Institutional dynamics in loosely coupled federal systems: The cases of Argentina and Venezuela

Kestler, Thomas

doi:10.1080/13597566.2018.1491842

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…Displaying the incremental nature of decentralization, this followed after the 1999 Constitution abolished the Senate, and the recentralization reform had narrowly failed in a referendum in 2007. As Freeman notes a ‘strikingly similar duplication of local government unfolded under Viktor Orbán’ to be discussed below which again evidences how illiberal playbook including a subnational one travels (Dickovick and Eaton 2013 , 1459, 1462; Freeman 2020 , 44; Kestler 2018 , 635).…”

Section: Praxis Of Subnational Illiberalismmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…Mostly, such changes had across-the-board application. 4 An exception was the creation of off-budget funds under direct presidential control of Chávez (filled with oil exploitation and general tax surpluses) enabling selective distribution of revenues to be followed by punitive withholding of funding (Kestler 2018 , 534). Although also universally applied, Venezuelan government also took a radical step of funding the new deconcentrated communal councils at the expense of subnational governments (Dickovick and Eaton 2013 , 9).…”

Section: Praxis Of Subnational Illiberalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Playbook of Subnational Illiberalism: Autocrats Face the Opposition-led Local Governments

Begadze¹

2022

Hague J Rule Law

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Recognizing the growing tensions between autocrats in the center and opposition-led local governments in Hungary, Poland and Turkey since 2018–2019 local elections, the article contributes to existing literature on illiberal democracies with a subnational portion of illiberal playbook. Tactics identified through the detailed study of the European context and brief review of Latin American experience leaves us with the following categories in the playbook: abuse of (existing) supervisory and accountability mechanisms; generating of financial vulnerability; centralization (outright and indirect) and deconcentration. Each of these categories assemble various means evolving through application and reinterpretation of traditional rules pertaining to local government, as well as crisis-induced innovations. While the Polish account carries the optimism still that antecedent robust guarantees and popular support matter even when illiberals rule the center, the playbook proved successful in Hungary and Turkey. Although certain incrementalism stayed as the most vulnerable actors were the first victims of soon-to-be normalized measures, crisis in Hungary and Poland did stretch the limits to the point that ulterior motives of undermining opposition-led local governments became publicly observable. Reflecting on this phenomenon, in the end, the article poses a theoretical question whether such pretextual instrumentalization of law can itself be judicially manageable, at least in situations when clear political opponents are targeted.

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Section: Praxis Of Subnational Illiberalismmentioning

confidence: 87%

Section: Praxis Of Subnational Illiberalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Playbook of Subnational Illiberalism: Autocrats Face the Opposition-led Local Governments

Begadze¹

2022

Hague J Rule Law

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“…and in the second every ring of a segmented worm (except its frontal and rear zones) contained the same set of internal organs (Durkheim, 1926, p. 150). Possible other examples could include the following: federal states such as Switzerland, Argentina, or late Czechoslovakia (Armageon, 2000, p. 117–119; Kestler, 2018); “small‐world” networks of pen pals and other acquaintances (Milgram, 1967; Watt & Strogatz, 1998); seamen jointly operating an air carrier in the open sea from various standpoints and without much interaction or supervision (Hutchins, 1995); the rotating command of the US Navy Fleet in WWI (McCulloch, 1965); loosely coupled telephone, telegraph, and computer networks (Orton & Weick, 1990); the somatotopically distributed nervous system (Brodal, 2016, p. 331); and insects fully capable of walking due to the decentralized feedback loop regulating the locomotion of each particular leg (Cruse & Schilling, 2015). …”

Section: Disclaimer: Which Complex Systems Do Not Generally Self‐destructmentioning

confidence: 99%

Redundancy, Noisy Signaling, and Semantic inflation: Studying the Patterns of Self‐Destruction in Complex Systems

Junge

Postoutenko

2020

Syst Res Behav Sci

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Across the natural and social world, some fairly advanced and apparently robust systems destroy themselves without discernible reason, function, or purpose. Whereas such and similar cases have been discussed within specific branches of scholarships, the attempts to propose and test a general theory of self-destruction in complex systems remain, to our knowledge, a thing of the future. To move in this direction, we suggest that the conflicts between explicit stratification, thorough functional differentiation and tacit segmentation within complex systems, are likely to provoke their unintended self-annihilation. Furthermore, we hypothesize that whenever such systems collapse, it is the circular co-dependency of noisy signaling, redundancy, and semantic inflation that sets self-destructive mechanisms in motion. We illustrate our preliminary findings with examples from social, natural, and artificial life; reexamine autoimmunity as a popular model of systemic self-destruction; and indicate potential avenues of empirical research aimed at supporting, qualifying or disproving the underlying hypothesis.

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Politische Systeme

Kestler¹

2023

Einführung in Die Lateinamerikastudien

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Institutional dynamics in loosely coupled federal systems: The cases of Argentina and Venezuela

Cited by 3 publications

References 68 publications

Playbook of Subnational Illiberalism: Autocrats Face the Opposition-led Local Governments

Playbook of Subnational Illiberalism: Autocrats Face the Opposition-led Local Governments

Redundancy, Noisy Signaling, and Semantic inflation: Studying the Patterns of Self‐Destruction in Complex Systems

Politische Systeme

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