The Challenges of Implementing Merit-Based Personnel Policies in Latin America: Mexico's Civil Service Reform Experience

Implementation of Merit Based Personnel Policies (MBPP) continues to be a highly problematic endeavour in Latin American countries. According to the literature, this is usually caused by the politico-administrative inheritances that characterize this region, such as patronage, corruption, centralism...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of comparative policy analysis 2011-02, Vol.13 (1), p.51-73
Main Author: Dussauge Laguna, Mauricio I.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accountability
Centralization
Civil servants
Civil service
Corruption
Government employees
Latin America
Mexico
Patronage
Personnel policies
Policy implementation
Public administration
Public servants
Reform
Reforms
Studies
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Summary:Implementation of Merit Based Personnel Policies (MBPP) continues to be a highly problematic endeavour in Latin American countries. According to the literature, this is usually caused by the politico-administrative inheritances that characterize this region, such as patronage, corruption, centralism and the lack of effective accountability mechanisms. By looking at Mexico's recent Civil Service reform process, this article shows that the development of new MBPP has been certainly constrained by some of those factors. However, the article also shows that a number of issues faced during the Mexican reform process can be linked to "simpler" issues of policy design and implementation. The article thus concludes that while "patronage", "amiguismo", illegality, and other traditional features of Latin American (and Mexican) administrative systems remain a central impediment for developing well-functioning MBPP, academics and practitioners should probably pay more attention to policy design issues (e.g. policy co-ordination; time and resources availability; institutional framework design), which contribute to better explaining and understanding why MBPP implementation remains such a challenging task in this region.
ISSN:1387-6988
1572-5448
DOI:10.1080/13876988.2011.538541