Mutaciones del estado unitario en América latina. Nuevos rasgos metodológicos para el estudio de los procesos de descentraliación

This Article investigates the adoption of the unitary form of State in Latin America: its constant presence in Constitutions during the republican phase; the French and the Spanish influence as well as the mixture with local institutions, culture and entities, and its mutation or transformation during the last decades. In particular, it analyzes the cases of Colombia, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador and Uruguay. These countries, in spite of being all classified as unitary, have paramount differences in regard to taxonomies and some of them go beyond the typical characters of unitary states, being more decentralized in terms of organization and division of power within the territory.