Doctoral Dissertation Research Political Science: Political Competition and Public Good Provision in Multi-Tier Systems of Governance: Social Policy and Poverty Reduction in Mexico

该项目分析了政治庇护主义和政党竞争对墨西哥次国家一级社会政策和减贫的联合影响。三个核心问题激发了这项调查。首先，如何解释政府在改善社会弱势成员状况方面的表现在国家以下一级的差异？其次，省级和地方一级的政治格局在多大程度上混淆了旨在改善社会福利的制度设计？第三，选民在要求多层次政府提供特定商品时扮演什么角色？通过探讨这些问题，拟议的项目旨在增进对国家以下一级政策选择和执行的决定因素的了解。 为实现这一目标，该项目包括三个主要组成部分。首先，分析探讨了州或二级政府向市政府分配资源的决定因素。其次，本研究分析了影响市政府在社会政策和扶贫方面绩效的因素。研究的第三个组成部分侧重于个人一级的分析，调查选民对其社区减贫方面的变化、这些变化的责任归属以及客户做法的看法。一个核心假设推动了这项研究：在州和市两级的施政中，如果按照基于政策而不是基于客户的政党竞争的逻辑分配资源，就最有可能实现减贫，通过超越国家一级的政策制定，拟议的研究通过丰富对民主和权力下放产生政策的条件的理解，具有更广泛的影响对穷人有益。虽然权力下放被描绘成解决发展问题、特别是减轻贫穷问题的灵丹妙药，但政治权力下放可能会强化国家以下一级的不民主做法，从而损害公民的福利。拟议的研究将奠定一个基础，以了解不同的权力下放战略不仅在各国，而且在州和地方政府之间产生的差异很大而且往往令人失望的结果。该研究还产生了新的数据集，可以有助于有限的量化数据库对地方国家政策的选择和性能，并为学者提供新的信息，公民对地方治理，政治问责制和裙带关系的看法，他们可以用来研究与发展中国家的经济发展有关的其他问题。

The project analyzes the joint effect of political clientelism and party competition on social policy and poverty reduction at the sub-national level in Mexico. Three central questions motivate this investigation. First, what explains sub-national variation in government performance in improving the conditions of the less advantaged members of society? Second, to what extent do political constellations at the provincial and local levels confound institutional designs intended to improve social welfare? And third, what role do voters play in demanding specific goods from multi-tiered governments? By exploring these questions, the proposed project intends to advance the understanding of the determinants of policy choice and implementation at the sub-national level. To accomplish this, the project entails three major components. First, the analysis explores the determinants of resource allocation by state or second-tier governments to municipalities. Second, the research analyzes the factors affecting municipal government performance with respect to social policy and poverty alleviation. The third component of the research focuses upon the individual level of analysis and entails a survey of voter perceptions regarding changes in poverty alleviation in their communities, attribution of responsibility for those changes, and clientelistic practices. One central hypothesis drives this research: poverty reduction is most likely to be observed when resources are allocated in accordance with the logic of policy-based rather than clientelistic party competition, both at the state and municipal levels of governance.By looking beyond policy formation at the national level, the proposed research has broader impacts by enriching the understanding of the conditions under which democracy and decentralization yield policies considered to be beneficial for the poor. Whereas decentralization has been portrayed as a panacea for the problems of development, especially for poverty alleviation, undemocratic practices at the sub-national level may be reinforced by political decentralization, thus undermining the welfare of citizens. The proposed research will establish a basis for understanding the widely varying and often disappointing results that different strategies of decentralization have yielded not only across countries but across state and local governments. The research also generates new datasets that can contribute to the limited pool of quantitative data on sub-national policy choice and performance and provide scholars with new information about citizen perceptions of local governance, political accountability, and clientelism that they can use to study other questions related to economic development in the developing world.