The political economy of the left has emptied the space of critique. It has articulated an unusual combination: bureaucratic centralism aligned with the expansion of financialization. If, as Marx claimed, historical events appear first as tragedy, the contemporary institutional left—especially in Latin America—has staged a neoliberal play. This has fueled delusion, much captured by the far right. This situation has demanded engagement with the public intellectual role in the Latin American—particularly Brazilian—tradition, in which critical theories have been tied to social forms of resistance against political and economic power. When such powers are reorganized within left-wing programs and governments, engaged intellectuals must confront their field. In this article, we draw on Ruy Fausto’s reflection on the misdirections of the left in its processes of bureaucratization and institutionalization to assess the limits of reformism, the question of left unity, and the conciliatory project with the accumulation regime. From this dialog, we propose taking the critique of financialized capitalism seriously through the decentralization of socialist alternatives, capable of resisting both the homogenizing force of financialization and its top-down imposition by the institutionalist left.

This article contributes to our understanding of merits and weaknesses associated with the subnational comparative case study. Despite its methodological strengths and the increasing importance of subnational units in politics, the subnational comparative case study remains underutilized in comparative politics. The root cause of the method’s merits lies in the substantive importance of subnational units in politics; at the same time, however, the difficulty of abstracting theory from local specificities hinders the wide utilization of this method. Through examining some important studies in comparative politics and Chinese politics that use comparative case studies, I identify problems in case selection and in achieving generalizability in research design of subnational comparative case studies.

This article puts the current cooperative pattern of state-nonprofit relations in France into historical context against the country’s statist past and suggests the implications this experience may have for other countries that share the statist background that France, perhaps in somewhat different form, also embodies. To do so, the discussion first reviews the current shape of the French nonprofit sector and the substantial scope and structure of government support of nonprofit human service delivery that exists. It then examines the unfavorable historical background out of which the current arrangements emerged and the set of changes that ultimately led to the existing pattern of extensive government–nonprofit cooperation. Against this background, a third section then looks more closely at the tools of action French governments are bringing to bear in their relations with nonprofits, the advantages and drawbacks of each, and the nonprofit role in the formulation of public policies. Finally, the article examines the key challenges in government–nonprofit cooperation in the provision of human services and the lessons the French experience might hold for Russia and other similar countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effects across the world, yet different countries have had varying degrees of success in their attempts to manage it. One of the reasons behind the different outcomes observed so far lies in the strengths and weaknesses of different governance arrangements leveraged to tackle the crisis. In this article we examine what we can learn about the operational capacity of different democracies through their early responses to the crisis. We provide a framework of four positive qualities of multilevel governance that might lead to greater chances of positive practical outcomes and present an illustrative case study of the experiences of Switzerland and the United Kingdom (UK). We conclude with some areas for further research and investigation.

This study investigates the relationships between nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the state. It demonstrates that Colombian state institutions aim to foster “culturally democratic citizens” through decentralization initiatives and participation mechanisms at the local level. The National Culture Plan is an overarching national policy that intends to be a reference for governance and civil society participation looking particularly to the players involved in the provision and consumption of cultural activities for its implementation. It marks a change at the national level as it launches civil society into the formulation of cultural policies and political participation in general. By examining local nongovernmental organizations through document and qualitative analysis, the study identifies four types of nongovernmental organizations that self-identified as working in cultural activities in Bogotá—insiders, yearners, dismissers, and outsiders. These types of NGOs emerged in personal interviews and illustrate that NGO–state relationships vary across the sector. Participation among the nongovernmental sector is uneven despite institutional reforms and initiatives supported by national legislation. This article provides data to add to a growing and innovative body of research necessary for professionals in public policy and nongovernmental management fields.

This article examines how subnational fiscal competition over foreign direct investment affects both the siting of new projects and the ability of local governments to raise tax revenue for social spending. We leverage a quasi-natural experiment, an unexpected declaration by the Brazilian Supreme Court in 2017 that reduced states’ ability to offer investors differentiated tax subsidies. Our results show that disadvantaged regions did not see a major shift in investment patterns after the change in investment law. We do not find a consistent relationship between the incentive law change and state revenue generation, but we do find that incentives are associated with less revenue. The results are consistent with arguments that investment incentives exacerbate inequality by reducing states’ capacity to collect revenue while doing little to affect investment location. Our results illustrate that economic agglomeration is difficult to reverse through tax policy and that fiscal federalism often cannot provide strong enough inducements to drive investment into less advantaged regions.

We examine the impact of decentralisation on COVID-19 mortality and various health outcomes. Specifically, we investigate whether decentralised health systems, which facilitated greater regional participation and information sharing, were more effective in saving lives. Our analysis makes three contributions. First, we draw on evidence from several European countries to assess whether the decentralisation of health systems influenced COVID-19 mortality rates. Second, we explore the regional disparities in one of the most decentralised health systems, Spain, to untangle some of the determinants shaping health outcomes. Third, we estimate the regional loss of Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) due to COVID-19 mortality, broken down by the wave of the pandemic. Our findings suggest that coordinated decentralisation played a critical role in saving lives throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite a trend of increasing multilevel government across the globe, there are surprisingly few studies on public support for decisions taken by different government levels. Decentralization is likely to boost government support because it increases congruence between citizens and their representatives. We argue that citizens’ preferences for subnational authority are key for their willingness to accept governmental decisions. Citizens who prefer decentralization are more supportive of subnational decisions, and their support for national decisions increases when subnational governments are involved in the decision-making process. We fielded a survey that asked 1,855 Norwegian respondents their willingness to accept decisions taken by their municipality, county, and national government to close an educational institution in their municipality. We find substantial empirical evidence for our hypotheses. Norway is a least-likely-case because government tiers enjoy high levels of trust. Therefore, the results have also important implications for the legitimacy of multilevel government in other countries.

Classic arguments about federalist governance emphasize an informational or learning role for decentralizing policy authority, but in practice, ideological outcomes frequently motivate this choice. We examine the role of ideology in the allocation of policy-making power by modeling a two-period interaction between an elected central executive and two local governments. Decentralization reduces the executive’s ability to set policy and control externalities but potentially insures against future policy reversals. In this environment, partial decentralization is a common outcome. Complete decentralization arises when executives are unlikely to be re-elected, party polarization is high, and institutional hurdles to policy-making are significant. These results help to clarify existing cross-national empirical findings on the determinants of centralization.