Patricio Aroca, Pedro Fierro (p)

Cristina García-Nicolás

Distributive politics encompasses the allocation of goods and services and has been widely studied in political science, economics, geography, and regional science. Although resource allocation can be considered the central element of the policy, questions remain. One of those questions is related to understanding the role of different actors in the assignment of non-programmatic programs, a highly complex process. This issue has become important in Latin America, especially in the wake of clientelism, a particular aspect of distributive politics. This work aims to explore the role of electoral and political factors in the allocation of public goods in Chile by identifying the agents i.e., gatekeepers, that have the greatest impact in the process.

To do so we analyse the distribution of two non-programmatic programs: the Neighbourhood Improvement Program (PMB) and the Urban Improvement Program (PMU) and contrast the proposed hypotheses by using spatial econometrics techniques. Specifically, we propose a political interpretation for W that enables us to identify the most decisive agent in the allocation of non-programmatic funds earmarked at the municipal level. The spatial analysis measurement of interaction is approximated through a neighbourhood matrix. If we define this “closeness” as belonging to a senatorial constituency, we can distinguish between direct (municipal level) and indirect (senatorial constituency level) allocation.

Our results show that most municipal funds are due to an indirect effect, meaning senators (not mayors) have the greatest influence in the process. The results are consistent with and validate the seminal Valenzuela’s (1977) thesis. Although a mayor’s political ideology does impact the territorial allocation of these programs via an alignment effect, the territorial unit that most explains the distribution is the senatorial constituency.

These results are interesting as Chile is a unitary state with a presidential system. However, senators fill both a legislative and political role, and they are the regional officials that receive the most votes after the president. The allocation of goods and services seems to be determined by the subnational authorities with the greatest political capital, and not those “closest” to the territory.

The political interpretation of W and the incorporation of spatial analysis into the model represent a twofold contribution to the literature on distributive politics and the identification of the gatekeepers in the territorial allocation of public funds in Chile.

Pui Hang Wong (p), María Antonieta Collazos-Ortiz

Pedro Fierro

Decades of research on political budget cycles (PBCs) has established that politicians tend to behave opportunistically by promoting expansionary fiscal policies before elections in order to advance their political careers. While existing evidence of PBCs is fixated on the national-level, subnational-level analysis remains scant and limited. This article studies whether resource rents fuel political budget cycles (PBCs) in Colombia at the subnational level. In particular, it examines whether a fiscal reform, which redistributes royalty revenue between subnational governments, limits the negative development impacts of resource rents and PBCs. Using municipal-level data and system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation method to account for potential endogeneity, we found that municipalities invested in health and education according to the size of the resource rents they received. We also found that the fiscal policy reform in Colombia made municipalities’ decisions about investment in human capital less reliant on resource revenue, especially for producer municipalities, as their ability to finance electoral transfers towards sectors visible to voters was restricted by the new policy. Our study contributes to the literature in two ways. Firstly, in stark contrast to research in resource curse, which usually relates resource abundance to all forms of economic pathologies and under-development, we find that resource rents are associated with higher levels of investment in human capital in producer municipalities. Secondly, relatively few studies have examined PBCs and resource rents in parallel at the subnational level. Our study advances this research agenda using municipality-level data in Colombia. The subnational level analysis may explain why previously research that employed a national-level design fails to uncover the effect of resource rents on PBCs.

Jinhwan Oh (p)

Pui Hang Wong

Arsenic is a serious problem harming regional development in Cambodia, particularly in Greater Mekong Region. To implement the Arsenic mitigation activities, the Government of Cambodia established the Arsenic Inter-ministerial Sub Committee (AISC) in 2002, which consists of representatives from 5 ministries which have responsibilities for water - Ministry of Rural Development (MRD), Ministry of Water Resource and Meteorology (MOWRAM), Ministry of Health (MoH), Ministry of Mines and Energy
(MIME), and Ministry of Environment (MoE), chaired by MRD with a sub-secretariat team (staff of DRWS and DRHC). However, the committee has not been working well due to lack of coordination between the ministries, and this study deals with current challenges as well as the way forward. Game theoritic methods as well as some empirical analyses will provided to derive policy implications.

Cristina García-Nicolás (p), Encarnación Murillo-García

Jinhwan Oh

The Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR, acronym in Spanish), approved on 27 April 2021, contemplates four axes: ecological transition, digital transformation, gender equality, and social and territorial cohesion. These are cross-cutting and interrelated axes linked to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the last of which is linked to Policy Objective 4 for the 2021-2027 programming period: "A more social Europe through the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights".
Cohesion is addressed in a cross-cutting manner, including measures against depopulation and the demographic challenge, strengthening the Welfare State, improving the education system and vocational training, as well as applying labour market access policies and promoting lifelong learning for workers.
In the case of Spain, the bulk of PRTR funding comes from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism (RRM) and the REACT-EU initiative. The former is a targeted instrument linked to the implementation of milestones and reforms, while REACT-EU seeks to offset the short-term economic impact of the pandemic. A high percentage of the European funds is distributed and managed by the Autonomous Communities (ACs) in a practical application of the principle of co-governance. In the case of the REACT-EU initiative, the distribution is done through the Operational Programmes of the European Social Fund and the European Regional Development Fund, using GDP, total unemployment, and youth unemployment as the main criteria. As regards the RRM, the allocation of funds to the ACs is more complex, since the criteria are determined by sectoral commissions which deal with each of the lever policies included in the PRTR.
Bearing in mind the context described above, this paper aims to analyse -after two years of the Plan's development- what contributions have been made in terms of both milestones and reforms in relation to cohesion, as well as the role of the Autonomous Communities in the distribution and management of Next Generation funds. This application of inclusive governance will not only have an impact on social cohesion, but also on territorial cohesion, given that not all regions have the same socio-economic situation, nor do they all have a similar capacity to absorb European funds.