Journal of Politics in Latin America 2/2010: 53-84 The Politics of Subnational Undemocratic Regime

Abstract: This article studies the continued existence of subnational undemo-cratic regimes in Argentina and Mexico, two countries that have recently ex-perienced national democratization. The first part of the article offers a con-ceptualization of subnational democracy and measures its territorial extension across all subnational units. The second part explores a common, albeit not systematically tested explanation about subnational undemocratic regime con-tinuity, namely, that these regimes persist because they meet national incum-bents ’ strategic political needs. This claim is tested using statistical analyses to contrast patterns of spending across undemocratic subnational units during the presidencies of Menem (1989-1999), De la Rúa (2000-2001), Duhalde (2002), and Kirchner (2003-2007) in Argentina, and Fox (2000-2006) in Mexico. Con-tradicting conventional wisdom, the results show that presidents only repro-duce a handful of subnational undemocratic regimes, as not all of them can meet presidential needs. In addition, the results reveal that the strategic calcula-tion of presidents regarding this reproduction is dictated by factors that have been largely overlooked by the literature