Dissertation Information for Alfonso J. GalindoNAME:
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SCHOOL: ADVISORS: COMMITTEE MEMBERS: MPACT Status: Fully Complete Title: Why is Mexico unstable? Corporativism and rent-seeking since 1929 Abstract: This dissertation explains how generalized rent-seeking practices--that take place through the intricate corporativist arrangements of the domestic political system--are the source of economic and social instability in Mexico. I analyze the Mexican Political System, focusing on the post-revolutionary period that started in 1929, with the foundation of the Party of the Revolution, currently known as Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). This political party governed Mexico uninterruptedly from its foundation to 2000. By building an organizational model based on Resource Dependency Theory, I explain the development of the basic components of the PRI System that led to stability in the country from the mid 1930s to the mid 1960s. At that time Mexico was able to produce enough internal wealth to allow the PRI leaders to coopt all sectors of society through its corporativist distributive arrangements. Meanwhile, the PRI government introduced protectionist policies allowing the elite formed by political and economic leaders to engage in rent-seeking activities. Protectionism and population growth led to the country's incapacity to generate enough resources to be distributed through the corporativist apparatus, creating a problem of scarcity that became evident in the late 1960s and was confirmed with the economic crisis of 1976. Scarcity was ameliorated by the oil-boom of the late 1970s, but the lack of a structural reform generated internal problems that led to another crisis in 1982. Mexican leaders in the 1980s and early 1990s attempted to change the characteristics of the PRI System to adapt to the resource constraints set by the international environment, confronting severe political problems with corporativist and rent-seeking interests. The reform process came to an abrupt end in 1994, with the assassination of the PRI Presidential Candidate. The prevailing conditions of political instability have not varied substantially from 1994 to 2006. Even though the PRI was ousted from Government in 2000, the vested interests of groups that were favored by the older rent-seeking arrangements are so strongly entangled in the political culture that the new government led by the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) appears to have been coopted by the traditional forces of the older System. |
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