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层面社会政策和减贫的共同影响。三个核心问题激发了这项调查。首先，如何解释政府在改善弱势社会成员状况方面的地方差异？其次，省级和地方一级的政治组合在多大程度上混淆了旨在改善社会福利的制度设计？第三，选民在向多层政府要求特定商品时扮演什么角色？通过探索这些问题，拟议的项目旨在促进对次国家层面政策选择和实施的决定因素的理解。要实现这一目标，该项目需要三个主要组成部分。首先，分析探讨了国家或二线政府向直辖市分配资源的决定因素。其次，从社会政策和扶贫两个方面分析了影响市政府绩效的因素。研究的第三个组成部分侧重于个人一级的分析，包括调查选民对其社区减轻贫穷的变化的看法、对这些变化的责任归属以及庇护主义做法。推动这项研究的一个中心假设是：在州和市一级的治理中，当资源按照基于政策的逻辑而不是按照裙带关系的政党竞争逻辑分配时，最可能观察到减贫。通过超越国家一级的政策形成，拟议的研究通过丰富对民主和权力下放产生被认为有利于穷人的政策的条件的理解，具有更广泛的影响。虽然权力下放被描绘成解决发展问题的灵丹妙药，尤其是在扶贫方面，但地方一级的不民主做法可能会因政治权力下放而得到加强，从而损害公民的福利。拟议的研究将为理解不同的权力下放战略不仅在国家之间，而且在州和地方政府之间产生的广泛差异和往往令人失望的结果奠定基础。该研究还生成了新的数据集，可以为有限的次国家政策选择和绩效定量数据库做出贡献，并为学者提供有关公民对地方治理、政治问责和庇护主义的看法的新信息，他们可以利用这些信息研究与发展中国家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.