From smaller to better government: The challenge of the second and third generations of state reform

This article contends that the content and scope of “second generation” state reforms in Latin America show a high degree of heterogeneity due to the national contexts and the depth of the changes produced by the earlier reforms. The “third generation” reform is rejected as a valid category. There is no clear distinction between premises or values, roles, and instruments of reform. The “first generation” of reforms constituted the easy phase of state transformation. In the second phase, the difficulties are similar to the ones that Latin American countries faced during 70 years of reformist attempts which constituted the prehistory of this process and ended mostly in failure. By means of a critical analysis of the paradigm of the “reinvention of governmentr”, the instrumental challenges implicit in its eventual materialization are reviewed. As an emblematic case, the Argentine experience is used to illustrate the main propositions of this article.