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.

Beginning in 1983, the Mexican government implemented one of the most extensive programs of market-oriented reform in the developing world. Downsizing the State examines a key element of this reform program: the privatization of public firms. Drawing upon interviews with government officials, business executives, and labor leaders as well as data from government archives and corporate documents, MacLeod highlights the difficulties of linking market reforms to improved public welfare. Privatization failed to live up to its promise of raising living standards or decentralizing the economy. Indeed, privatization actually increased the concentration of wealth in Mexico while redirecting the economy toward foreign markets. These findings contribute to theoretical debates regarding state autonomy and the embeddedness of economic action. MacLeod calls into question the autonomy of the Mexican state in its privatization program. He shows that the creation of markets where public firms once dominated has involved both the destruction of social relations and the construction of new relations and institutions to regulate the market.

The Mexican government abandoned its role as owner of diverse enterprises and began to focus efforts on the populations most pressing needs: drinking water, health, education, agriculture, nutrition, housing, the environment, infrastructure and the administration of justice. The aim was to transform a paternalistic government into a supportive government - governing for all, but working harder for those who have less. Did it succeed?

Taking Mexico as an example, Williams (political science, Middlebury College) considers the various successes and failures of market-based reforms in areas like privatization, deregulation, and environmental policy. He assesses policy initiatives under various administrations and compares Mexico's privatization efforts to those of Argentina. Three case studies are presented and the findings analyzed in a comparative framework. The role of coalitions in successful reforms is emphasized. c. Book News Inc.

This volume represents the most important work to date on one of the pressing policy issues of the moment: the privatization of social security. Although social security is facing enormous fiscal pressure in the face of an aging population, there has been relatively little published on the fundamentals of essential reform through privatization. Privatizing Social Security fills this void by studying the methods and problems involved in shifting from the current system to one based on mandatory saving in individual accounts. "Timely and important. . . . [Privatizing Social Security] presents a forceful case for a radical shift from the existing unfunded, pay-as-you-go single national program to a mandatory funded program with individual savings accounts. . . . An extensive analysis of how a privatized plan would work in the United States is supplemented with the experiences of five other countries that have privatized plans." —Library Journal "[A] high-powered collection of essays by top experts in the field."—Timothy Taylor, Public Interest

This title was first published in 2001. An analysis of the political economy of Mexico's financial reform. It is organized in three parts. The first part - chapters one to four - develops the framework, both historical and institutional. The first chapter outlines the theoretical discussion on state autonomy and develops a simple analytical framework to study public policy decisions. The subsequent three chapters address three main themes: external dependency of domestic states on international capital, political change under President Carlos Salinas and financial policy in Mexico. The second part presents the analysis of three main institutional changes to the financial system - development banking reform, commercial banking privatisation and autonomy of the central bank. Each specific case study shows how the reforms conformed to the ideas of the dominant consensus on economic policy and how they delivered an inefficient incentive structure. The third part - chapter eight - brings together all the elements to explain Mexico's 1994 financial crisis.