IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/wdevel/v82y2016icp1-13.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effect of State–Local Complementarity and Local Governance on Development: A Comparative Analysis from Post-War Guatemala

Author

Listed:
  • Klick, Matthew T.

Abstract

What accounts for variation in human development levels across similar communities? Why, for example, have some equally poor, indigenous, highland communities in Guatemala made advances in health and education while others have stagnated or regressed? This paper argues that, contrary to an emerging recognition of the role of “ordinary citizens” in peacebuilding or crime reduction, human development requires the complementarity of non-state leaders and government resources. Results are demonstrated through a quantitative analysis of all of Guatemala’s 334 municipalities, combined with a qualitative analysis, including over 250 key informant interviews and focus group participants from four paired communities throughout the Western Highlands, which effectively traces the implementation of a widely acclaimed government anti-hunger program. This paper underscores the variability in local governance present across short distances in Guatemala, with dramatic influence on local development outcomes. In most communities, the role of traditional leaders and other non-state actors is increasingly crowded out by political conflicts exacerbated by growing, and shifting political party and religious affiliations. In these instances, development governance has broken down and development resources are distributed along locally derived lines of patronage versus need. Elsewhere, however, where state actors have identified and incorporated the legitimacy, informal authority, and networks of traditional leaders at the village level, the implementation of the anti-hunger program is visibly more effective. The role of local, informal leaders is pivotal in legitimizing the program, mobilizing citizen participation, and overseeing more equitable distribution of key resources. The paper concludes with an exploration of what explains variation in the quality of local governance across space and its implications for development practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Klick, Matthew T., 2016. "The Effect of State–Local Complementarity and Local Governance on Development: A Comparative Analysis from Post-War Guatemala," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 1-13.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:82:y:2016:i:c:p:1-13
    DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.01.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16000036
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.01.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rao, Vijayendra & Ananthpur, Kripa & Malik, Kabir, 2017. "The Anatomy of Failure: An Ethnography of a Randomized Trial to Deepen Democracy in Rural India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 481-497.
    2. Nicola Gennaioli & Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 2013. "Human Capital and Regional Development," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(1), pages 105-164.
    3. Tsai, Lily L., 2007. "Solidary Groups, Informal Accountability, and Local Public Goods Provision in Rural China," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 101(2), pages 355-372, May.
    4. Oliver Kaplan, 2013. "Protecting civilians in civil war," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 50(3), pages 351-367, May.
    5. ., 2014. "Introduction to Part III," Chapters, in: Common Innovation, chapter 15, pages 133-134, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Nobes, Christopher, 2014. "Accounting: A Very Short Introduction," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199684311.
    7. Avdeenko, Alexandra & Gilligan, Michael J., 2015. "International Interventions to Build Social Capital: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Sudan," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 109(3), pages 427-449, August.
    8. Kripa Ananth Pur & Mick Moore, 2010. "Ambiguous Institutions: Traditional Governance and Local Democracy in Rural South India," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(4), pages 603-623.
    9. Mark P. Jones, 2011. "Weakly Institutionalized Party Systems and Presidential Democracy: Evidence from Guatemala," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 14(4), pages 3-30, December.
    10. Fumihiko Saito, 2008. "Decentralization and Local Governance: Introduction and Overview," Springer Books, in: Fumihiko Saito (ed.), Foundations for Local Governance, chapter 1, pages 1-24, Springer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carla Canelas & Rachel M. Gisselquist, 2018. "Human capital, labour market outcomes, and horizontal inequality in Guatemala," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(3), pages 378-397, July.
    2. Carla Canelas & Rachel M. Gisselquist, 2017. "Human capital, labour market outcomes, and horizontal inequality in Guatemala," WIDER Working Paper Series 091, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Ramprasad, Vijay, 2021. "Institutional benefit pathways in development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jonathan Craft & John Halligan, 2017. "Assessing 30 years of Westminster policy advisory system experience," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 50(1), pages 47-62, March.
    2. Scott Scheall, 2016. "A brief note concerning Hayek’s non-standard conception of knowledge," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 29(2), pages 205-210, June.
    3. Peng, Donna & Poudineh, Rahmatallah, 2017. "An appraisal of investment vehicles in the Tanzania's electricity sector," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 51-68.
    4. Eckhard Hein, 2017. "Stagnation policy in the Eurozone and economic policy alternatives," FMM Working Paper 05-2017, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    5. Stefano AMELIO, 2016. "The Connection between IAS/IFRS and Social Responsibility," Management Dynamics in the Knowledge Economy, College of Management, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, vol. 4(1), pages 7-30, March.
    6. Johannes Blum & Klaus Gründler, 2020. "Political Stability and Economic Prosperity: Are Coups Bad for Growth?," CESifo Working Paper Series 8317, CESifo.
    7. Paolo Di Caro & Roberta Arbolino & Ugo Marani, 2018. "A note on the effects of human capital policies in Italy during the Great Recession," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 38(3), pages 1302-1312.
    8. Castelló-Climent, Amparo & Mukhopadhyay, Abhiroop, 2013. "Mass education or a minority well educated elite in the process of growth: The case of India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 303-320.
    9. Shi, Wei & Tang, Yinuo, 2015. "Cultural similarity as in-group favoritism: The impact of religious and ethnic similarities on alliance formation and announcement returns," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 32-46.
    10. Qing Li & Long Hai Vo, 2021. "Intangible Capital and Innovation: An Empirical Analysis of Vietnamese Enterprises," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 21-02, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    11. Uwe Sunde & Thomas Dohmen & Benjamin Enke & Armin Falkbriq & David Huffman & Gerrit Meyerheim, 2022. "Patience and Comparative Development," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(5), pages 2806-2840.
    12. Bartels, Charlotte & Jäger, Simon & Obergruber, Natalie, 2020. "Long-Term Effects of Equal Sharing: Evidence from Inheritance Rules for Land," IZA Discussion Papers 13665, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Mikaela Backman & Charlie Karlsson, 2016. "Determinants of self-employment among commuters and non-commuters," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95(4), pages 755-774, November.
    14. Francisco Queiró, 2022. "Entrepreneurial Human Capital and Firm Dynamics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(4), pages 2061-2100.
    15. He, Quqiong & Pan, Ying & Sarangi, Sudipta, 2018. "Lineage-based heterogeneity and cooperative behavior in rural China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 248-269.
    16. Luis Medrano-Adán & Vicente Salas-Fumás & J. Sanchez-Asin, 2015. "Heterogeneous entrepreneurs from occupational choices in economies with minimum wages," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 597-619, March.
    17. Nino Kokashvili & Irakli Barbakadze & Ketevani Kapanadze, 2017. "How Participating In The Shadow Economy Affects The Growth Of Latvian Firms," University of Tartu - Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Working Paper Series 101, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu (Estonia).
    18. Fan, Xiaomin & Xu, Yingzhi, 2023. "Does high-speed railway promote urban innovation? Evidence from China," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    19. Hong Sun & Valentina Hartarska & Lezhu Zhang & Denis Nadolnyak, 2018. "The Influence of Social Capital on Farm Household’s Borrowing Behavior in Rural China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-20, November.
    20. Anke Hoeffler & Patricia Justino, 2024. "Aid and fragile states," Chapters, in: Raj M. Desai & Shantayanan Devarajan & Jennifer L. Tobin (ed.), Handbook of Aid and Development, chapter 14, pages 225-246, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:82:y:2016:i:c:p:1-13. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.