Evaluando las instituciones políticas de los distritos federales

Abstract

This article aims to apply suitable methodological instruments for evaluating institutional output of different designs of local administration. Starting from an awareness that the institutional dimension of government embraces a number of different elements, it states the need for a comprehensive view enabling these separate elements to be analyzed separately in order to gauge the effects of this institutional framework upon the resulting quality of government. Thus three different evaluation criteria are worked with, capable of being applied in different institutional contexts so as to assess dispersion or concentration of political power, their proportional or disproportional nature, and their greater or lesser capacity for monitoring electoral systems. The crossing of the three criteria produces a model for evaluating systems of government which is then applied to three political capitals of federal states: the “Federal Districts” of Washington DC, Mexico City and Buenos Aires.