Nafta Politica

The Politics of NAFTA in Mexico
Author(s): Guy Poitras and Raymond Robinson
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp.
1-35
Published by: Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Miami
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/165861 .
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The Politics

of NAFTA in Mexico

Guy Poitras and Raymond Robinson*

OR MUCH of the twentieth century, ThirdWorld economies that were based upon import-substitution industrialization (ISI) were dominated by authoritarian regimes. When
economic liberalization began to overtake many of these
countries, however, as happened in recent years, the question
arose as to whether authoritarian rule had not become anachronistic in mediating the relations between state and economy
in the Third World.
Theexperience of Mexico strongly suggests that authoritarian rule remains a potent force in this era of economic
change. Although Mexico's authoritarian government continued to retain power even in the presence of a liberal economic
agenda, adopted during the early 1990s, it did find it expedient
to make some adaptations in the system. The most significant
of these, by far, was to make alterations inthe ruling coalition
that had governed the country since the early 1930s, rather than
to embark upon a transition to democracy. These changes
represented the regime's most critical initiative in attempting to
meet, if not reconcile, the conflicting claims of authoritarianism
on the one hand with the demands of economic liberalization
on the other.
Whether an open economy functions betterunder democratic or authoritarian rule has been (and still is) a matter of

Guy Poitras is Professor of Political Science at TrinityUniversity in San
Antonio (X). Raymond Robertson is a graduate student in economics at the
University of Texas at Austin and studied under a Fulbrightgrant in Mexico
during the 1991-1992 year.
*An earlier version of this article was presented as a paper at theannual
meeting of the International Studies Association, Acapulco (Mexico), 24-27
March 1993. The authors wish to thank Dale Story for his helpful comments
on this earlier version.

2

STUDIES ND WORLD FFAIRS
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JOURNAL F INTERAMERICAN
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debate. In the case of Mexico, three views have gained
prominence in delineating the ambiguous relationship between economic and political freedom.The first view,
invoking classical liberal theory, holds that economic freedom
(open markets) and political freedom (democracy) must eventually coincide in Mexico (Baer, 1991; Bizberg, 1990). In this
view, it is axiomatic that Mexico's authoritariangovernment
would gradually lose its ability to function effectively in a free
market system based upon supply and demand. The corollary
to thisview is that reform efforts, economic and political,
would take place in sequence, with economic liberalization
preceding democracy, much as occurred in Chile (Weintraub
and Baer, 1992; Rubio, 1993).
The second view, rooted in contemporary experience in
LatinAmerica and elsewhere, diverges from this view but is not
incompatible with it. Since economic liberalization extracts
greater...