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Decentralization of Water Service Delivery in Mexico: The Effects of Party Politics, Intergovernmental Dynamics, and Municipal Capacity

Abstract

This project examines the impact of intergovernmental relations and municipal capacity on the process of decentralization of water services through a subnational examination of water service delivery in central Mexico. Conventional thinking is that local governments must have already developed an institutional and administrative capacity in order to provide adequate public services. Others argue that capacities will be developed through the process of giving local governments authority over service provision. Additionally the unique political history of Mexico, a one-party dominant federal government until 2000, provides an interesting opportunity to examine the effects of intergovernmental relations on the provision of public services. Mexico's decentralization reforms have been both hailed as a move in the right direction by international lending institutions and criticized by academics and political observers as an attempt by the historically centralized government to retain control by decentralizing without delegating the necessary authority. The primary research question of this study is: how do intergovernmental relations and municipal capacity influence the process of decentralizing water services, the form that decentralization takes, and the quality of the services provided? Related to this question is whether local governments need to have already developed capacity in order to adequately provide public services or whether this capacity can be acquired "on the job", what impacts political affiliations at the local and state level make, and how various federal and state institutions related to water have shaped the process of decentralization and ultimately the quality and coverage of local water services. These questions and considerations will be addressed through an examination of water services at the municipal and state level in the Mexican states of Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí, and Zacatecas, Mexico.

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