Placing this book in the context of NAFTA and Mexican movements for social change, journalist and historian Dan La Botz unveils the forces behind Marcos and the Zapatista Rebellion of January 1994 and re-examines the circumstances surrounding the assasination of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio. Contains a detailed analysis of how Ernesto Zedillo and the PRI won the August 21, 1994 elections and includes an examination of widespread electoral fraud. La Botz provides a first-hand account of the founding of National Democratic Converntion (CND), the new force for democracy and social justice in Mexico led by Rosario Ibarra. Ibarra is Mexico's leading human rights activist and first woman presidential candidate.

Examines how public water service becomes a political tool in Mexican cities and uncovers the politics of water provision in developing democracies

Morris explores the historical ability of Mexico's one-party-dominant, authoritarian regime to weather frequent periods of political and economic crisis, as well as its potential for surviving into the coming century.

Compares a range of Mexican food policy reforms, focusing on the SAM (Mexican Food System), a program in place from 1980-82, designed to shift subsidies and privileged access from large private farmers and ranchers to peasants and small producers. In this context, Fox (political science, MIT) examines the limits and possibilities of political reform, and its history and future in the Mexican state. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book examines the relationship between Spain and America in the seventeenth century through the life and thought of Juan de Palafox (1600-1659), a protege of the count-duke of Olivares who became bishop of Puebla and Visitor General of New Spain. A witness to the catastrophic consequences of Olivares' plan to abrogate the political heterogeneity of the Spanish monarchy, and more sensitive than his patron to the constitutional diversity of the empire, Palafox developed an alternativeprogramme for reform which involved delegating power to the American municipalities controlled by the creoles. His support for creole aspirations and attempt to carry out a radical plan for administrative decentralization threatened to overturn the established viceregal system and met with strong opposition in government circles. Faced with domestic revolt and war in Europe, ministers in Madrid chose to stand by the status quo and preserve a model of overseas government which, although in manyways defective and prone to abuse, at least seemed to offer the crown the measure of authority required for satisfying its growing financial requirements. Reform in America was sacrificed to the preservation of Spain's reputation in Europe. Yet the fact that Palafox failed in no way undermines the importance of his endeavour. By promoting a different political arrangement between Spain and the Indies, he thrust under the spotlight the main problem faced by Spanish statesmen of this period, that of ruling a composite monarchy at a time of mounting international pressure. This book contributes, therefore, to our understanding of the way in which the transatlantic relationship worked and developed; it redresses the deficit of studies of the Spanish practice of empire and raises questions that are relevant to other composite political structures. It does so at the same time as it revises and throws new light on the figure of Palafox, whose achievements and failures have been analysed so far almost exclusively with reference to his famous dispute with the Jesuits. By setting Palafox firmly in the context of his time, this study revises old commonplaces and assists current efforts to reconstruct the human fabric of the Spanish empire, a field of research which is only just beginning to receive the attention it deserves.

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.

The urgent need to professionalize Mexican police has been recognized since the early 1990s, but despite even the most well-intentioned promises from elected officials and police chiefs, few gains have been made in improving police integrity. Why have reform efforts in Mexico been largely unsuccessful? This book seeks to answer the question by focusing on Mexico's municipal police, which make up the largest percentage of the country's police forces. Indeed, organized crime presents a major obstacle to institutional change, with criminal groups killing hundreds of local police in recent years. Nonetheless, Daniel Sabet argues that the problems of Mexican policing are really problems of governance. He finds that reform has suffered from a number of policy design and implementation challenges. More importantly, the informal rules of Mexican politics have prevented the continuity of reform efforts across administrations, allowed patronage appointments to persist, and undermined anti-corruption efforts. Although many advances have been made in Mexican policing, weak horizontal and vertical accountability mechanisms have failed to create sufficient incentives for institutional change. Citizens may represent the best hope for counterbalancing the toxic effects of organized crime and poor governance, but the ambivalent relationship between citizens and their police must be overcome to break the vicious cycle of corruption and ineffectiveness.