The Political Autonomy of Subnational Executives: Buenos Aires between 1991–1999 and 2002–2007

Abstract

The concept under analysis in this work is the subnational political autonomy of governors in federal countries. The research question is: What factors favor the political autonomy of subnational executives? The argument that guides this research is that there are six factors that favor the political autonomy of subnational executives: 1) the institutional design of the province; 2) the territorial political capital; 3) the fiscal resources of the province; 4) the interference of the mayors and the president in the provincial party; 5) the political ambition of the governor; 6) the political ambition of the president. The hypothesis of this work is that the interaction between these factors modifies the political autonomy of governors: the more factors they have in their favor, the greater their capacity to carry out an autonomous government agenda. The cases of the governors of Buenos Aires, Eduardo Duhalde and Felipe Solá, are analyzed.