Municipal Management and Population Development: Case of Hidalgo, Mexico

Abstract

The administration at the municipal level and its management are the first governmental instance that receives and attends to the needs of the citizens, so it provides elements that should allow people to have a better quality of life, the present research establishes the objective of determining if the management elements evaluated in the municipalities and selects those that can present an alignment with the development of the population based on the Human Development Index results, present a positive relationship, for which a concurrent mixed methodology is used, which involves quantitative information obtained from statistics of official sources, and is analyzed with Spearman's rho statistic using the SPSS statistical program and, complementarily, the qualitative aspects are approached based on semi-structured interviews with management personnel of municipal administrations, researchers and academics from institutions of higher education, as well as state level officials with activities in municipal aspects. The main findings indicate that although there are correlations with average levels between economic development and income and health indexes, they are not notable in the well-being and improvement of citizens' conditions. The contributions of the interviews show that although the processes related to municipal planning, the alignment of public policies and the establishment of mechanisms for citizen participation have improved, the municipalities present challenges in terms of improving the well-being of the population. Keywords: municipal management, human development, evaluation. https://doi.org/10.55463/issn.1674-2974.50.4.21