Notes!: Eaton and Dickovick 2004

Eaton, Kent, and Tyler Dickovick. 2004. "The politics of re-centralization in Argentina and Brazil." Latin American Research Review 39(1): 90-122.

decentralization often involved giving subnational governments the power to control spending, which took a lot of power away from national-level politicians, who now want it back (91)
this has also made it more difficult for national governments to insure macroeconomic stability (91)
this article focuses on uncovering teh factors that influence the ways politicians pursue re-centralization, and their relative success or failure (92)
must remember that Brazil and Argentina are still really decentralized countries, despite this article's talk of re-centralization
four possible recentralizing factors:

presidents have heightened their control over healthcare and schools even as they haven't rolled back rearlier decentralization measures (95)
stylized review of de- and re-centralization in Arg (97) and Brazil (98)
economic crises only indirectly led to recentralization, despite the fact that we would expect presidents to take more control in a hyperinlfation crisis (99)
Arg: interestingly, de la Rua's presidency resulted in little recentralization, despite big economic crises (101)

the crisis actualy made Peronist governors even more in need of federal transfers, adn thus unwilling to give them up with dlR needed to pay creditors instead of giving money to the provinces (101-102)

in Brazil subnational governments had borrowed liek crazy for pork, expecting national government ot bail them out (102)

Cardoso changed this with Real plan
recentralization only started happening when the governors' bad habits became public, adn this issue outweighed the gains made through patronage spending

formal/decree powers (aka presidential partisan powers) were not really used to recentralize in Argentina (105), though president's personal power gave hims some leverage (106)

didn't help at all in Brazil, as constitution laid out most of the rules here (107)

Menem's power and popularity in teh party gave him a lot of control over who got nominated and elected, which helped his recentralization efforts (108-109)

but he was a lame duck after 1995, and lost a lot of this power (109)
none of this happenened in Brazil, as there is little party discipline for Cardoso, but he did have popular support which was helpful (110)

the cabinet and bureaucracy is important, hurt Menem in his second term (112-113), helped Cardoso throughout (113-114)
COnclusion

Notes!