Introduction of Civil service reforms in Latin America through the lenses of Neo-Institutionalism

This study analyses the introduction of civil service reforms in three countries in Latin America through the lenses of Neo-Institutionalism. The three countries are Argentina, Brazil and Chile and the two theories are Historical Institutionalism and Institutional Isomorphism. The aim is to show which theory explains better the introduction of reforms in each case. The research design applied to this case study is congruence analysis which is a “three-cornered fight” testing theoretically derived predictions with empirical data, and establishing which theory has a better explanatory power. The study found out that these two theories are complementary rather than contrasting, and therefore both were to some extent useful to explaining the introduction of civil service reforms in the three cases. In Argentina and in Brazil, the introduction of reforms was more led by historical institutionalism while in Chile it was led by Institutional Isomorphism, however, in any case the theories were not excludable and features of both were found in the three cases. The conclusion is that the reestablishment of democracy was crucial for the introduction of reforms since the voice of the citizens played a bigger role and the pursuit of international legitimacy was also decisive for the introduction of reforms. Now that we know why the reforms were introduced, recommendations for further studies would be to analyse to what extent these reforms have been fully implemented and to identify the gaps between de jure and de facto practices.