Explaining Policy Outcomes in Federal Contexts: The Politics of Reproductive Rights in Argentina and Mexico

This article explains the political and institutional factors that affect reproductive rights policies in Argentina and Mexico. Consistent with the comparative literature on gender, politics and institutions, the article reveals that federal arrangements define the arenas in which advocates can challenge governments. The comparative analysis suggests that the content and variations of policy outcomes are not only determined by the legal distribution of such rights. Women's positions towards abortion and contraception was greatly shaped by partisanship and ideology, and this was critical to legislative outcomes, while the number of women legislators was only important to introduce the issues. Important for further research are the effects of institutional and party instability on women's organising in legislatures, and the relevance of links between women's groups outside legislature and political parties for the success of gender equality policies.     

The Political Constraints on Economic Policy in Post-1982 Mexico: The Case of Pemex

Abstract Fourteen years of market-oriented reform in Mexico have led to many economic changes. However during 1982–1994 there was relatively little change in the hydrocarbon sector. This article seeks to explain the slowness of reform essentially in political terms. While political constraints on reforming the hydrocarbons sector were genuine, it is also clear that the De la Madrid and Salinas governments chose to avoid controversial decisions in this sector as far as possible. Risk aversion seems, at least in this context, to have been a characteristic of Mexican authoritarianism during 1982–1994. Because of the inherent importance of the oil and gas sector to the Mexican economy, the slow growth of production since 1982 (largely resulting from extreme policy caution) provides a part of the explanation for the slow growth of the Mexican economy as a whole.     

Religion and the Media in a Battle for Ideological Hegemony: the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and TV Globo in Brazil

Abstract – Starting out from a celebrated 1995 controversy which arose from a late-night incident on Brazilian TV, the relationships between neo-Pentecostalism and established culture are explored. Taking into account traditions of legal rhetoric and of political adherence, the paper shows that what appears at one level as a religious conflict is at another level a conflict over political power, over the rhetoric and imagery of power, and for control of the popular imaginary.     

The World Bank and Policy Reform in Mexico and Argentina

This article examines the World Bank's role in the market policy reform experiences of Mexico and Argentina. It argues that while reform was driven by domestic elites, the bank played an important role, providing technical advice and financial support and helping to spread market reform ideas. The nature of the bank's involvement, however, differed substantially in the two countries because of their distinct political arrangements, histories, and geopolitical positions in regard to the United States. In the recent era of second-generation reforms, the World Bank's involvement in compensatory policy development has become more focused, although still more intense in Argentina than in Mexico. This involvement has important implications for the quality of democracy, insofar as the 1990s market reforms were formulated by insulated international policy networks unaccountable to the public. Recently, the bank has declared its commitment to involve civil society in its lending policies, a move that may have important implications for democratic development.     

Models of Clientelism and Policy Change: The Case of Conditional Cash Transfer Programmes in Mexico and Brazil

Clientelist systems vary, and this variation influences the adoption and evolution of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes. We find that vertically integrated, corporatist clientelism in Mexico and more locally oriented, bossist clientelism in Brazil differentially shape the choices of governments to turn piecemeal, discretionary CCTs into more expansive and secure benefits.     

The Power of Mass Mobilisation: Argentina's Struggle for the Legalisation of Abortion

The mass pro-abortion mobilisation which took place in 2018 has been arguably the most successful attempt in Argentina's history at altering the existing legal framework regulating access to voluntary termination of pregnancy. Never before has any legislative project legalising abortion reached the upper chamber of the Congress. Could this result be attributed to the support it received from a mass social movement? What are the limitations of mass mobilisations when a structural change to a long-lasting narrative is required? In order to address these questions, the issue of abortion will be examined through the perspective of power-making and counterpower-making strategies.     

Using ‘Public Health Crossings’ to Create Community‐Based Rural Healthcare in Mexico: The Case of Two Health Centres in Xochimilco

Health centres established in Xochimilco, Mexico during the 1930s and 1940s represent a larger shift in the national health agenda from training medical students in rural health to addressing the specific health challenges of rural communities. While the 1935 centre offered urban students practical experience in rural environments, it did not adequately address the area's health problems. In contrast, the 1947 centre utilised improved community exchanges to enhance the region's health and sanitation. This decade of transformation resulted from a network of politicians, international organisations, and health professionals who helped to establish broader community‐based public health programmes in rural Mexico.     

