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AbstractThis article asks whether democratization, under certain historical conditions, may relate to the deteriorating rule of law. Focusing on Mexico City, where police corruption is significant, this study argues that the institutionalized legacies of police power inherited from Mexico's one-party system have severely constrained its newly democratic state's efforts to reform the police. Mexico's democratic transition has created an environment of partisan competition that, combined with decentralization of the state and fragmentation of its coercive and administrative apparatus, exacerbates intrastate and bureaucratic conflicts. These factors prevent the government from reforming the police sufficiently to guarantee public security and earn citizen trust, even as the same factors reduce capacity, legitimacy, and citizen confidence in both the police and the democratically elected state. This article suggests that when democracy serves to undermine rather than strengthen the rule of law, more democracy can actually diminish democracy and its quality.

Using a sociology of knowledge framing, this essay highlights how & why the sociological imagination presented by leading European & American scholars showcased in this special issue offers a relatively hopeful assessment of recent transformations. It then questions the extent to which the same optimism prevails for scholars -- and citizens -- of the poorer, less advanced countries of the world. It not only suggests that many of the fundamental sociological transformations associated with the contemporary era -- ranging from globalization of economy, the rise of internet technology, the decline of the nation state, & the rise of more cosmopolitan identities -- are unevenly distributed around the world. It also argues that their political, social, & economic impact will vary, depending on history & developmental context. The essay further suggests that precisely because of the statist & protectionist legacies of late development, many of the same transformations that bring positive gains in the advanced capitalist world, signal troubles ahead for the developing world & its future. The essay draws to a close with a more focused examination of the dark side of recent transformations, evident in such problems as unchecked violence & regional or ethnic fragmentation across major swathes of the global south. Such developments, the essay concludes, should sustain the call for a more "pluralist" sociological imagination for the new millennium, one that can take into account differences within & between various countries around the globe, while also advancing our normative understanding of what it would take to make "global society" possible. References. Adapted from the source document.

This article examines the practices of urban planners in the early decades of this century as a basis for thinking about the public sphere in Mexico. It offers a general description of downtown Mexico City, its physical and social character, and the foreign and domestic reference points used to build the city in the period of revolutionary transition when competing views about downtown changed the profession of planning and the city itself. The article suggests that the existence of conflictive views of the city advanced by different planning elites impeded any real consensus on government efforts to develop downtown. This owed in no small part to the fact that the low-income, market, and trading-centered activities of downtown residents did not figure into modernist views of city planners, conservative and progressive alike. As downtown areas fell out of the urban planning picture, its populations were neglected, its physical spaces deteriorated, its social composition narrowed, and its so-called publicity became ever more circumscribed.