Downsizing the State

Privatization and the Limits of Neoliberal Reform in Mexico

By: Dag MacLeod

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Paperback | 26 February 2010

At a Glance

Paperback
320 Pages

Edition Type
New edition

Dimensions(cm)
15.1 x 22.9 x 2.0

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Beginning in 1983, the Mexican government implemented one of the most extensive programs of market-oriented reform in the developing world. Downsizing the State examines a key element of this reform program: the privatization of public firms.

Drawing upon interviews with government officials, business executives, and labor leaders as well as data from government archives and corporate documents, MacLeod highlights the difficulties of linking market reforms to improved public welfare. Privatization failed to live up to its promise of raising living standards or decentralizing the economy. Indeed, privatization actually increased the concentration of wealth in Mexico while redirecting the economy toward foreign markets. These findings contribute to theoretical debates regarding state autonomy and the embeddedness of economic action.

MacLeod calls into question the autonomy of the Mexican state in its privatization program. He shows that the creation of markets where public firms once dominated has involved both the destruction of social relations and the construction of new relations and institutions to regulate the market.

Industry Reviews

“These two monographs on government-business relations in contemporary Mexico (Macleod’s Downsizing the State and Shadlen’s Democratization Without Representation) share the same publisher as well as the virtues of careful research and documentation, creative synthesis of theoretical strands from political science, economic sociology and new institutional economics, an explicit comparative angle and accessibility for non-area specialists. These books can be confidently recommended as texts in graduate courses on comparative politics, sociology of economic organization, business management and public administration.”

—Kun-Chin Lin, Political Studies Review

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