Public Management Policy Change: a Comparative Study of Civil Service Reform in Mexico and Guatemala

Abstract

This dissertation examines two contemporary attempts at changing civil service policy in Mexico and Guatemala. The purpose of this study is to understand the factors that determine policy change and stability in the public management policy domain. Drawing from the public policy and public management literature, this study uses an analytical framework based on Kingdon (1984) and Baumgartner and Jones (1993) to account for policy change and stability. This research presents two narrative accounts of the progression of events of two initiatives to enact a new civil service law in Mexico and Guatemala. Through within-case and cross-case analyses, this research reveals the institutional configurations that structured the policy processes in both episodes. Policy venues, policy communities, and consolidated political parties play key roles in fostering policy change. The study also reveals the roles and interactions of groups and individuals in pursuit of their policy objectives. The activities of policy entrepreneurs and their taking advantage of policy windows appear particularly relevant in advancing policy change. Based on this analysis, two explanations for the episodes' progression and outcomes are presented, pointing to the determinants of policy change and stability. The comparative analysis of the episodes provides further insights into the relative significance of institutions and actors in different country contexts. Given the lack of a theoretical orientation in the study of policy processes in Latin America, this research contributes to fill that gap by producing a theoretically informed analysis of policy-making in the region. Beyond the case findings, this dissertation provides an assessment of the ability of two well-established policy theories to explain policy-making in the Latin American context. This study provides useful lessons for policy-makers attempting policy change, and contributes to advance scholarly debates on the suitability of existing theories of the policy process in emerging-democracy contexts.