is taken from the Federal Registry of Civil Society Organizations coordinated by the National Institute for Social Development. Any CSO that wants to be eligible for donations or federal grants has to be enrolled in this Registry. Although this measure may approximate to the situation of civil society organization capacity at the local level, it does not necessarily catch up the possible interaction of informal social actor with municipal authorities. However, this is the only measure that provides a systematic picture of civic organization at the local level in México.

18

training activities) in operation in the municipality in the year of analysis

PA Seniority Percentage of the municipal political appointees that have been in office three or more years (2013) Positive

PA Track Record Percentage of the municipal political appointees that have had previous experience in other governmental activities (2013) Positive

Fiscal Autonomy Municipal tax collection per capita as a percentage of the municipal budget per capita – Average of the three years previous to the analysis (Natural Logarithm) Positive

Results10

The existence of procedural attributes of bureaucratic capacity in municipal administrations in Mexico

is, at some level, positively associated with the adoption of at least one participatory instrument, and

with the configuration of broad and comprehensive participatory systems in 2011 and in 2013 (see

Tables 6 and 7). Despite this association is not always statistically significant, the presence of these

attributes is related with an increment in the implementation rate of participatory instruments in in

almost every category (specially with social control and co-governance instruments in 2011, and with

aggregation and consultation mechanisms in 2013). The presence of these attributes are also positively

and significantly associated with the decisions of adopting at least one participatory mechanisms, and

with the articulation of broad and comprehensive participatory systems. This evidence may preliminary

sustain the argument that procedural mechanisms endow local administrations a minimum level of

coherence and stability that may lead to the deepening of existing participatory initiatives.

Input attributes of bureaucratic capacity are also positively associated with the introduction of a

wider range of participatory instruments and with the consolidation of ample and comprehensive

participatory systems in both years analyzed. For 2011, political appointees’ seniority is positively and

significantly related with the adoption of at least one participatory instrument, with an increment a

higher diversity of social control mechanisms, as well as with the configuration of broader and

comprehensive participatory systems. Meanwhile, in 2013 political appointees’ governmental track

record is significantly associated with the adoption of at least one participatory mechanism, with higher

10 The three tables containing the results of the statistical analysis are at the end of the paper.

19

amplitude of expression and aggregation instruments, as well as with the articulation of broad and

comprehensive participatory systems. Municipal fiscal autonomy, however, have mix results in both

years, although the relations of this variable with the dependent factors are not statistically significant in

any of both years analyzed.

With regard to the arguments proposed by the modernization, the “New Left”, and the

“Democratic Decentralization” perspectives, this analysis suggests that local party politics may be

determinant to understand the adoption of participatory governance practices in urban Mexican

municipalities, whereas other variables (like poverty levels and capacity of social organization at the

local level) may not be relevant. A higher incidence of PAN and Leftist governments is positively

related, but only significantly in 2013, with the introduction of at least one participatory mechanism, as

well as with the configuration of comprehensive systems of citizen participation with a broad variety of

instruments. PAN Governments are also positively associated with a wide diversity of consultation

devices in 2013.

In opposition to societal explanations, in Mexico’s case there is not enough evidence to support

the argument that higher levels of social density (understood as the capacity of social actors to organize

autonomously) may lead to the adoption of participatory governance practices. As the evidence shows,

the number of registered CSOs is not significantly related, and it has mixed results, with the adoption of

any type of participatory instrument, nor with the consolidation of comprehensive participatory systems.

Despite the way this variable was constructed may slightly bias the result, the evidence provided by this

analysis may suggest, as some authors submit, that CSOs in Mexico may still follow clientelistic or

passive strategies of contention, particularly at the local level, that limit their capacity to pressure

authorities to open up democratic and participatory mechanisms of political relation (Isunza and Gurza

2012; Gurza and Bueno 2011).

