The idea of a Latin American Leviathan is repeated insistently. There is talk of bureaucratic elephantiasis and an apparatus that devours the public treasury. The dominant diagnosis proposes mass clippings – volunteer, vacancies freezing, spending mutilation – as a fast path towards efficiency. But the figures deny the cartoon: the proportion of employment and state spending, measured against GDP and economically active population, does not exceed that of similar developing countries. The dilemma is not volume, but design.
Decades of political instability left their mark. Each government printed a contradictory stamp on laws, structures and priorities. The result is a mosaic of unconnected standards, offices without clear mission and administrative circuits designed for times already extinguished. That Historical deformity Explain the current scene: abundant but demotivated staff, anachronistic procedures, obsolete technology and, paradoxically, strategic vacancies impossible to cover due to lack of profiles or competitive wages.
The “Sobrera-Falta” syndrome is palpable. Vital sectors – public health, inspection, information systems – work with minimal schools and eroded budgets, while irrelevant dependencies retain over -dimensioned endowments. Between 70 % and 90 % of many ministerial budgets are used today to salaries, leaving crumbs for supplies, maintenance or investment. With fewer tools and more social demands, management suffers and the narrative of the ineffective state is self-cumple.
The exit does not go through a plan, but by reconfigure capabilities. First step: align the “objective function” (what should be achieved) with the “production function” (with what resources and processes). It implies mapping tasks, identifying duplicities, reassign personnel, professionalizing technical pictures and modernizing normative frameworks. Second step: invest in physical and digital infrastructure that returns to the official tools to produce measurable results. Third step: establish incentives and an evaluation system that rewards innovation and criminalize inertia.
The challenge is double: demystify hypertrophy and expose true urgency – a coherent, flexible and citizen -oriented state architecture. Only in this way will the management capacity be recovered and the State will be avoided as a problem when, well calibrated, it can and should be part of the solution.
Carlos Felice
E-mail: [email protected]
Instagram: @carlosdfelice
By CEDOC
