ABSTRACT
Globalization is redefining the roles of states and their governments in different spheres of action. In Latin America, that transformation has been reflected both in the functions they fulfill and the strategies they adopt (Kliksberg, 1997, 2001). The failure of public administration structures to adapt to that process, and political and economic crises, have led to the emergence of modernization programs. For several decades, the modernization of the public administrations seems to have been a distinctive feature of their existence and frequently appears on the government agenda (Peters, 2002; Collier and Collier, 2002). The design of such modernization programs has also been conditioned by globalization processes, through both a consideration of international referents and the action of transnational agents that have acted as vehicles of institutional diffusion.
