Policymaking and the Control of the Nongovernmental Sector: Porfirio Díaz and the Grand Diet

Regimes and politicians seeking dominance of groups perceived as important to policy formation is not a new phenomena, and this is illustrated by the frustrated efforts of the Mexican president and dictator Porfirio Díaz to gain control of the Masonic lodges of his country. The Grand Diet devised by him as a pan Mexican Masonic alliance eventually collapsed, representing one of his few political failures and confirming the view that Mexican secret societies have seldom been amenable to central control.