Where Power Resides: Institutional and Political Determinants of Local Power in Argentina and Brazil.

In recent decades, at the same time that the globalization movement has pushed nation-states toward economic and political integration, a parallel ?localization? movement is pulling nation-states issues and agendas toward the local level. As the world integrates, an increasing decentralization of responsibilities, money, and authority is also taking place. However, similar decentralization policies have led to radically different outcomes in the amount of power devolved to local governments, as evidenced in two of the largest Latin American countries, Argentina and Brazil. Existing theories, based on the type of political party systems or the constitutional type of governments, cannot account for such differences. Drawing from a sequential theory of decentralization, this paper traces the processes of political, fiscal, and administrative decentralization in Argentina and Brazil from the late 1970s to the present and argues that the timing of different types of decentralization reforms and the type of coalitions that pushed forward those policy changes are the main determinants of the resulting divergent empowerment of local governments and actors. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]