Transformations and lags of local governance in Mexico

Abstract

In the last decades, local governments in Mexico have implemented more participatory and less vertical processes of solution of public problems. The balance is in progress, continuity and inertia in building a new government relationship-local society. In structural terms, has gone from a government dominance to the presence of a large diversity of actors and a more participatory decision-making of public policy process, likewise has generated an expanded calendar that goes beyond the role of public services to include issues of local development (Cabrero, 2003).

Political and administrative changes that have been implemented for at least the last three decades in order to make more participatory and efficient the task of governing and respond more effectively to the attention of the needs of the population, have had their greatest impact on the transformation of governance processes at the municipal level. However, the quality of local institutions does not seem to be necessary to meet the challenges at a local level. There is also a broad consensus that the problem at the municipal level in Mexico is not technical, but political, which refers not to the professionalization of local government, but to increase the quality of governance and improve the decision making process.

This article aims to reflect from a governance approach and five concrete municipal gover- nment in Mexico (Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Querétaro, San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas), about new governance processes, with emphasis on participatory management and decision oriented to stimulate, from a more horizontal and concerted approach, processes of solving local problems public decisions. To meet this aim, first, the process of institutional change in the Mexican municipality described secondly the emergence of a new public action at the municipal level is analyzed, and finally, the deficit of local government institutions is set out.