Emerald Studies in Latin American Public Administration and Policy

Latin America and the Caribbean is a region marked by the coexistence of significant advances in state capacities and public policy innovation with persistent and deep structural challenges. These include high levels of inequalities, corruption, clientelism, patronage, crime, urban development deficits, and poverty, among others. While Latin American countries share important cultural, historical and institutional legacies, they also display substantial variation and heterogeneity in the capacity of their states and societies to address complex collective problems.

Public administration and governance across the region have undergone profound transformations over the past four decades. Governments have adopted diverse models of public administration to strengthen state effectiveness and improve their populations' quality of life. Processes such as decentralization, democratization, state reform, social inclusion, and the expansion of municipal and regional responsibilities have significantly reshaped the institutional landscape. National governments have pursued ambitious reform agendas with varying degrees of depth and success. At the same time, local and subnational governments have moved to the center of policy implementation, public service delivery, and progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals. Despite these advances, the region continues to face major challenges in consolidating state capacity to create public value and deliver sustainable improvements in citizens’ well being. Despite this, the study of public administration in Latin America has long been fragmented across countries, disciplines, and methodological traditions. Questions of state capacity, institutional performance, political-administrative dynamics, and public sector reform remain under-explored or unevenly addressed. This series responds to that gap.

Emerald Studies in Latin American Public Administration and Policy provides a dedicated, international forum for understanding how public institutions function, evolve, and perform in Latin America and the Caribbean. It welcomes research on public management, bureaucratic systems, intergovernmental relations, institutional capacity building, policy implementation, and the governance challenges that define the region - including inequalities, institutional weaknesses, clientelism, populism, informality, territorial fragmentation, violence, and political volatility.

The series promotes comparative, interdisciplinary, and multi-method scholarship, engaging public administration, political science, public policy, law, economics, sociology,

and related fields. It also embraces practice-oriented work that connects academic research with the realities of public sector reform and governance innovation.

Published in collaboration with leading academic networks across the region, the series aims to:

• Advance research on public administration, governance, and state capacity in Latin America across multiple disciplines and national contexts.
• Strengthen dialogue between theoretical approaches and applied research relevant to public sector innovation and institutional strengthening.
• Build bridges between academia, public institutions, international organisations, and civil society.
• Support comparative and cross-national analysis that highlights regional patterns, divergences, and emerging challenges in Latin American governance.
• Make visible new debates in local, regional, national, and metropolitan public administration, including methodological innovation and capacity-building strategies.