20

Population is also positively associated with the introduction of specific types of participatory

mechanisms, as well as with the configuration of broad participatory systems. As the evidence indicates,

governments of highly populated municipalities are more prone to articulate wide participatory systems

composed mainly by expression and consultation devices. Higher poverty levels, as the analysis shows,

may play against the introduction of participatory instruments and the consolidation of comprehensive

participatory systems, although in both analyses this variable was not significantly enough to fully

support this argument.

Finally, the existence of broader municipal budgets may be positively associated with the

introduction of at least one participatory instrument and with the configuration of wider participatory

systems. However, this variable was not significantly enough in all cases to sustain this argument

robustly. It is important to stress that although the direction of the associations of each independent

factor with the dependent variables is, in general, the same in the 2011 and 2013 analyses, the levels of

statistical significance vary greatly between these two years. This oscillation in the significance level of

the relations may be an indicator of the personalistic and the volatile nature of the process of adoption of

participatory practices at the municipal level in Mexico.

With the intention to assess the stability of participatory instruments and systems in time, another

set of logit and ordered logits models was run using a different group of dependent variables that may

catch the variations of these instruments and systems in every analyzed municipality (Table 8). Firstly, it

was defined a binary variable (Participation) that differentiates between the municipalities that had at

least one participatory mechanism in 2011 and 2013, from those who had not. Besides, five additional

dependent variables were constructed in order to measure the stability of participatory instruments of

each category and jointly (Expression, Advice, Co-governance, and Amplitude), and of the participatory

system in operation during 2011 (System). These five variables were defined in ordered to differentiate

21

those municipalities who had abrupt changes in the amplitude of their participatory instruments – and in

the configuration of their participatory systems – from those who remained relatively steady, but with

different levels of participatory amplitude (Low, Medium, and High Amplitude). 11 Additionally,

procedural attributes of bureaucratic capacity variables were recoded in order to distinguish the stability

of these attributes between 2011 and 2013, as well as the number of attributes that remain stable in the

same period.

Although the results of these models suggest that there is a positive association between the

stability of procedural attributes with the maintenance of broad and comprehensive participatory

systems, the robustness of this association is not systematic enough to completely support this argument.

In fact, the permanence in time of weberian attributes seems to play against the stability of all types of

participatory mechanisms. This association – that it is only statistically significant in the case of co-

governance instruments – contradicts the original intuition that high levels of stability of procedural

measures may favor the stability of participatory governance practices.

With regard to input attributes of bureaucratic capacity, political appointees seniority and

government track record are positively related with the stability of participatory instruments and

systems, but only the latter is significantly associated with the permanence of advise and consult

mechanisms and with the maintenance of comprehensive systems of participation. As in the previous

analysis, municipal fiscal autonomy is positively associated with the stability of participatory

11 Highly unstable municipalities were defined as those who moved (forwards or backwards) two or more categories of participation amplitude between 2011 and 2013. For instance, municipalities that had comprehensive participatory systems in 2011 and moved to one-dimensional systems in 2013 are considered as highly unstable municipalities. Likewise, municipalities that had no participatory in instrument in any category in 2011 and moved forward to implement more than two mechanisms in the same category in 2013 are also considered as highly unstable. Municipalities with low participatory amplitude are those that remain relatively stable but with low levels of participation (less than 3 participatory mechanisms or with a one-dimensional participatory system). Municipalities with high participatory amplitude, in change, are those that remain stable but with high level of participation (more than 6 participatory mechanisms or with a comprehensive participatory system).

22

governance practices, although these relations are not statistically significant enough to support this

argument systematically.

Population seems to be the more relevant variable in this two-period analysis, and this

variable is significantly and positively associated with the maintenance of participatory devices between

these two years, as well as with the stability of broad and comprehensive systems of citizen

participation. On the contrary, larger municipal budgets per capita – that it is generally associated with

less populated cities – are also positively related with the maintenance of co-governance instruments,

although it has a negative association with the permanence of expression and aggregation mechanisms.

