Negotiated Agreement in Intergovernmental Relations in Argentina. The Case of Federal Revenue Sharing

CRISTIAN ALTAVILLA

Viena

Congreso; International Conference for Academic Disciplines; 2013

International Journal of Arts and Sciences (IJAS)

The need to negotiated agreement in federal revenue sharing system is required both by the constitutional law and as a political and institutional practice. In 1994 the Argentinean Constitution was reformed and regarding this issue, it clearly states that both levels of government must agree on a new federal revenue sharing through an intergovernmental agreement called ?ley-convenio? [law-agreement] that means a formal agreement between governors and the President. Nevertheless, this legal requirement has not been fulfilled yet. Despite this non-observance, all amendments produced involving the revenue system have been made through negotiated agreements, but the actors involved were not satisfied with the outcomes obtained because in the long term those agreements were detrimental to them. However, in the process of negotiations many political, human, economic, and especially, institutional resources were put into play. That means that the governors counted with power resources (especially considering the institutional aspect which increases the power of otherwise politically impotent actors). Why then these actors couldn?t obtain the expected outcomes? Analyzing the progress achieved in depth, we can see that the actors involved actually had important resources in the negotiations. Then, one reason that explains the outcomes may be that some of those players reached certain kinds of benefits, but only in the short-term.