Conclusion

This chapter draws integrated lessons from the previous chapters. State capacity is significant in explaining policy outcomes, but is largely unsatisfactory and diverse across policy targets and capacity dimensions. Latin American countries have demonstrated outcome variations along the historical state capacity divergence. State capacity is multifaceted along diverse policy targets, and the effectiveness of causal linkages also varies across them. Policy emulations and the collaboration between the state and societal actors complement state weaknesses. Finally, the chapter adds some further suggestions, such as assessing policy effectiveness before implementation, information and knowledge accumulation, technological innovations, and remarks on democratic regimes as the baseline and decentralization as a crucial benchmark.