The Quest for Good Governance: Uruguay’s Shift from Clientelism

Issue Date January 2016
Volume 27
Issue 1
Page Numbers 139-51
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Uruguay improved its levels of universalism in the last fifteen years. This improvement is due to a prolonged process of transformation in Uruguayan politics from competitive particularism to an open access regime. We claim that the change in the way that parties compete for votes – from clientelistic to programmatic strategy – is the cause of this transformation. In order to provide descriptive evidence of the main features of this governance regime transformation, this paper traces the process of institutional reforms and elite behavioral changes that lead to that outcome, and proposes an analytic framework to explain it.

About the Authors

Daniel Buquet

Daniel Buquet is professor of political science at the Universidad de la República (Uruguay). He is coauthor of Fragmentación política y gobierno en Uruguay: ¿Un enfermo imaginario? (1998).

View all work by Daniel Buquet

Rafael Pineiro

Rafael Piñeiro is assistant professor of political science at the Universidad Católica del Uruguay.

View all work by Rafael Pineiro