Once again, political and electoral factors seem to be relevant variables to explain the stability of

participatory instruments and systems. Even though alternation in power is not statistically relevant in

this analysis – and neither in the previous one – a high incidence of leftist governments is positively

associated with the continuity of participation initiatives and with the steadiness of comprehensive

participatory systems. Also, a higher occurrence of PAN governments is also significantly and positively

related with the continuation in operation of comprehensive systems of citizen participation.

Finally, poverty levels and the capacity of organization of social actor at the local level are not

statistically relevant to explain the stability of participatory instruments and systems in urban Mexican

municipalities. As the evidence of these three sets of models suggests, it seems that the adoption and the

maintenance of participatory governance practices at the local level in Mexico do not depend on the

pressure that social groups may exert over local politicians, but it is highly contingent to the agendas of

elected authorities that may or may not include citizen participation as a key instrument of government.

23

Discussion: A preliminary explanation of the adoption and the stability of participatory governance instruments in Mexican municipalities

According to the results presented previously, the existence of procedural and input attributes of

bureaucratic capacity seems to be relevant to understand the adoption of participatory governance

practices in Mexican urban municipalities but, just in a few cases, they are pertinent to understand the

stability in time of these instruments. The presence of at least two procedural attributes in municipal

administrations seems to induce local politician’s calculations in order to implement at least one

participatory instrument. Furthermore, a higher incidence of political appointees and top-level

bureaucrats with more than three years of experience in the municipal administration or with a previous

job experience in governmental activities seems to increase the probability that local authorities take the

decision to implement at least one participatory instrument. However, when we try to understand the

politician’s decision of maintaining participatory practices in operation between 2011 and 2013, the

incidence of leftist governments at the municipal level seems to be the only relevant factor. With this,

“New Left” arguments seem to apply in Mexico’s case.

Likewise, bureaucratic capacity attributes seem to be relevant to explain the configuration of

broad and comprehensive participatory systems in urban Mexican municipalities, but not necessarily to

understand the stability of these schemes in time. As the results of the statistical analysis have shown,

the presence of two or three procedural attributes in municipal administration might create favorable

conditions for local politicians with a participatory agenda to implement broad and comprehensive

systems of participation. Furthermore, local authorities’ decision to keep in office or to appoint top-level

bureaucrats with a previous governmental job experience also increases the probability of articulating

ample systems of participation.

However, when we try to understand the stability of participatory systems in time, political and

contextual features of municipalities seem to be the key factors, while bureaucratic capacity attributes

24

lose relevance (with the exception of the job antecedent of political appointees). At the end, the stability

in time of participatory devices and systems seems to depend on the incidence of rightist or leftist

governments and on the size of the city. If we considered that most populated municipalities in Mexico

have better socioeconomic conditions in comparison to other cities, then the analysis elaborated in this

paper may give support to modernization and to “New Left” arguments.

With these results in mind, it is possible to construct a more complete picture of the mechanisms

that lead to the adoption and to the stability of participatory governance practices in Mexican

municipalities, as well as to understand the role that bureaucratic capacity attributes might play in these

processes. First of all, the configuration of broad participatory systems is a phenomenon that occurs

more frequently in largely populated municipalities. As the results of the analysis have shown, this is not

the result of the availability of budgetary resources or the pressure that local CSOs may exert, but of a

explicit strategy of local politicians in these cities to articulate communication and consultation

mechanisms in scenarios that are naturally more complex and heterogeneous in comparison to least

populated cities.

Furthermore, and as other studies have shown (Rojo 2013; Cabrero and Zabaleta 2011),

authorities in highly populated municipalities have better chances to recruit – and in some cases to keep

in office – more educated and more experienced political appointees that may deploy their abilities to

suggest a broader repertoire of participatory practices in that cities. These suggestions will be

particularly sound in municipalities with rightist or leftist elected authorities that, in comparison to PRI

politicians, are more prone to include citizen participation issues into their political agendas.

