Abstract

GARCIA-TEJEDA, Enrique  and  VIEIRA-SILVA, . Juan Guillermo. The diversity of local political agendas during COVID-19: A comparison of Mexican states. Íconos [online]. 2023, n.76, pp.77-98. ISSN 1390-8065.  https://doi.org/10.17141/iconos.76.2023.5692.

COVID-19, as an event that disrupted economic activities around the world, affected government policy agendas. In Latin America, most of the responses were centralized by national governments; however, in Mexico, the 32 states developed their own economic policies in response to the pandemic. The Mexican case allows us to analyze recent hypotheses of comparative studies on this issue, which propose that the size of the population and the scale and socioeconomic structure of the administrations may be factors that explain the scope and diversity of local agendas. A quantitative methodology based on the estimation of Shannon’s entropy index and non-parametric tests is used. Contrary to expectations, we find that the scope and diversity of the responses are not significantly related to the factors proposed in the literature. At least for the case of COVID-19 in the short run, the size and diversity of local agendas in Mexico seem to be based on institutional factors, such as information processing according to bounded rationality, incremental solutions, and the functional labeling of local governments. Thus, the variety of agendas is based on the direct interests of communities.

Keywords : local policy agendas; COVID-19; agenda setting; local governments; Mexican policies; subnational policies..

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