Reflections on Two Decades (Afonso et al.)

Reflections on two decades of social-spending decentralization by José R. Afonso, Sulamis Dain, Vivian Almeida, Kleber Castro and Ana Cecília Faveret in the book Decentralization  and Reform in Latin America. “Several Latin American countries have been pursuing an intensive process of fiscal decentralization over the last two decades; and, at the same time, almost the entire region has made changes to its social policies. These two processes reflect, first, the desire to generate allocation efficiency gains, which have an impact on expanding the decision-making, fiscal, and financial autonomy of local government; and, second, the desire to strengthen democracy. The latter has had repercussions on social policy actions and services, generating broader coverage and higher monetary benefits, together with improved access, expansion of coverage, and the decentralization of jurisdictions and resourced for service provision.”