Governing Mexico

Based on extensive fieldwork and a wide variety of US and Mexican academic, government and journalistic sources, this book analyzes the critical institutions and policy issues that will determine whether and how the Mexican government can modernize the economy and retain political legitimacy.

Revolution in Development uncovers the surprising influence of postrevolutionary Mexico on the twentieth century's most important international economic institutions. Drawing on extensive archival research in Mexico, the United States, and Great Britain, Christy Thornton meticulously traces how Mexican officials repeatedly rallied Third World leaders to campaign for representation in global organizations and redistribution through multilateral institutions. By decentering the United States and Europe in the history of global economic governance, Revolution in Development shows how Mexican economists, diplomats, and politicians fought for more than five decades to reform the rules and institutions of the global capitalist economy. In so doing, the book demonstrates, Mexican officials shaped not only their own domestic economic prospects but also the contours of the project of international development itself.

Who makes land use decisions, how are decisions made, and who influences whom, how and why? This working paper is part of a series based on research studying multilevel decision-making institutions and processes. The series is aimed at providing insight i

What kind of democracy will emerge in Mexico when the current levels of violence are brought under control? Will democratic reformers gain strength in the new equilibrium between government and criminal organizations? Or will corruption tilt the balance toward criminal interests? In the context of these questions, John Bailey explores the ¿security trap¿ in which Mexico is currently caught¿where the dynamics of crime, violence, and corruption conspire to override efforts to put the country on a path toward democratic governance.

This volume offers an overview of party politics in Mexico, with a special focus on the 1997 mid-term congressional elections. In Mexico the three main political parties have led the advances towards democratic governability. Chapters on the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional), the PAN (Partido Acción Nacional) and PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática) examine the responses of these three leading parties to changing electoral challenges. As competition for the vote increased, these parties have been forced to adapt and to introduce changes in their organization. These changes have had wider implications for the development of the party system. In consequence, this volume is more than the study of leading competing parties in Mexico. It also analyses the behaviour of the Mexican electorate and the changing institutional setting that underpins both the nature of political parties and the patterns of competition and co-operation.

Mexico is at the center of the global battle over abortion. In 2007, a watershed reform legalized the procedure in the national capital, making it one of just three places across Latin America where it was permitted at the time. Abortion care is now available on demand and free of cost through a pioneering program of the Mexico City Ministry of Health, which has served hundreds of thousands of women. At the same time, abortion laws have grown harsher in several states outside the capital as part of a coordinated national backlash. In this book, Elyse Ona Singer argues that while pregnant women in Mexico today have options that were unavailable just over a decade ago, they are also subject to the expanded reach of the Mexican state and the Catholic Church over their bodies and reproductive lives. By analyzing the moral politics of clinical encounters in Mexico City's public abortion program, Lawful Sins offers a critical account of the relationship among reproductive rights, gendered citizenship, and public healthcare. With timely insights on global struggles for reproductive justice, Singer reorients prevailing perspectives that approach abortion rights as a hallmark of women's citizenship in liberal societies.

Regulators help ensure the access to and quality of public utilities, facilitate investment and protect market neutrality. Good external and internal governance of regulators is crucial to their performance. Based on a framework developed by the OECD, this study assesses the functions ...