Spanish American political institutions were highly centralized during the colonial time period. I always assumed this was because the Crown wanted to have more control over how the colonies were run. However, there may be other factors that influenced the choice of highly centralized institutions in the colonies. It may be that centralized political institutions were chosen over less centralized ones because the Castilian Spaniards, not the Aragonese Spaniards, initially developed the New World.
More after the jump….