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The Political Economy of Subnational Economic Recovery in Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Jonathan Hiskey*
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
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Abstract

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In an era when development processes seem best characterized by a continuing cycle of macroeconomic crisis and recovery, a critical question for students of the political economy of development concerns identifying the factors that facilitate recovery from economic shock. Recent work on this question has moved beyond a focus on specific macroeconomic policy adjustments toward analysis of the role political institutions play in shaping recovery processes. Applying this research to the experiences of Mexico's thirty-one states following the country's 1995 economic crisis, I identify significant variations in states' abilities to recover from crisis and link those variations in part to the country's uneven electoral transition to a multiparty democracy that coincided with the crisis. With more and more governmental activities increasingly being decentralized to lower levels of government, these findings provide an indication of the important role subnational variations in political environments can play in shaping the broader political and economic outcomes of Latin America's “dual transition.”

Resumen

Resumen

En tiempos en los cuales los procesos de desarrollo parecieran estar caracterizados principalmente por un ciclo continuo de crisis macroeconómica y de recuperación, una pregunta crítica surge para los estudiantes de economía política del desarrollo: ¿cuáles son los factores que mejor le permiten a una economía recuperarse de un shock económico? Estudios recientes sobre este tema han desviado su atención desde el estudio de políticas de ajuste macroeconómico hacia el análisis de los tipos de instituciones políticas que un país posee para enfrentar las consecuencias sociales de una aguda depresión económica. Este artículo lleva esta investigación más allá, a través de la evaluación de las variaciones en las dimensiones institucionales y su impacto en los índices de recuperación económica subnacional. Basándome en los procesos de recuperación de los treinta y un estados de México posteriores a las crisis económica de 1995, identifico variaciones significativas que existen en las diversas capacidades con las que los estados contaron para recuperarse de la crisis; y de este modo ofrezco apoyo preliminar para la tesis que propone que la recuperación de una crisis económica está en parte determinada por la capacidad que las instituciones políticas tienen para manejar los conflictos que surgen casi inevitablemente durante períodos de crisis.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by the University of Texas Press

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