STATE FORMATION AND BUREAUCRATIZATION IN ARGENTINA AND BRAZIL

State formation and state capacity are two sides of the same coin. In other words, how a state is formed will condition its capacities. Therefore, a few discussion of the formation of the state in Latin America is in order. The research agenda on state formation and state capability was first advanced by Tilly (1981; 1985; 1996), who investigates the relation between war, taxation, and the centralization of power in Europe. His argument is that the instruments used for the preparation of wars produces not only centralization of power but also capabilities, in particular the capacity to levy and collect taxes, which in turn requires the building of a bureaucratic machine. The different trajectories taken by countries (more or less resources, greater or lesser popular or oligarchic resistance, forms of organized violence, etc.) explain the variations in autonomy and capacity among states.

Although Tilly (1996) warns that his theory is applicable only to developed countries, Centeno (1997) and Enriquez and Centeno (2012) tested it on Latin American states. They acknowledge the existence of weak states in the region was explained by low taxation and low coercive capability. The financing of Latin American countries has been historically through royalties, tariffs, foreign loans, and the printing of money. Although wars have taken place in the region, they were not interstate or total wars, as was the case in Europe. Centeno (1997) suggests a validation of Tilly’s theory for Latin America, where the taxation-coercion circuit was less intensive than in Europe, thus generating weaker states. In certain

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countries such as Brazil, Centeno (1997) shows that war efforts helped to create relatively strong states pushed by domestic military industrial production. He also shows that the winners of the 1870s war – Brazil and Argentina – saw an increase in the size of their governments. In other words, Centeno argues that war efforts were not enough to reduce the relative weakness of countries in Latin America.

Historical factors became obstacles to the development of a causal relationship between war, state formation, and state capacity.The lower level of taxation and coercion generated weaker states and therefore weaker bureaucracies. In short, in Latin America the state survived, but did not prosper or build capacities. This explains the late bureaucratization in the region.

If on the one hand state bureaucracies were established in most European countries in the late nineteenth century to collect taxes in order to finance wars, on the other hand different patterns of bureaucratic rationalization emerged (Silberman, 1993). Equally different were the various forms of rationalization of the state itself, as well as the relationships between the states and their societies.

If traditional authority was no longer the dominant modus operandi, this did not mean that (i) bureaucratic rationalization followed a single path, as expected by Weber; or that (ii) the relationship between state and society based on personal connections were abolished altogether, even in countries where democratic rules were already institutionalized and political parties consolidated.

Silberman’s (1993) contribution is seminal. He uses the rational choice per-spective to identify the variable that determined the different types of bureaucra-tization throughout the nineteenth century to explain the two rationalization pat-terns. His objective is to understand why one type of bureaucracy arose, which he calls professional or a professionally oriented rationalization, with more generalist bureaucrats than experts, and another, which he calls organizational or organiza-tional ly oriented raorganiza-tionalization, in which specialization is more likely to prevail.

He also seeks to understand what kind of problem in state organization each type of rationalization addressed, why bureaucratization took different paths, and what the explanatory variables were. According to Silberman (1993), this variable was related to the level of uncertainty faced by governments when ensuring their per-manence in power or when dealing with succession. The two trajectories responded to different political contexts: one, marked by high uncertainty, generated the

Bureaucratic capacity in Brazil and Argentina

organizational bureaucracy; and the other, marked by low uncertainty, generated the professional bureaucracy.

The review above forms the basis for a deeper investigation into the bureau-cratization processes in Argentina and Brazil that seeks (i) to identify similarities and differences between the two countries; (ii) to determine whether trajectories can explain the subsequent different decisions concerning how the bureaucratic system should work; and (iii) to determine why, if both countries adopted polit-ical-partisan-technocratic criteria for the recruitment of its bureaucracy, Brazil has chosen to alter its civil service system after redemocratization while Argentina maintained its traditional model. The question is whether different bureaucratic systems in two countries with similar development and political agendas can be explained by different political motivations triggered by redemocratization. The literature traditionally analyses the bureaucracy in the two countries broadly as rampant territories of patronage, paternalism, clientelism, and personalism, disre-garding the political dimensions behind these choices, and the existence of numer-ous enclaves of bureaucratic excellence in organizations where merit and compe-tence have prevailed.²

This section is based on secondary data and draws on the literature that compares the two countries and on the literature on each country separately. As regards comparative analysis, Sikkink (1991) and Grindle (2012) stand out. The former focuses on the influence of organizational structures on developmental policies, as implemented by the Juscelino Kubitschek (JK) and Arturo Frondizi administrations in the late 1950s. The latter seeks to understand what enabled the reforms that led to the creation of a bureaucratic body whose members were selected more on the basis of merit than of patronage, and particularly the strategies adopted by reformists and the motivation of political actors in favor of institutionalized public employment systems. Both authors highlight the importance of legacies from the past and conclude that institutions created during the government of Getulio Vargas placed Brazil in a more advantageous position than Argentina with regard to institutionalizing the bureaucratic system. One of the points highlighted by Sikkink (1991) is that during the period she considers,

2 In the Brazilian case, Schneider (1991), Sikkink (1991), and Evans (1992; 1995) are exceptions to this view.

STATE CAPACITIES AND DEVELOPMENT IN EMERGING COUNTRIES Bureaucratic capacity in Brazil and Argentina

3 See also Evans (1992), Santos (1979), and Schneider (1991).

4 Later, the US Ponto IV program continued to support EBAP and public administration schools at the Federal Universities of Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul.

in both countries patronage and meritocracy coexisted as rationales. According to her, what distinguished the countries was the existence of what she called a small

“island” sector in Brazil used by JK to formulate and implement his economic policy.³ The staffing process of this bureaucracy was not subject to political pressures, but was based on merit, level of college education, and technical skills.

