Social Welfare Policy and Political Opening in Mexico

In: Journal of Latin American studies, Band 25, Heft 3, S. 613-628

Abstract

In this article I wish to provide an overview of the changing priorities that successive Mexican governments have given the social development sector since the administration of President Echeverria (1970–6). This will be set against a backcloth of political reform and an opening of the political space in which parties other than the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) have been allowed to function, albeit under certain constraints. In addition I will examine important changes that have been undertaken both in the nature of social policies themselves, but also in the patterns and efficiency with which public agencies have delivered this particular social good. I argue that in Mexico, as in many advanced capitalist countries since Bismarck's Prussia during the late nineteenth century, social welfare provision is an important element in the understanding of political management and 'statecraft'.1 As well as providing a temporary palliative to offset some of the negative outcomes of rapid urbanisation and economic growth based upon low wage rates and trickle-down, social policy provides an arena through which scarce societal resources may be negotiated. As I will describe, those patterns of negotiation change for a variety of reasons: as power relations shift; as economies reflate or turn into recession; as the level of state intervention and control intensifies or slackens; as our diagnosis of specific problems and the policy instruments we develop become more sophisticated and sensitive to local needs; and last, but not least in the context of Mexico, are included changes that arise from human agency as different presidents take executive office.