Partisan alignments vs. financial autonomy? Political relations between Mayors and Governors in the Buenos Aires province (2011-2019)

Varetto C.; Dosek T. · Revista Chilena de Derecho y Ciencia Politica (2026) · DOI: 10.7770/rchdcp-v17n1-art1716

Resumen

Traditionally, the literature on subnational politics in Argentina have characterized mayors (intendentes) as fiscally and politically dependent on provincial governors. However, recent studies show that in the last two decades mayors have gained a greater political role in intergovernmental relations. In this context, we show that the nature of the political game and the interactions between mayors and governors are more diverse and vary according to partisan alignments and cooperative or conflictive nature of these relationships. We argue that in the cases where the actors drift away from the partisan alignment logic, the key factor that explains the resulting type of relations (conflictive or cooperative) is the availability of the municipalities’ own fiscal resources. Empirically, the combination of available fiscal resources and previous political differences between both leaders explain the conflictive or cooperative character of the relations between the executives at both levels. We illustrate these patterns with a comparative exploratory analysis of eight cases of municipalities in the Province of Buenos Aires during two government periods (2011-2015, 2015-2019). We make use of publicly available data of municipalities’ own fiscal resources and review national and local newspapers and secondary literature for our empirical qualitative illustrations. Este trabajo está sujeto a una licencia de Atribución-NoComercial 4.0 Internacional (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Instituciones: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú