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This paper seeks to explain the recent and growing international relations of Mexican sub-national units. It addresses four central questions: 1) What explains the dramatic growth in the international relations of these governments?; 2) Do sub-national units have an independent foreign policy in Mexico?; 3) Which are the levels of sub-national units diplomacy in Mexico?; and, 4) Which variables explain the variation in this international activity?The first section argues that the growth in external relations of sub-national governments is generated by the combination of two sets of variables: a) in the international arena, the growing interdependence and globalization of the system, and b) in the domestic system, the processes of democratization, decentralization and structural reform. The second section sustains that, in strict legal terms, Mexican sub-national units do not have a foreign policy of their own, given the legal limitations that exist in the country, where foreign policy is an exclusive faculty of the federal Executive. The argument in the third section is that there exists a wide variation in the degree of international participation of sub-national governments, and to characterize this variation, a typology is constructed (four levels of sub-national diplomacy: autarchy, international participation, international relations, and foreign policy). Based on this typology, the 32 Mexican federal states are classified. Finally, the fourth section argues that the degree of international activity depends on four variables: economic (State gross income), political (juxtaposed government), geographic (border location), and external shock (international visibility). Each of these variables is analyzed to determine its impact on the unit's international relations. Finally, the conclusions summarize the main findings of the paper and present a series of recommendations on public policy issues to improve the representation and coordination of the interests and activities of sub-national governments on international issues. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparing the "shaming" exerted by international actors over Mexico around the issues of femicides in Ciudad Juárez, on the one hand, and security-related violations of human rights, on the other, this paper explores the relevance of issue-characteristics in the determination of the level of "shaming" exerted by the main players within Transnational Advocacy Networksâ??Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and intergovernmental and government actors. The paper adopts propositions by the literature in the sense that issues that involve bodily harm of vulnerable individuals and that coincide with existing international understandings about appropriate behavior are more likely to generate "shaming" (not only by NGOs, but also by governments and intergovernmental actors). The paper shows that the femicides have generated a significantly greater amount of "shaming" over Mexico than security-related violations, and concludes that issue-characteristics have been a relevant intervening variable in the determination of levels of international shaming over the country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on two specific situations (the response by security forces to radical social mobilization in Oaxaca, and the militarized "war on drugs"), and recurring to the notions of "pressure from above" and "argumentation", this papers offers a systematic account of the international attention/preoccupation, and the related debates and discussions, that have emerged around the tensions between security and human rights during the first year of the presidency of Felipe Calderón. How strong is this international concern? What are the characteristics of the discussions or the debates implied? What do we make of all this? Does it matter? The paper shows that the Mexican government is not under significant international pressure to modify its approach to human rights within its security agenda. The paper also shows that the discussions about human rights and security cannot be considered as "true argumentation". This implies that international concern and the related discussions or debates are not significant, and that therefore international actors and the processes they generate are not making a determinant contribution to the definition of the Mexican government's approach to human rights within its security agenda. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the cases of the European Union (EU) and NAFTA and examines how integration has affected politics, economic structures and economic performance in three countries: Mexico, Portugal and Spain. The paper reviews the relationships between regional integration, economic growth, and democratic consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Norway has made a point of administering its petroleum resources using three distinct government bodies: a national oil company (NOC) engaged in commercial hydrocarbon operations; a government ministry to help set policy; and a regulatory body to provide oversight and technical expertise. In Norway's case, this institutional design has provided useful checks and balances, helped minimize conflicts of interest, and allowed the NOC, Statoil, to focus on commercial activities while other government agencies regulate oil operators including Statoil itself. Norway's relative success in managing its hydrocarbon resources has prompted development institutions to consider whether this "Norwegian Model" of separated government functions should be recommended to other oil-producing countries, particularly those whose oil sectors have underperformed. Seeking insight into this question, we study eight countries with different political and institutional characteristics, some of which have attempted to separate functions in oil in the manner of Norway and some of which have not. We conclude that while the Norwegian Model may be a "best practice" of sorts, it is not the best prescription for every ailing oil sector. The separation of functions approach is most useful and feasible in cases where political competition exists and institutional capacity is relatively strong. Unchallenged leaders, on the other hand, are often able to adequately discharge commercial and policy/regulatory functions in the oil sector using the same entity, although this approach may not be robust against political changes (nor do we address in this paper any possible development or human welfare implications of this arrangement). When technical and regulatory talent is particularly lacking in a country, better outcomes may result from consolidating commercial, policy, and regulatory functions in a single body until institutional capacity has further developed. Countries like Nigeria with vibrant political competition but limited institutional capacity pose the most significant challenge for oil sector reform: unitary control over the sector is impossible but separation of functions is often impossible to implement. In such cases reformers are wise to focus on incremental but sustainable improvements in technical and institutional capacity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Norway has made a point of administering its petroleum resources using three distinct government bodies: a national oil company (NOC) engaged in commercial hydrocarbon operations; a government ministry to help set policy; and a regulatory body to provide oversight and technical expertise. In Norway's case, this institutional design has provided useful checks and balances, helped minimize conflicts