ABSTRACT
Implementation of Merit Based Personnel Policies (MBPP) continues to be a highly problematic endeavour in Latin American countries. According to the literature, this is usually caused by the politico-administrative inheritances that characterize this region, such as patronage, corruption, centralism and the lack of effective accountability mechanisms. By looking at Mexico’s recent Civil Service reform process, this article shows that the development of new MBPP has been certainly constrained by some of those factors. However, the article also shows that a number of issues faced during the Mexican reform process can be linked to “simpler” issues of policy design and implementation. The article thus concludes that while “patronage”, “amiguismo”, illegality, and other traditional features of Latin American (and Mexican) administrative systems remain a central impediment for developing well-functioning MBPP, academics and practitioners should probably pay more attention to policy design issues (e.g. policy co-ordination; time and resources availability; institutional framework design), which contribute to better explaining and understanding why MBPP implementation remains such a challenging task in this region.
