Bridging The Convergence-Divergence Policy Diffusion Divide, Mid-Range Theorizing, and Devolving Food Aid in Mexico and The Dominican Republic

Scholarship on policy diffusion in Latin America tends to emphasize pressure for policy convergence, often associated with globalization and multilateral lending institutions (MLIs), or pressure for policy divergence, often linked to domestic political institutions. These studies capture crucial forces at work shaping the region’s democratic and neoliberal economic transitions. However, attention to convergence or divergence pressure, rather than mid-range theory that frames how the two combine at different stages in the diffusion process, obscures findings from empirical case studies. This research tries to explain why Mexico successfully devolved food aid resources away from its national capital to rural areas, while the Dominican Republic tried and failed. If both countries were under similar convergence pressures, as suggested in the convergence literature, and were undergoing a similar domestic transition in their political structures, as suggested in the divergence literature, why the different outcomes? Convergence pressure put devolving food aid on the reform agenda in both countries, and, subsequently, domestic pressure, in particular changing national party systems, shaped the eventual organization, implementation and variation of devolution policies that followed. Thus, bridging the convergence-divergence divide becomes necessary to understand these case studies.