This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.
This book assesses the impact of decentralization on Mexico’s intergovernmental relations and examines the constraints upon the devolution of political power from the center to the lower levels of government. It also discusses the distribution of power and authority to governments of opposition parties within the context of a more open political space. Victoria Rodríguez uncovers a new paradox in the Mexican political system: retaining power by giving it away. She argues that since the de la Madrid presidency (1982–1988), the Mexican government has embarked upon a major effort of political and administrative decentralization as a means to increase its hold on power. That effort continued under Salinas, but paradoxically led to further centralization. However, since Zedillo assumed the presidency, it has become increasingly clear that the survival of the ruling party and, indeed, the viability of his own government require a genuine, de facto reduction of centralism.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1977.
Since 1983, Mexico has undergone a rapid and thorough economic restructuring program, with privatization at the core. The government has divested itself of hundreds of public companies, increasing the role of private capital, both domestic and foreign. Supporters have argued that divestiture would have positive implications for Mexican democracy, but Judith A. Teichman concludes that political and economic power in Mexico is more concentrated and exclusionary than ever. She uses extensive field research, including interviews with top political and business leaders to describe and analyze the process by which the Mexican state has reformed its mammoth public enterprise sector.
The industrialization process in Mexico began before that of any other nation in Latin America except Argentina, with the most rapid expansion of new industrial firms occurring in the 1930s and 1940s, and import substitution in capital goods evident as early as the late 1930s. Though Mexico’s trade relations have always been dependent on the United States, successive Mexican presidents in the postwar period attempted to control the penetration of foreign capital into Mexican markets. In Industry, the State, and Public Policy in Mexico, Dale Story, recognizing the significance of the Mexican industrial sector, analyzes the political and economic role of industrial entrepreneurs in postwar Mexico. He uses two original data sets—industrial production data for 1929–1983 and a survey of the political attitudes of leaders of the two most important industrial organizations in Mexico—to address two major theoretical arguments relating to Latin American development: the meaning of late and dependent development and the nature of the authoritarian state. Story accepts the general relevance of these themes to Mexico but asserts that the country is an important variant of both. With regard to the authoritarian thesis, the Mexican authoritarian state has demonstrated some crucial distinctions, especially between popular and elite sectors. The incorporation of the popular sector groups has closely fit the characteristics of authoritarianism, but the elite sectors have operated fairly independently of state controls, and the government has employed incentives or inducements to try to win their cooperation. In short, industrialists have performed important functions, not only in accumulating capital and organizing economic enterprises but also by bringing together the forces of social change. Industrial entrepreneurs have emerged as a major force influencing the politics of growth, and the public policy arena has become a primary focus of attention for industrialists since the end of World War II.
Since the mid-1960s it has been apparent that authoritarian regimes are not necessarily doomed to extinction as societies modernize and develop, but are potentially viable (if unpleasant) modes of organizing a society's developmental efforts. This realization has spurred new interest among social scientists in the phenomenon of authoritarianism and one of its variants, corporatism.The sixteen previously unpublished essays in this volume provide a focus for the discussion of authoritarianism and corporatism by clarifying various concepts, and by pointing to directions for future research utilizing them. The book is organized in four parts: a theoretical introduction; discussions of authoritarianism, corporatism, and the state; comparative and case studies; and conclusions and implications. The essays discuss authoritarianism and corporatism in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
The last two decades saw a host of governments abandon statist development models for more market-friendly ones. However, not all reform attempts fared equally well. Why do some governments succeed in implementing market reforms while others fail? Why might the same government succeed in one policy area but not another? Market Reforms in Mexico explores these central questions by examining Mexico's reform experience in privatization, deregulation, and environmental policy. More than simply a book on 'Mexican politics,' this study speaks to the broader political dynamics behind the success or failure to implement reforms; first, by assessing new policy initiatives in multiple arenas across presidential administrations in Mexico, then by comparing Mexico's privatization experience to that of Argentina's. Through structured, focused comparison of select case studies, the author argues that the fate of dramatic reform initiatives turned on coalition politics (both inside and outside the state), and explains how institutional dynamics and the capacity to solve the problem of policy 'costs' strongly affected reformers' prospects of success.
