The essays collected in this book are very precise and focused empirical studies on the early development of public bureaucracies in Latin American countries. In their own introductory essays, which comprise the first three chapters, the editors of the book elaborate upon that empirical research, presenting ambitious and relevant theoretical proposals related to social science discussions about state building.This is a necessary and very important book because, first of all, empirical studies about the formation of Latin American bureaucracies remain extremely unusual. And the book has a particularly interesting orientation, given that most of the chapters connect and compare the institutional structures of the colonial administration before independence to the state bureaucracies of the newly independent nations. The empirical studies, in other words, look for continuities as well as ruptures during the key period of transition to independence as well as in a few preceding and following decades. To my knowledge, this has never been attempted before in such a systematic and comprehensive way.The book is a very important and essential contribution, in the second place, because of its wide area of interest. It will appeal strongly to scholars in history and historical sociology as a matter of course, but its interest goes well beyond those fields. Many current political and public policy problems that cause widespread concern in Latin American countries can be traced back to ineffectual bureaucracies and weak state institutions. Mass poverty and social inequality, lack of public security, political corruption, and other persistent issues are the result, among other factors, of inadequate formulation and bad management of public policy by government agencies. Now, it is clear that the deficiencies of state institutions in the region are connected to institutional legacies and path dependency resulting from early state-building decisions. The book under review analyzes and discusses very thoroughly the institutional blueprints and the circumstances of early state building in Latin America. Analyzing the impact of early state building on current institutional practices is highly relevant for contemporary studies on good governance and the effectiveness of state institutions, public management and public policy research, civil service reform, institutions, and economic development, among other areas.The book's methodology and research focus are introduced by the editors in chapters 1 and 2. Juan Pro Ruiz underlines the significance of the interim period between the colonial regime and the consolidation of the new independent nations, elaborating upon the concept of Sattelzeit (saddle time) as originally coined by Reinhart Koselleck (p. 1). Among other theoretical considerations, Pro Ruiz examines the curious fact that the importance of bureaucracies went unnoticed during the entire period of state building in Latin America, except when bureaucracies were decried as a scourge afflicting society and politics (p. 4). Juan Carlos Garavaglia's contributions to the book are remarkable for their range and depth. Apart from a theoretical chapter (chapter 2), he provides in chapter 3 a sweeping empirical panorama of state-building processes across the whole Latin American region. And in his third contribution, chapter 9, Garavaglia provides a thorough empirical study on the development of bureaucracies from 1760 to 1861 in the geographical area that corresponds today to Argentina and Uruguay.Based mostly on primary sources, the empirical studies provide a profusion of facts and analysis; they represent a necessary reference for any future research on state building in the geographical areas considered. We do not have space here to review even some of these studies in depth, so I will just mention one of many fascinating facts and one of several amusing stories told by the authors about early state building under challenging circumstances. Although Chile represents a well-known example of successful state building in the region, Elvira López Taverne presents crucial data and new insights in her study on the case. Areas such as education showed a spectacular growth of resources and staff, going from 83 primary schools in 1845 to 427 primary schools in 1860 (p. 228). What is more, during this entire period the Chilean state commissioned three foreign—and therefore politically nonpartisan—experts of international renown in the area of education: Andrés Bello, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and José Joaquín de Mora. They not only held top institutional positions, but also their contributions to public debates kept the issue at the top of the public policy agenda of the time. Finally, Alejandro M. Rabinovich relates a peculiar “misadventure” that happened to a sergeant major during the siege of Montevideo in 1827. Finding a big shipment of meat being smuggled into the city, the officer ordered the immediate punishment of the culprits. One of them, however, happened to be brother-in-law to the commanding general of the army. The sergeant major, already reckoned as a boring disciplinarian anyway, was promptly dismissed (p. 362). State building could be really challenging sometimes.
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Dec 15, 2020
N K Litvinenko 
Open Access
