Democracy and authoritarianism at the local and national levels

Abstract

Author of Hybrid Regimes within Democracies: Fiscal Federalism and Subnational Rentier States, a reference work on subnational democracy, the Argentine political scientist Carlos Gervasoni talks with Brazilian Nelson Rojas de Carvalho about the theme of the dossier in volume 26 of the journal Terceiro Milênio: the processes of democratization and de-democratization currently observed at the local level. In the Argentine federation, Gervasoni notes, the provinces have strong autonomy to define their own electoral rules — which helps generate significant disparities in the intensity of democracy among some of them, even though all adopt periodic elections. Is it likely that this will affect the degree of democracy at the national level? If so, how can it be measured? And what is observed in other federations, such as Brazil, Mexico, and the United States? These and other questions, such as the authoritarian trend observed in territories with rentier economies, permeate the dialogue between the two researchers. “Studying the Argentine provinces, I discovered that many are deeply rentier, but the source of their rents is not oil or mining, but fiscal federalism,” says Gervasoni, the project manager of Varieties of Democracy for South America. Check it out.