What explains Mexico's unfettered enthusiasm for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a policy that is the kingpin of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's strategy of large-scale economic liberalization? Of the three signatories to this historic pact, Mexico's support is perhaps the most quixotic. Mexico's ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which still formally controls the government and economic policy- making, acquired and maintained power over the decades largely through its strong nationalist rhetoric and protectionist policies. Through nation- alization of the oil industry in 1938, strict regulation of the U.S.-based automobile industry in the 1950s and 1960s, restriction of foreign invest- ment in 1973, and nationalization of the banking system in 1982, Mexico has fearlessly guarded its domestic industry and actively struggled for national autonomy. This is not to say that Mexico has shunned foreign- and particularly U.S.- capital, or that it has rejected all attempts at inter- national integration. The bracero program introduced in the 1960s and the maquiladora program developed in the 1970s and 1980s attest to Mexico's interest in international economic cooperation. Yet, Mexican pol- itics and economic policy have always been defined by a strong nationalist orientation and a clear reluctance to fully open its borders

Dans le debat sur les politiques de transports urbains dans les PVD et le developpement, l'etude du metro de Mexico (1964-1976) souligne les conflits entre les elites politiques et economiques, les implications politiques, les modifications en terme de politique de transport urbain et d'impact technique immediat.

Using Mexico City as a case study, this paper examines the unique problems and constraints that contribute to urban fiscal and political crisis in cities in developing countries. The recent international debt crisis and Mexico’s history of dependent development accelerated the fiscal insolvency of Mexico City and limited local capacity to generate new or alternative revenue sources. Metropolitan authorities have limited maneuvering room to address this problem due to limited revenues and to growing urban austerity protests. The paper explores contradictory relationships between urban fiscal and political crisis and links them on the local urban level to the national and international context of dependent development. The paper concludes that urban political reform emerges in the constrained policy space where authorities can agree about Mexico City’s future and legitimize their rule at the same time.

Using Mexico City as a case study, this paper examines the unique problems and constraints that contribute to urban fiscal and political crisis in cities in developing countries. The recent international debt crisis and Mexico’s history of dependent development accelerated the fiscal insolvency of Mexico City and limited local capacity to generate new or alternative revenue sources. Metropolitan authorities have limited maneuvering room to address this problem due to limited revenues and to growing urban austerity protests. The paper explores contradictory relationships between urban fiscal and political crisis and links them on the local urban level to the national and international context of dependent development. The paper concludes that urban political reform emerges in the constrained policy space where authorities can agree about Mexico City’s future and legitimize their rule at the same time.

The role of new social movements in producing urban, societal and political change has been a significant theme in urban research and theoretical debate since the 1960s.

From a case study of the 1965 decision to build Mexico City's subway and the conflicts it engendered between 1964 and 1976, we see the political origins and developmental effects of mass rapid transit in LDC's. The paper validates basic premises of the political economy perspective; but instead of situating the subway policy's implementation in the context of interclass conflicts between capital and labor, it shows that cross-class alliances, intraclass divisions, and state-class alliances determined transport policy stances, and that these problematic alliances and divisions emerged from unique patterns of urban concentration, class formation, and state composition associated with Mexico's peripheral status in the world economy. It also shows that the subway's contentious introduction altered national development trajectories, not by changing land use or labor force mobility but by modifying the balance of state and class power in Mexico.

In Mexico, deteriorating economic conditions and stringent austerity measures associated with the current debt crisis have generated widespread dissatisfaction and social protest, particularly among urban poor and middle classes. At the same time, austerity and economic crisis have reduced the fiscal resources available for accomodating social demands. This not only inspires more active opposition, it tends to exacerbate conflicts within the government over what concessions can and must be made to protesting forces.

What explains state actors' support for democratic political reforms, and how does this shape democratization? These questions have remained relatively unexamined in recent scholarship on democratization because most scholars assume that state actors are unwilling to relinquish political power through the introduction of democratic structures and practices. Yet this assumption is now being called into question.

This paper was presented at the Columbia University-New York University Consortium seminar entitled "Mexico: Contrasting Visions" in April 1989.

En abril de 1987, la legislatura federal de México organizo en la capital un "congreso local" de representantes por eleccion directa, bajo el nombre de Asamblea de Representantes del Distrito Federal.

This article explores the relationship between reputational standing, productivity, and gender. Contrary to the results of most studies that assign article publication a prominent role in predicting reputational standing, chapter publication rates are identified as strong and consistent predictors of reputational standing. There were no gender differences with respect to reputational standing as measured by the indices employed in this study.