Introduction: Looking for Governance: Latin America Governance Reforms and Challenges

Abstract

Governance scholarship is particularly positioned to propose reforms in public administration to improve the work of governments. The papers in this mini-symposium focus on governance reforms in Latin America, presenting results related to the processes of institutional change that shaped public administration. Governance reforms in Latin America have created different realities and currently face the challenge of institutionalization as a central element. The pattern of institutional change in public administration in Latin America was politically shaped in contexts of democratic instability. Just as democracy represented an essential element for institutional changes in public administration, its instability and institutional weakness make it challenging to institutionalize governance mechanisms in Latin America. Thus, governance reforms in Latin America reinforce the path-dependent characteristic of public administration reforms.