Health Care Reform in Vietnam: Chasing Shadows

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and assess health care reforms in Vietnam since the late 1980s. It will argue that shortcomings of the reforms centre on three related sets of measures: substitution of budgetary allocation with user charges, expansion of social insurance and promotion of decentralisation. Reduction in fiscal support for providers offered them the motive to concentrate on revenue-generating activities while user charges provided them with the means to do so. With both the motive and the means for maximising revenues in place, providers vigorously pursued income-maximisation which had the effect of raising overall expenditures while reducing access. To deal with the problem of declining access due to rising user charges, the government is in the process of vigorously expanding social insurance. However, social insurance does not deal with the root causes of the problem of rising expenditures which lie in paying providers on a fee-for-service (FFS) basis. The paper will further argue that decentralisation has aggravated the adverse effects of FFS by diluting control and accountability.     

Mexican Conservatives, Clericals, and Soldiers: the 'Traitor' Tomás Mejía through Reform and Empire, 1855–1867

General Tomás Mejía (1820–67) became a leading Mexican opponent of the Liberal Reform Movement in the mid-nineteenth century. Originating from the Querétaro Sierra Gorda, where for twenty years he had a strong power base, he took his stand in defence of the Catholic religion. A devotee of the local cult of the Virgin of the Pueblito, Mejía cooperated first with the Conservative Party and subsequently with the Second Mexican Empire (1862–67). Beween 1864 and 1866, he became the Empire's principal military commander. Juárez had him shot, along with Maximilian, when the Empire fell. Triumphant Liberals blotted out his name from the history of the nineteenth century. Mejía defended an alternative, Catholic vision of Mexico to the Liberal secular state and its Revolutionary successor.     

The Federal Dilemma: Organisational Strategies and the Consolidation of Parties in Mexico and Argentina

What accounts for the consolidation of party organisations? The specialised literature has stressed the importance of institutions in shaping the ways in which political parties organise. However, little attention has been paid to the role of federalism. We argue that in federal settings, party territorial organisational strategies condition their capacity to become consolidated parties. We illustrate our theory with an analysis of the development of conservative parties in Argentina and Mexico to explain their different levels of consolidation.     

Putting Large-Scale Infrastructure Projects First: The COVID-19 Pandemic in Indigenous Mexico

This article argues that whilst indigenous people are central to the Mexican president's official developmentalist discourse of bringing prosperity to the country's marginalised and poor, their needs during the COVID-19 pandemic have not been met and their interests have been sidelined. Whilst experiencing serious loss of trading revenue, negative impacts of misinformation, and lack of access to appropriate healthcare, indigenous Mexicans also faced the aggressive advance on their territories of large-scale infrastructure projects, which have become the backbone of the president's strategy for countering the economic recession caused by the pandemic. The discontinuation of relevant legal means to challenge the advance of the megaprojects during the pandemic effectively threatened indigenous people's democratic rights to protect their land, identities and way of life.     

Shifting the debate on land reform,poverty and inequality in Zimbabwe,an engagement with Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myths and Realities 1

Zimbabwe's land reform: myths and realities 2 2. Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myths and Realities by Ian Scoones, Nelson Marongwe, Blasio Mavedzenge, Jacob Mahenehene, Felix Murimbarimba and Crispen Sukume, Woodbridge, Suffolk, James Currey, 2010, 304 pp., ISBN 9781847010247. purports to overturn the western media and academy's ‘myths’ of agrarian failure and cronyism in Zimbabwe's fast-track land reform with a study rooted in the ‘reality’ of its outcomes in the Masvingo area. Yet the positivist picture painted by Scoones, Marongwe, Mavedzenge, Mahenehene, Murimbarimba, and Sukume is another position in portrayals of a complex process entangling many local material struggles–including those seen as successful examples of the yeomanry admired by the authors–with the equally important processes of authoritarian nationalism they side-line. ‘Myth making’ is not counter to ‘reality’, but positions particular claims within it. By concentrating on the ‘local’ and celebrating what they see as non-technocratic successes, the authors ignore the context and politics of the state–which they later invoke to develop adequate supportive policy and stability for the new farmers. Their reality ignores as much as the myths they try to challenge, and thus fails to assist to develop the policies they would like.     

Strategic Alliances: State-Business Relations in Mexico Under Neo-Liberalism and Crisis

Abstract – This paper examines how neoliberal policies implemented under Carlos Salinas Gortari (1988–1994) changed the nature of state-private sector relations in Mexico. The paper attempts to show how Mexico's entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) solidified a strategic alliance between the state and business. The drastic peso devaluation of December 1994 and the ensuing economic crisis however, threatened to shatter the very foundation of the new alliance with the private sector. This paper thus, explores how the Ernesto Zedillo regime (1994–2000) addressed the expectations of the capital class and strengthened its transparent ties with the private sector. The paper argues that given the nature of the more transparent strategic alliance formed under the Salinas administration, big business continues to be brought into the policy making process, and that in fact, Zedillo continues to intervene on the side of business.     