Although there is a positive association between procedural attributes of bureaucratic capacity

and the configuration of broader and more comprehensive participatory practices, this relation does not

necessarily mean that the existence of more professional administrations induces the articulation of

25

ampler participatory systems in Mexican municipalities. It could be reasonable to think, particularly in a

context like the Mexican, that introducing democratic (participatory instruments) and administrative

innovations (open contests, evaluation mechanisms, training activities) are simultaneous processes that

follow the same argumentative logic. Thus, rightist and leftist authorities elected in highly populated

municipalities will be more prone to advance capacity-building reforms with the explicit intention to

break patrimonial legacies inherited from previous PRI administrations, in the same way they implement

participatory practices in order to disrupt corporatist practices of political intermediation.

If we take the previous argument as true, the effect of bureaucratic capacity on the introduction

and the stability of participatory governance practices will be quite modest, and it will be confined to the

influence that input attributes may exert over local politicians’ calculations (particularly, political

appointees seniority and governmental track record). With this, there will be strong evidence to support

the idea that democratic innovations at the municipal level in Mexico are still highly contingent to the

personal attributes of the elected authorities that will be shaped by their political orientation (rightist or

leftist), and by their capacity to recruit or to maintain in office educated and experienced top-level

bureaucrats.

Conclusion

The findings of this article contribute to the debate of the mechanisms that may help to explain

democratic innovations at the subnational level in Mexico. According to the analysis presented in this

paper, the political orientation of elected politicians, particularly in highly populated municipalities, is

the key factor to understand the adoption and the stability of participatory practice in Mexican

municipalities. Rightist and leftist politicians may implement this type of democratic innovations with

the intention of breaking authoritarian and corporatist legacies that nowadays persist in Mexican

municipalities. The pre-eminence of authorities’ political orientations as a key factor to explain this

26

phenomenon may be related to the institutional incentive structure shaped by Mexican federalism that

leaves broad spaces of discretionary action to elected politicians, in a context of lowly institutionalized

municipal bureaucratic structures. Although input attributes of bureaucratic capacity may be relevant to

the explanation suggested here, these administrative features seem to be contingent, at the end, to the

discretionary power of authorities to recruit or to maintain in office top-level bureaucrats with a robust

education or with previous experience in governmental activities, and not with an explicit strategy of

administrative reform.

Although procedural attributes of bureaucratic capacity are also related with the introduction of

democratic innovations, the results of the analysis presented here may also suggest that these

administrative features should be considered governmental innovations that, in their adoption, may

follow the same logic that participatory practices. Thus, the findings of this paper call for a broader

exploration of the determinants of governmental innovation in Mexican municipalities that it does not

include solely the introduction of participatory governance practices, but also the implementation of

administrative practices oriented to increase the capacity, and the professionalism of municipal

bureaucratic structures.

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Table 6. 2011 Results - Amplitude of Participatory Governance Instruments and Systems (Logit and Ordered Logit Models) AMPLITUDE

Participation Expression Consult Co-governance System Amplitude Population 2010 (log) 0.741** 0.112 -0.124 0.031 0.240 0.109

(0.330) (0.188) (0.170) (0.165) (0.184) (0.158) Poverty 2010 -2.096 -0.355 -2.654** 2.057 -1.365 -1.463

(1.559) (1.226) (1.320) (1.257) (1.166) (1.082) Average Municipal Budget 09-11 (log) 0.322** -0.247*** -0.099 0.009 0.089 -0.017

(0.143) (0.095) (0.090) (0.090) (0.091) (0.080) CSOs per 1000 inhabitants 2013 0.687 -0.806 -0.083 -0.142 0.617 -0.085

(1.245) (0.816) (0.668) (0.699) (0.791) (0.641) PAN Governments (3 cycles) 0.113 -0.108 0.080 0.064 0.201 0.050

(0.207) (0.133) (0.133) (0.129) (0.139) (0.122) Left Governments (3 cycles) -0.102 0.050 0.045 0.045 0.122 0.020

(0.246) (0.180) (0.174) (0.176) (0.175) (0.155) Alternation in Power (3 cycles) 0.020 0.086 -0.150 -0.047 -0.029 0.023

(0.228) (0.161) (0.159) (0.157) (0.159) (0.145) Weberian Attributes = 1 0.398 -0.285 -0.084 0.312 0.370 0.216

