Subnational undemocratic regime continuity after democratization: Argentina and Mexico in comparative perspective

This dissertation addresses the issue of regime juxtaposition---that is, the existence of subnational undemocratic regimes (SURs) alongside national democratic governments. More specifically, the study explores the factors that facilitate the reproduction of these regimes in Argentina and Mexico, two countries that have recently experienced national democratization albeit in a territorially uneven fashion. The first part of this study builds on an original dataset collected during fieldwork in Argentina and Mexico to measure levels of democracy across all twenty-four Argentine provinces and thirty-two Mexican states. In doing so, this dissertation then provides a systematic and comprehensive assessment of how subnational democracy has varied and evolved among disparate subnational units and over time. The second part of the dissertation develops an analytic framework to explain SUR continuity. The framework is then tested using a variety of qualitative and quantative methodologies in two countries and four subnational cases. Building on a cross-sectional time series analysis, and on an in-depth qualitative comparative study which gathered evidence in 150 original interviews with key national and subnational political actors, the study finds that SURs' financial dependency on the federal government and the nature of SURs' state-administrations, in combination with national variables, are the primary factors explaining different trajectories of SUR continuity.