The Problem of Macroeconomic Policy Crossroads:Explaining the Economic Policy Paradox of Switzerland and Japan in the 1990s

The 1990s, which can be characterized as a decade of disinflationary growth and austerity policies for most developed market democracies, was the decade of stagnant growth and policy complacency for Switzerland and Japan. Based on a framework that emphasizes the structure of policy choices available to governments at economic crossroads (or crisis), I show Switzerland and Japan are unique in that (a) disinflationary fundamentals spared the countries from speculative or inflationary pressure that required drastic responses and (b) the governments paradoxically maintained conservative economic policies despite room for expansion in order to continue policies based on the compromise between export and domestic sectors. The policy crossroads perspective stresses the importance of endogenous coalitions even in a world of economic globalization to explain concerted politics and conservative policies, and to assess the true impact of international finance on domestic changes.     

Art and Modernity in Porfirian Mexico: Julia Escalante's Graziella and the Lechero

This essay examines Julia Escalante's Graziella and the 1881 El Lechero (The Milkman) as a case study of the ways in which the art of a Mexican woman artist instantiates aspects of Porfirian modernity. In the context of the academic hierarchy that existed through much of the nineteenth century, these scenes of everyday life, that is, genre scenes, done by a woman artist, would have been seemingly unremarkable. Different from most works by a woman artist, these paintings were exhibited in two very different spaces in downtown Mexico City: the National Academy in 1879 and 1881, and later in the Hotel del Jardín in 1888. I will suggest that these exhibition spaces define an architecture of legibility for the paintings inflecting the critical reception of the painting, opening onto the process of Porfirian modernity.     

Crossing Party Lines: Volatility and Ticket Splitting in Mexico (1994–2000)

This article aims to amplify our portrait of the Mexican electorate by examining the ways in which Mexican electors distributed their votes among the parties during 1994–2000, both over successive elections (volatility) and in the same election (ballot splitting). Aggregate and survey data revealed that Mexicans engaged in these two forms of electoral behaviour frequently, indicators of an electorate in flux. Regression analysis indicated that, contrary to the expectation that the politically sophisticated differentiated their votes, virtually all parts of Mexican society were equally likely to switch parties and split tickets.     

Baring it all for Activism: The 1985 Naked Protest in Mexico

This article analyses the 1985 naked protest carried out by silver miners of Pachuca, Mexico. This singular form of resistance, the first in Mexican labour history and organised by a dissident group within the miners' union called Liberación Minera (Miners Liberation), forced management to recognise and temporarily solve some of the miners' grievances. The naked protest unveiled the shady practices of the miners' employer, the state-owned Compañía Real del Monte y Pachuca, which refused to provide work clothes and safety equipment to miners. It also pointed to the miners' union leadership's complicity in the deterioration of labour conditions. Part of the miners' naked protest success had to do with the support that they gained from members of the left-wing press who used the protest to offer an early critique of Mexico's neoliberal policies. The 1985 naked protest occurred during one of Mexico's most severe economic crises and only four years before the company became privatised. This protest is one of the last examples of organised labour resistance before industries closed down and fired thousands of workers.     

Tears,Trauma and Suicide: Everyday Violence among Street Youth in Puebla,Mexico1

Despite considerable ethnographic research with young people in street situations and a growing interest in violence, little attention has been paid to suicide. The occurrence of suicide is a dramatic event that reveals weaknesses in support systems established by governments and civil society organisations, as well as perceived failings of friends. While an interest in suicide usually considers cause, in this paper we explore effect. How does the death of a member of a tightly knit group of street youth affect others and what does the suicide tell us about their identification with death more generally? Research for the paper was part of an in‐depth study of identities among street youth in Mexico.     

The Evolution of Innovation Policy Governance Systems and Policy Capacities in the Baltic States

This paper analyzes the evolution of innovation policy (IP) governance systems in the Baltic States and discusses how this progression has influenced the development of long-term IP capacities. The Baltics must attend to their long-term policy capacities as they are going through a ‘catch-up’ process while being influenced by both historical socioeconomic legacies and pressures of the global political economy. At the same time, they have delegated key policy activities away from centers of policy making and moved toward increasingly fragmented IP governance models, which provide narrow feedback and policy learning mechanisms that complicate the creation of long-term policy capacities.