The core of Sikkink’s (1991) evaluation of the positive results of JK’s development policy and the difficulties faced by Frondizi rests on the training and qualifications of civil servants. Unlike most studies by Brazilian authors, Sikkink (1991) not only notes the importance of the Department for Public Service Administration (Departamento Administrativo do Serviço Público, DASP) but also highlights the fact that the training of technical staff was carried out by the Brazilian School of Public Administration (Escola Brasileira de Administração Pública, EBAP) established in 1952 within the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) to provide undergraduate and graduate public administration courses, a task that the DASP was not up to. For four years the EBAP relied on technical and financial assistance from the US government, which included the visits of experts in public administration and scholarships for Brazilian academics to study in the United States.⁴ Argentina opened a college for civil servants in 1957, the Higher Institute for Public Administration, (Instituto Superior de La Administración Pública, ISAP), but it was never as dynamic as that of Brazil. Vargas’s legacy in organizational building included the creation of several federal state-owned companies such as Companhia Siderurgica Nacional (CSN), the National Economic Development Bank (BNDE) and the oil company, Petrobras. These remained the backbone of an insulated bureaucracy, while many of the organizations created by Perón were abolished after his fall. The Brazilian institutional architecture endured as a basis not only for development programs during the JK period, but also for subsequent democratic and authoritarian governments. Sikkink (1991) concludes that the conditions enabling the existence of solid and lasting specialized institutions and state-owned companies relatively insulated from the political game and strengthened by recruitment, training, and promotion processes based on merit

Bureaucratic capacity in Brazil and Argentina

(such that qualified personnel were retained), made a significant contribution to the success of development policies in Brazil.

Grindle (2012) discusses institutions ruled by patronage in six developed countries and in four Latin American countries, including Argentina and Brazil.

She points out that in many countries in Latin America legal requirements for a civil servant career have existed, most prominently the passing of competitive entrance examinations, have existed since the beginning of the twentieth century.

Civil servants, however, continued to be hired by other – although not illegal – means: work contracts were ruled by the CLT labour law, which did not mandate entrance tests. The prevalence of forms of patronage in Latin America is explained by Grindle as a remnant of the colonial past. Spain and Portugal transferred their practices of civil service recruitment to their colonies, conditional on criteria that included race and religion, but not necessarily skill, even though control over the colony was weaker in Brazil than in Spanish America. From the mid-twentieth century on, however, Brazil and Argentina were able to rely on relatively strong states, capable of generating industrialization strategies, providing some social services, and consolidating their national identities. Grindle’s contribution is to demonstrate, as does Sikkink (1991), how the legacy from the past has influenced subsequent reforms, but also why reforms that sought to minimize patronage occurred in some countries but not in others. What Grindle notes in relation to Brazil and Argentina was that reformist waves always occurred more strongly in Brazil than in Argentina.

If we agree with these analyses, i.e. that the past explains the present, how should we interpret them in the light of Silberman’s thesis that different forms of bureaucratization were the result of rational choices by politicians? Weberian-molded bureaucracies were built in Argentina and Brazil during the 1950s, when both countries were under authoritarian regimes. This runs counter Silberman’s argument of electoral uncertainty. The challenge remains, however, of how to explain the political motivation and the rationale of why a Weberian bureaucracy was built in Brazil and not in Argentina after redemocratization. If the answer partly lies in their trajectories, this concept alone does not fully explain political decisions taken at the same critical moment, i.e. during redemocratization. My argument is that the difference between Brazil and Argentina is a result of decisions

STATE CAPACITIES AND DEVELOPMENT IN EMERGING COUNTRIES Bureaucratic capacity in Brazil and Argentina

deriving from distinct redemocratization agendas and is not only a result of past trajectories.

As shown by Hagopian (1992), Kinzo (2001), and Souza (1997), the main agenda in Brazil was the building of democratic institutions. Furthermore, the introduction of a competitive entrance examination for public service served to break patronage and enforce the requirements of an advanced democracy. These ideals were embedded in the 1988 constitution. Argentina, on the other hand, only chose to reform its constitution in 1994, and the agenda did not focus on institutional reforms, but rather on legislating against the abuse of human rights that had occurred during the dictatorship. In other words, Brazil looked at the future and Argentina at the past. These different foci, one on building a solid democratic system, the other bent on punishing crime, is the main reason for the contrast between the two countries.

4. BUREAUCRATIZATION IN ARGENTINA AND BRAZIL AFTER