Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The quality of government performance in Argentine municipalities

为什么有些地方政府官僚机构表现良好，平等地向所有公民提供商品和服务，而在其他城市，获得政府服务是一项艰巨的任务，结果是那些有政治联系的人比其他人更能利用政府服务？该项目通过发展政府绩效理论和收集关于直接衡量阿根廷城市实施食品分配方案的绩效的数据，朝着理解政府绩效的原因迈出了重要一步。关于政府绩效的现有文献并没有直接解决政府绩效质量为何存在差异的问题。一些作者认为政治家总是寻求建立高绩效的官僚机构，而另一些人则持相反的观点，认为政治家通过战略性地提供政府服务，优先发展客户网络或政党机器。在本项目中，首席研究员开发了一种政府绩效理论，明确将绩效质量视为一种政治选择。它满足了其他研究者所强调的需要，即确定关于我们应该期望看到更好或更差的政府绩效的条件的可检验假设。它进一步创新，不仅分析了可能陷入赞助人-客户网络的个人的行为，而且还分析了这些网络之外的人的行为，因此突出了政府绩效不佳所带来的不同人口部门的支持权衡。此外，虽然现有的文献大多只关注大选竞争，但本文的理论还考察了党内竞争（以初选形式）如何对政府绩效产生单独的影响。从经验上讲，现有文献中很少有直接衡量政府绩效的方法。在本论文中开发的理论进行了测试，在社会福利实施的阿根廷市政府绩效的质量的原始数据集。这个地方政府实践的数据集是从一个原始的问卷调查中开发出来的，问卷调查对象是三个不同省份的100多个城市的社会福利政策负责人，这些城市广泛代表了阿根廷的社会和政治状况。该研究采用了对问卷答复的统计分析，并辅以选定的案例研究，以检验政治竞争的性质与政府业绩质量之间的关系。调查表可作为在不同国家和区域收集类似数据的模板。拉丁美洲经过近20年的新自由主义改革和权力下放，地方政府在公民生活中发挥着越来越重要的作用，特别是对该区域依靠政府支助满足其许多基本需求的穷人而言。本论文的研究结果将提高我们的理解，为什么一些地方政府比别人表现得更好，从而允许更好地评估未来的权力下放浪潮在拉丁美洲和其他发展中国家的可能后果。

Why do some local government bureaucracies perform well, delivering goods and services to all citizens equally, while in other cities accessing government services is a difficult task, with the result that those with political contacts are better able to take advantage of government services than others? This project took an important step towards understanding why governments perform as they do by developing a theory of government performance and collecting data on a direct measure of that performance in the implementation of a food distribution program in Argentine cities. The existing literature on government performance has not directly addressed the question of why there is variation in the quality of government performance. Whereas some authors assume politicians always seek to create high-performing bureaucracies, others take the opposite view and assume that politicians prioritize the development of clientelist networks or party machines through the strategic provision of government services.In this project, the principal investigator developed a theory of government performance that explicitly treats the quality of performance as a political choice. It met the need, highlighted by other researchers, to identify testable hypotheses concerning the conditions under which we should expect to see better or worse government performance. It further innovates by analyzing the behavior not only of individuals potentially enmeshed in patron-client networks, but also of those outside such networks, and therefore highlights the trade-offs in support from different sectors of the population that poor government performance entails. Furthermore, whereas most existing literature focuses on general election competition only, the theory developed here also examines how intra-party competition, in the form of primary elections, may exercise a separate effect on government performance.Empirically, there are very few direct measures of government performance in the existing literature. The theory developed in the dissertation was tested on an original dataset of the quality of Argentine city government performance in social welfare implementation. This dataset of local government practices was developed from an original questionnaire administered to the head of social welfare policy in over 100 cities across three different provinces broadly representative of Argentine social and political conditions. The research employed statistical analysis of questionnaire responses, supplemented by selected case studies, to test for a relationship between the nature of political competition and the quality of government performance. The questionnaire can serve as a template for the collection of similar data in different country and regional settings. After nearly two decades of neo-liberal reform and decentralization in Latin America, local governments play an increasingly important role in the lives of citizens, especially for the region's poor who rely on government support to meet many of their basic needs. The findings of this dissertation will improve our understanding of why some local governments perform better than others and thereby allow for a better assessment of the likely consequences of future waves of decentralization in Latin America and elsewhere in the developing world.