Aaron Schneider

Decentralization: Conceptualization and measurement

Decentralized government institutions are doing more of the work of government than ever before, but there is little agreement about 1) what decentralization means, or 2) how it should be measured. To overcome this confusion, this article builds on standard definitions of decentralization that include three core dimensions: fiscal, administrative, and political. The article offers an empirical test of that definition using factor analysis of data from 1996 for sixty-eight countries. Factor analysis confirms these three core dimensions and generates a score for each case in each dimension, allowing countries to be measured according to their type and degree of decentralization. In future work, these scores can be used for hypothesis testing about the causes and effects of decentralization on important social outcomes. This exercise demonstrates that conceptual confusion need not hamper research when empirical tests can help verify conceptual categories.

State-building and tax regimes in Central America

1. Revenues, states, and Central America 2. State-building in a globalized political economy 3. Historical junctures in Central American state-building and tax 4. 1990s transnational integration: quantitative evaluation of socioeconomic actors, democratic institutions, and tax regimes 5. Inside-out state-building in El Salvador: dominant and cohesive transnational elites 6. Outside-in state-building in Honduras: dominant but divided transnational elites 7. Crisis in Guatemalan state-building: divided, subordinate transnational elites 8. Conclusion: state-building and tax in developing countries.

Who Gets What from Whom? The Impact of Decentralisation on Tax Capacity and Social Spending

Abstract This project studies patterns of decentralisation and public finance in 68 countries where local and national statistics are available. Six indicators of decentralisation are clustered around fiscal, administrative and political dimensions, and these dimensions had independent and surprising relationships with the resources governments collected and what they did with their money. First, politically decentralised regimes taxed less overall and spent less on social policies. Second, administrative decentralisation showed a positive impact on social policies, but neither administrative nor fiscal decentralisation had a systematic relationship to tax capacity. These results suggest that multi-level governance might best be pursued in a partial fashion. Political centralisation may favour the actors and interests that seek large amounts of progressive public action, while administrative decentralisation may allow competition, information and innovation to lead to efficient and effective public policies. Other things being equal, political centralisation and administrative decentralisation may achieve high levels of effective, efficient and redistributive public action.

INSTITUIÇÕES GOVERNAMENTAIS E PARTICIPAÇÃO CIDADÃ: FINANÇAS PÚBLICAS INCLUSIVAS EM PORTO ALEGRE - BRASIL

A recurrent theme in political science links new forms of participatory democracy to citizens’ attitudes and their willingness to abide with their obligation to pay taxes. In this paper we examine how the citizens of Porto Alegre - Brazil view tax paying, from the perspective of material and non-material benefits. Using survey data collected in Porto Alegre in 2003 with 687 interviews, we find that, overall poor sectors show a tendency to support tax paying because of the material benefits, while middle sectors also have supporting attitudes, but for non-material benefits. Through the use of logit regression we find empirical evidence of a connection between trust in participatory budget and citizens support for the municipal government.

Responding to fiscal stress: Fiscal institutions and fiscal adjustment in four Brazilian states

Abstract Despite similar external shocks and pressures, Brazilian state leaders varied in the timing and the manner in which they adjusted to fiscal stress. Some state leaders rapidly switched to market-oriented strategies that cut public intervention in the economy. Other state leaders delayed adjustment, and when they finally put their accounts in order it was through market-governing strategies that preserved government activism. In part, these different fiscal policy regimes were products of the decision-making process in which chief executives operated. In states where budgeting obeyed a more open and democratic pattern, chief executives lacked autonomy and were forced to build coalitions to adjust. This meant that they adjusted more slowly and their adjustment strategies included appeals to broad interests, including those seeking protection from market pressures. In states where budgeting was more autocratic, chief executives could act quickly and without building a coalition. The current project uses structured comparison to contrast adjustment patterns in two democratic-budgeting states and two autocratic-budgeting states. The link between budget institutions and adjustment strategy appears to hold regardless of the socioeconomic condition of the states and the political hue of the state leaders.

