The Quest for Good Governance: Uruguay’s Shift from Clientelism

Abstract

Uruguay improved its levels of universalism in the last fifteen years. This improvement is due to a prolonged process of transformation in Uruguayan politics from competitive particularism to an open access regime. We claim that the change in the way that parties compete for votes - from clientelistic to programmatic strategy – is the cause of this transformation. In order to provide descriptive evidence of the main features of this governance regime transformation, this paper traces the process of institutional reforms and elite behavioral changes that lead to that outcome, and proposes an analytic framework to explain it.

Health systems governance: the missing links

“…However, some groups-the elites-have more influence over the policy and reform processes. Attention needs to be paid to how social groups can build coalition with elites, whether because they share preferences, 25 or by changing their incentives. 26 Effective pressure groups have also been built on coalitions between the middle class and the poorest groups, or between social movements and experts.…”

Anti-corruption and transparency in civil society organisations in Uruguay: The challenges of fostering an agenda when the attention is elsewhere

“…The explanations that have been proposed to account for the low corruption levels usually combine the strength of the political institutions, the respect of the rule of law and freedom of the press, the low potential rents due to the lack of natural resources and the passage from an equilibrium of party competition based on patronage to a programmatic equilibrium in the last decades, in a general context where corruption was not considered endemic (Buquet & Piñeiro, 2016;Martini, 2016;Vaz Mondo, 2011).…”

“…However, the relatively exceptional situation of the country in these aspects has a long history and for a long time coexisted with clientelist practices. Buquet and Piñeiro (2016) offer a compelling explanation to understand the transition from a clientelist to a universalistic system of public resources allocation. Their account pays special attention to the historical centrality of the party system in Uruguayan history (Caetano et al, 1987).…”

“…The co-participation of the ruling and the opposition party in the different public bodies became an important feature of Uruguayan democracy and was legally ensured by the need of legislative supermajorities to appoint authorities (in the Justice department, public administration, electoral justice, public companies, etc.) (Buquet & Piñeiro, 2016).…”

“…The 1973-1985 dictatorship interrupted political competition, but when democracy was regained the system moved towards a new equilibrium of political competition in which the two traditional parties assumed a market-oriented programmatic offer that aimed to control and reduce the practices that were common in the previous equilibrium, and the Frente Amplio took the left side of the political spectrum (Bidegain, Freigedo, & Zurbriggen, 2021). The result of the new equilibrium was a system that moved from particularism to universalism in public resources allocation (Buquet & Piñeiro, 2016).…”