TRANSFER OF POLICIES AND MANAGEMENT MODERNIZATION: THE STORY (AND LESSONS) FROM WHEN THE CHILE’S PROGRAM FOR MANAGEMENT IMPROVEMENT ‘TRAVELED’ TO MEXICO.

Abstract

In Latin America there is a long tradition of learning from the institutions and political-administrative development of other countries. Nevertheless, the study of these policy transfer/dissemination processes –or transnational learning, as known in academic literature– has not been able to consolidate itself as a matter of greater interest among academics in the region. This article presents the transfer of the Chilean Program for Management Improvement (PMI) to the federal administrative system in Mexico, particularly covering the period between 2005 and 2008. Specifically, it seeks to explain how and why the PMI eventually turned into the Special Program for Enhancing Federal Public Administration, with a similar name but fundamentally different objectives and characteristics. The main thrust is that the PMI ended up being something radically different as a result of a number of inter- and intra-bureaucratic conflicts associated with the two federal departments involved in the process: the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit and the Secretary of Public Affairs. Said actors held quite different opinions as to why taking the Chilean PMI as a reference, what (and how) to retrieve from the original scheme and, above all, how to insert the new program into the framework of the developing Mexican results-based management system.