Decentralization and Criminal Gangs in El Salvador: Impacts on Municipal Finances and Local Economic Development.
Recent literature has argued that decentralization can create new forms of leverage for criminal gangs, increasing their territorial presence and levels of violence. In this article we reverse the causal arrow and analyze how gangs affect the performance of decentralized institutions. We study the c...
| Publicado en: | Journal of Development Studies Vol. 60; no. 9; pp. 1372 - 1394 |
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| Autores principales: | , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Sep2024
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=179023035&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 179023035 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00220388 JDS jtl: Journal of Development Studies issn: 00220388 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Sep2024 vid: 60 iid: 9 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 179023035 10.1080/00220388.2024.2339932 ppf: 1372 ppct: 22 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T db: hlh ui: 179023035 – @attributes: type: P db: hlh ui: 179023035 tig: atl: Decentralization and Criminal Gangs in El Salvador: Impacts on Municipal Finances and Local Economic Development. aug: au: Eaton, Kent Huanqui, Silvana Larios, Jose affil: Politics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA Universidad del Pacífico, Lima, Peru División de Gestión Fiscal, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC, WA, USA su: El Salvador Economic activity Federal government Cities & towns Local finance Capital investments sug: subj: Economic activity Federal government Cities & towns El Salvador Local finance Capital investments keyword: decentralization gangs municipal finance decentralization gangs municipal finance ab: Recent literature has argued that decentralization can create new forms of leverage for criminal gangs, increasing their territorial presence and levels of violence. In this article we reverse the causal arrow and analyze how gangs affect the performance of decentralized institutions. We study the case of El Salvador, a country with the ubiquitous presence of gangs. We find that the higher presence of gangs reduced municipalities' fiscal revenues, thereby increasing their dependence on transfers from the central government. This result is mostly driven by mid-size municipalities, as the effect is not significant for small and large municipalities. In addition to depressing revenues, gang presence was also associated with lower municipal spending and less service provision, effectively hollowing out municipal governance. The drop in municipal spending is particularly strong in capital spending and in small municipalities. The article also finds that gangs undermine economic activity – not just in the municipalities where they operate but through spill-over effects in neighboring jurisdictions as well. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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