Social Investment at Sub-National Level in Mexico: The Role of Actors and Institutions

Sub-national governments have been largely considered to be better equipped to respond to local preferences and needs more effectively than central governments. While this capacity has been mainly associated with the role of sub-national governments in delivering social services, their role in as social policy innovators has been scarcely studied, especially in the Latin America context. Nonetheless, as the case of Mexico shows, in the context of increasing political and financial decentralization, sub-national governments have been more active in implementing their own social policy initiatives. This paper explores the most important factors that may explain the increasing activism of sub-national governments in the social policy realm, measured by the size and type of social investment, apart from their spending in health and education services. To do so, we produce a qualitative comparative analysis that comprises three different states in Mexico; state-level is the second-tier of local government in the Mexican union. This comparative analysis looks at the relationship between social policy and different political and institutional variables, including the actual capacity of the government to get financial resources, as well as the type of actors in charge of social policy in each state.