Dismantling Policies and Eroding Administrative Capacities. Latin American Lessons for a World in Democratic Retreat

This chapter offers a comparative analysis of how Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico simultaneously dismantled public policies and eroded administrative capacities as governing strategies under contemporary populist leadership. Synthesizing the empirical findings from preceding chapters, it identifies shared mechanisms of weakening state structures, such as staff elimination, regulatory degradation, and disarticulation of inter-institutional coordination, while also tracing country-specific institutional pathways that enabled dismantling. The chapter contributes to the literature by demonstrating that the dismantling of administrative capacities results from deliberate political projects that privilege executive control over bureaucratic autonomy and expertise. The comparative analysis advances a theoretical understanding of dismantling as a dual process that affects both policies and the administrative apparatus necessary for their implementation. In doing so, it helps explaining contemporary dynamics of administrative and policy change taking place in other regions beyond the countries under study.