How Can We Foster the Transformations the Region Sorely Needs? ECLAC’s New Document Proposes Tools for Growing in a Sustained Way and Building More Just and Inclusive Societies

The publication addresses the trap of low institutional capacity and ineffective governance in which Latin America and the Caribbean is caught.

In the framework of the ninth meeting of the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development, which is taking place this week in Santiago, Chile, the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, presented a document entitled Gobernanza endógena: teoría, datos y herramientas para salir de la trampa de gobernanza poco efectiva en América Latina (Endogenous Governance: Theory, Data and Tools for Escaping the Trap of Ineffective Governance in Latin America).

The publication addresses one of the development traps in which the region is mired - the trap of low institutional capacity and ineffective governance - and how to implement public policies that can be maintained over time and enable sustained growth and quality job creation, in order to build more just and inclusive societies.

The document proposes rethinking governance as a phenomenon that is produced and reproduced in the public policy cycle itself. "Ineffective governance" is presented as a structuring factor that conditions the viability of policies and helps explain why many of them fail even when the diagnoses are solid. In addition, it proposes moving towards an approach of endogenous governance, which conceives of governance as not just a structural context that conditions public action, but also as a dimension that can be shaped by the very design and implementation of policies.

The presentation was led by ECLAC's Executive Secretary, accompanied by Andrés Boeninger, Economic Affairs Officer in the Office of the Executive Secretary and co-author of the document. Subsequently, a panel discussion was held with prominent experts and United Nations officials including Michelle Muschett, Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); Gerardo Munck, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California; and Conrado Ramos Larraburu, Secretary-General of the Latin American Center for Development Administration (CLAD).

"The document we are presenting today is related to one of ECLAC's central concerns: moving from the assessment of 'what to do' towards the 'hows' of development. Meaning, how to design and implement transformative public policies that are not only technically solid but also viable in complex political and institutional contexts. In that vein, this study seeks to contribute a perspective that understands governance to be an essential part of the very process of policy, and it proposes tools for sustaining transformations in the region," José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs indicated in his presentation.

"The trap of ineffective governance is a political-institutional configuration that reduces the State's capacity for steering, implementing, coordinating and sustaining transformative public policies. This has very concrete consequences for government action and for the effectiveness of policies and the management of transformations. That is why this document proposes treating governance not as a problem that appears after policies are designed, but rather as a dimension that must be in the design from the start. In other words: governance stops being a 'backdrop' and becomes an essential part of the public policy problem. And that opens the door to different solutions and to a shift in the way we think about and work on public policy discussion and design," the senior United Nations official explained.

ECLAC's Executive Secretary added that what this document is proposing is a theoretical shift, which consists of moving from simply asking ourselves why governance is weak to analyzing the political-institutional context and, based on comprehension of that context, asking ourselves how we can design policies that will not fail, given the context. "Which is to say, this is about making the analysis of governance endogenous when we design policies and processes for managing transformations," he stated.

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