Bases de um novo contrato social? : impostos e orçamento participativo em Porto Alegre

In spite of the growing interest about alternative forms of political participation, among which the participatory budget (OP), we know little about how this form of involvement is affecting the structuring of a more efficient social contract. Such situation, perhaps, is due to the fact that the payment of taxes is considered a legal obligation; therefore, the argument is that there would be little to be studied on this field. This article argues that how citizens position themselves about the payment of taxes influences other domains of politics, such as institutional trust and levels of political involvement. Through a survey with porto-alegrenses, the results indicate that the existence of a negative structural dimension insofar as payment of taxes is concerned undermines the actual social contract.

Governance Reform and Institutional Change in Brazil: Federalism and Tax

Abstract This paper contrasts two processes of governance reform in Brazil in the 1990s: federal relations and tax. The degree of institutional change possible in each case depended on whether powerful actors reached a new social pact. Discarding old social pacts in favour of new ones was not easy, however, and it only occurred when the interests and powers of actors had shifted sufficiently through a series of incremental changes. In the case of federal relations, incremental changes cumulated until they breached a threshold and a wholesale change could occur. In the case of tax, the fundamental actors and interests remained the same, and incremental change occurred only within the institutions that already existed. The point of this distinction is more than semantic. A social pact is necessary for wholesale institutional change, and this is the only way to attain an increase in both the capacity and the accountability of government institutions. Without such wholesale change, governance reform occurs within existing institutions and therefore does not constitute an increase in both capacity and accountability.

Accountability and Capacity in Developing Country Federalism: Empowered states, Competitive Federalism

Abstract State extraction depends in part on the degree and type of accountability to citizens. Accountability relationships are especially complex in federal systems, where multiple and overlapping jurisdictions must compete to respond to, and extract from, common citizen bases. The current project examines the operation of accountability and taxation in India. India has always been a centralised federation in which a powerful central government, made even more powerful by single-party dominance, overwhelmed most state interests. The result was a fiscal system in which the central government controlled most resources. Over the last few decades, the Indian party system has increasingly fragmented and oriented towards interests in the states, and the fiscal system has shifted in turn. What was originally a highly centralised federation has now evolved into a more decentralised regime in which resources and powers are held significantly by state governments, which compete with each other and with the federal government. Interestingly, as competition increased, the overall amount of tax decreased and, in turn, more coercive mechanisms of extraction were adopted.

Response to Gerald M. Easter's review of State-Building and Tax Regimes in Central America

In Central America, dynamic economic actors have inserted themselves into global markets. Elites atop these sectors attempt to advance a state-building project that will allow them to expand their activities and access political power, but they differ in their internal cohesion and their dominance with respect to other groups, especially previously constituted elites and popular sectors. Differences in resulting statebuilding patterns are expressed in the capacity to mobilize revenues from the most dynamic sectors in quantities sufficient to undertake public endeavors and in a relatively universal fashion across sectors. Historical, quantitative, and qualitative detail on the five countries of Central America are followed by a focus on El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. The greatest changes have occurred in El Salvador, and Honduras has made some advances, although they are almost as quickly reversed by incentives, exemptions, and special arrangements for particular producers. Guatemala has raised revenues only marginally and failed to address problems of inequity across sectors and between rich and poor.

SHIPYARD WORKERS, NEW ORLEANS, AND U.S. DEMOCRACY

This project explores the civic engagement of workers in the Avondale shipyard on the outskirts of New Orleans. Avondale workers earn decent incomes, patronize local businesses, join associations and support those organizations with their leadership, contributions, and civic engagement. This engagement creates the social capital that holds the community together, training people to take an interest in the public good, and driving them to seek political information. As leaders in the community, Avondale workers share that information with family, friends, and fellow workers, and build the sense that they can participate effectively in public life. They are politically engaged, vote at high rates, and participate in democratic life. The workers themselves are clear on where their civic activism comes from – the struggle and victory of securing union representation in the workplace. That struggle was difficult, and it taught workers to intertwine their civic future with that of the community. It also secured the material benefits of income and stability that allowed workers to plan for a lifetime of increasing productivity, income, and generational advancement.