(0.393) (0.283) (0.276) (0.275) (0.274) (0.250) Weberian Attributes = 2 1.235** 0.162 0.316 0.198 0.601* 0.733**

(0.596) (0.312) (0.317) (0.309) (0.319) (0.290) Weberian Attributes = 3 -1.225** 0.614 0.052 1.329** -0.681 -0.456

(0.492) (0.525) (0.520) (0.523) (0.431) (0.440) PA Seniority 2013 0.646* 0.179 0.214 0.453** 0.449* 0.576***

(0.376) (0.223) (0.220) (0.228) (0.239) (0.212) PA Government Track Record 2013 -0.350 0.062 -0.029 0.308 0.531 0.069

(0.720) (0.485) (0.467) (0.476) (0.499) (0.442) Average Fiscal Autonomy 09-11 (log) 1.169 1.840 -1.871 -0.544 -0.864 -0.590

(2.597) (1.612) (1.582) (1.550) (1.593) (1.420) 0 - 1 / Type 0 – Type 1 -2.680 -4.689** 0.175 2.814 0.392

(2.478) (2.254) (2.180) (2.349) (2.037) 1 – 2 / Type 1 – Type 2 -0.371 -2.927 1.628 3.192 1.617

(2.464) (2.246) (2.183) (2.350) (2.040) 2 – 3 / Type 2 – Type 3 1.428 -1.456 2.928 4.142* 3.213

(2.471) (2.240) (2.187) (2.353) (2.044) CONSTANT -9.995** (4.063) Observations 314 262 262 262 314 314 Log likelihood -119.123 Akaike information criterion 266.247 Notes: ***p < .01; **p < .05; *p < .1

29

Table 7. 2013 Results - Amplitude of Participatory Governance Instruments and Systems (Logit and Ordered Logit Models)

AMPLITUDE

Participation Expression Consult Co-governance System Amplitude

Population 2010 (log) 0.358 0.482*** 0.239 -0.010 0.170 0.362**

(0.345) (0.177) (0.170) (0.176) (0.182) (0.166) Poverty 2010 -2.982* -1.681 0.189 1.650 -1.824 -1.541

(1.730) (1.434) (1.324) (1.248) (1.281) (1.195) Average Municipal Budget 11-13 (log) -0.123 0.034 0.095 0.084 0.115 0.121

(0.158) (0.088) (0.086) (0.084) (0.092) (0.081) CSOs per 1000 inhabitants 2013 -1.139 1.126 0.270 0.342 -0.181 -0.210

(1.046) (0.849) (0.790) (0.844) (0.733) (0.697) PAN Governments (3 cycles) 0.435 0.149 0.252* 0.151 0.468*** 0.356***

(0.296) (0.141) (0.138) (0.139) (0.167) (0.136) Left Governments (3 cycles) 1.013** -0.220 -0.248 -0.231 0.436* 0.199

(0.448) (0.221) (0.217) (0.206) (0.233) (0.201) Alternation in Power (3 cycles) -0.167 0.071 0.114 0.049 -0.243 -0.065

(0.321) (0.179) (0.175) (0.177) (0.189) (0.165) Weberian Attributes = 1 -0.233 0.395 0.394 0.310 -0.194 0.095

(0.475) (0.351) (0.337) (0.343) (0.337) (0.316) Weberian Attributes = 2 2.000* 0.545* -0.409 0.193 0.397 0.330

(1.070) (0.327) (0.309) (0.309) (0.346) (0.296) Weberian Attributes = 3 -0.182 0.631 1.159** 0.755 0.474 0.955**

(0.717) (0.467) (0.506) (0.471) (0.532) (0.483) PA Seniority 2013 0.034 0.142 0.349 0.062 0.282 0.086

(0.388) (0.247) (0.238) (0.226) (0.252) (0.221) PA Government Track Record 2013 1.562* 1.114** 0.719 0.349 0.879* 1.144**

(0.875) (0.507) (0.486) (0.497) (0.512) (0.467) Average Fiscal Autonomy 11-13 (log) -0.077 0.376 0.627 -0.888 -0.493 -0.192

(2.850) (1.712) (1.708) (1.664) (1.772) (1.567) 0 - 1 / Type 0 – Type 1 3.995* 2.406 -0.311 1.573 3.779*

(2.273) (2.210) (2.240) (2.349) (2.133) 1 – 2 / Type 1 – Type 2 6.641*** 4.245* 1.027 2.063 5.240**

(2.280) (2.220) (2.239) (2.348) (2.137) 2 – 3 / Type 2 – Type 3 8.294*** 5.870*** 2.537 3.183 7.077***

(2.308) (2.234) (2.242) (2.353) (2.159) CONSTANT -1.977 (4.162) Observations 297 260 260 260 297 297 Log likelihood -96.672 Akaike information criterion 221.344 Notes: ***p < .01; **p < .05; *p < .1

30

Table 8. 2011-2013 Results – Stability of Participatory Governance Instruments and Systems (Probit and Ordered Probit Models) High Stability: Maintain in categories 2 or 3

Participation Expression Consult Co-governance System Amplitude

Population 2010 (log) 0.605** 0.257 0.318* 0.267 0.299* 0.304*

(0.250) (0.174) (0.162) (0.171) (0.175) (0.163) Poverty 2010 -1.089 0.573 0.066 1.581 1.199 0.935

(1.384) (1.214) (1.267) (1.286) (1.309) (1.197) Average Municipal Budget 11-13 (log) 0.086 -0.166* 0.034 0.241*** 0.038 -0.057

(0.113) (0.085) (0.084) (0.087) (0.089) (0.084) CSOs per 1000 inhabitants 2013 -1.206 0.387 -0.129 0.156 -0.301 -0.443

(0.864) (0.816) (0.623) (0.778) (0.637) (0.625) PAN Governments (3 cycles) 0.190 0.076 0.175 -0.059 0.294* 0.019

(0.191) (0.138) (0.141) (0.144) (0.153) (0.143) Left Governments (3 cycles) 0.645** 0.044 0.066 0.024 0.419* 0.174

(0.294) (0.207) (0.210) (0.215) (0.224) (0.204) Alternation in Power (3 cycles) -0.167 -0.040 0.079 0.120 -0.236 0.001

(0.220) (0.170) (0.172) (0.182) (0.180) (0.170) Stability of Previous Weberian Attributes 0.405 0.004 0.125 -0.042 0.035 0.149

(0.309) (0.239) (0.244) (0.251) (0.250) (0.238) Number of Stable Weberian Attributes 0.387 -0.314 -0.230 -0.866*** 0.127 0.076 (0.422) (0.320) (0.313) (0.333) (0.334) (0.310) PA Seniority 2013 0.189 0.021 -0.080 0.228 0.323 0.169

(0.298) (0.228) (0.219) (0.225) (0.241) (0.222) PA Government Track Record 2013 0.795 0.430 1.064** 0.519 0.956* 0.720

(0.625) (0.479) (0.463) (0.491) (0.497) (0.463) Average Fiscal Autonomy 11-13 (log) 2.238 1.272 0.927 0.131 1.888 -0.427

(2.214) (1.628) (1.582) (1.634) (1.675) (1.519) High instability – Stability/Low Amp 1.125 3.814* 4.854** 4.177* 2.750

(2.225) (2.090) (2.197) (2.272) (2.101) Stability/Low Amp – Stability/Medium Amp 2.261 4.672** 5.997*** 4.303* 3.431

(2.225) (2.099) (2.208) (2.272) (2.105) Stability/Medium Amp – Stability/High Amp 3.820* 5.900*** 7.180*** 5.193** 4.871** (2.242) (2.111) (2.220) (2.279) (2.116) CONSTANT -7.527** (3.104) Observations 297 279 276 264 288 288 Log likelihood -154.289 Akaike information criterion 334.577 Notes: ***p < .01; **p < .05; *p < .1