of interest, and allowed the NOC, Statoil, to focus on commercial activities while other government agencies regulate oil operators including Statoil itself. Norway's relative success in managing its hydrocarbon resources has prompted development institutions to consider whether this "Norwegian Model" of separated government functions should be recommended to other oil-producing countries, particularly those whose oil sectors have underperformed. Seeking insight into this question, we study eight countries with different political and institutional characteristics, some of which have attempted to separate functions in oil in the manner of Norway and some of which have not. We conclude that while the Norwegian Model may be a "best practice" of sorts, it is not the best prescription for every ailing oil sector. The separation of functions approach is most useful and feasible in cases where political competition exists and institutional capacity is relatively strong. Unchallenged leaders, on the other hand, are often able to adequately discharge commercial and policy/regulatory functions in the oil sector using the same entity, although this approach may not be robust against political changes (nor do we address in this paper any possible development or human welfare implications of this arrangement). When technical and regulatory talent is particularly lacking in a country, better outcomes may result from consolidating commercial, policy, and regulatory functions in a single body until institutional capacity has further developed. Countries like Nigeria with vibrant political competition but limited institutional capacity pose the most significant challenge for oil sector reform: unitary control over the sector is impossible but separation of functions is often impossible to implement. In such cases reformers are wise to focus on incremental but sustainable improvements in technical and institutional capacity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infant mortality (IM), defined typically as the number of babies per 1,000 to die before their first birthday, is a global health problem of epic scope. In many developing countries, the IM rate is similar to that of the US in the 19th century and in disadvantaged regions of the U.S.—such as the rural South, urban wastelands, and Native American reservations. Almost universally, infant mortality is assessed via an abstract numeric register, and more often than not, the IM rate represents something else, such as progress toward the MDGs. Absent from the widely circulating IM rates are representations of lifeless infant bodies, grieving mothers and fathers, and vulnerable communities. Seeing IM as merely an abstract abacus, we argue, has profound implications for how we understand and respond to child death. IM as a numeric object or 'fact' prevents understanding child death within contexts of familial and social trauma, structural violence, and social justice. This paper is part of a multi-sited ethnography of the transnational biopolitics of infant mortality. Here, we first problematize prevailing conceptions of IM and then present findings from a pilot study of aid workers alongside data from global public health documents and first-person narratives. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Cold War, US policy-makers implicitly rejected "North America" as a relevant context for security cooperation, seeing Mexico as part of a larger "Latin American" arena and Canada as part of a "North Atlantic" community. NORAD was only "North American" in the narrower US-Canada bilateral sense, and seen by most in Washington as an extension of the NATO alliance. Since the end of the Cold War, US planners have begun thinking in terms of a trilateral "North American" theatre, and have formalized this new regional geography through domestic political and regional diplomatic forums (e.g., the pairing of Canada and Mexico desks within the State Department's Western Hemisphere Affairs bureau and the Security and Prosperity Partnership, respectively). But the specific security challenges in each bilateral relationship tend to pull the US in different directions, challenging the regional concept. Recent developments in Mexico (drug war, swine flu) have intensified these tensions. This paper traces the development of a North American "regional consciousness" in US security planning over the last twenty years, assesses the salience and durability of this new perspective, and identifies and assesses some of the policy advantages and distortions which stem from subsequent institutional changes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is essentially a dialogue with Alfred Montero's insightful idea of approaching the generic and controversial concept of "development" through a more empirical notion of "productivity-enhancing synergy" between public and private agents at the heart of developmental outcomes, in his comparative analysis of Brazil's and Spain's subnational governments (Montero, 2002). As a way of discussing his contributions, we decided to subject it to a tentative quantitative test, based on another pair of countries, Brazil and Mexico, in a context of stabilization of the market reforms and of reasonably sustained growth that is different from his original setting. Based on preliminary data gathered, we will indicate that there is a high correlation between market-conforming institutions and developmental performance of the states of Brazil and Mexico, without taking into account how strategic actors and institutions interacted through a "productivity-enhancing synergy". Put it simply, this restricted test will allow us to bring into some questions to Montero's concept of "productivity-enhancing synergy" to possibly advance his contributions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since at least 20 years, Mexico has constantly tried to adapt its border regime to the expectations of the United States on border enforcement politics. During the same period, the Mexican political agenda called special attention to programs promoting the human rights of migrants. And since almost 20 years back, Mexico's state unit "Beta Groups for Protection of Migrants" (Grupos Beta de Protección a Migrantes) has been patrolling the northern, and later also the southern Mexican border. Their aim: To protect the human rights and the well-being of all migrants, regardless of their migration status, and without enforcing migration law. With this profile, Beta Groups stand worldwide unique. Despite of this, to this date no profound analysis of this state unit has been made, nor have its place and role in contemporary Mexican migration policy been defined. This paper presents the central findings of a research study on the Beta Groups, that draws on field research in Mexico's northern and southern border zones, on interviews with main actors in the United States and Mexico, and an analysis of discursive material, such as publications, posters and folders of Beta Groups or of the responsible Mexican state authorities like the national Migration Institute or the Department of the Interior. So how do Beta Groups protect the human rights of all migrants on Mexican soil, as it is their defined goal? Understaffed and not properly supplied, the main daily routine of Beta Groups agents to day in its current 16 operational areas is to offer some help and service to migrants, e.g., giving basic information about the dangers of the clandestine border crossing, hand out water and food. Sometimes, Beta Agents engage in rescue operations of lost or wounded migrants in the deserts, canals, and mountains of the border zone. Working mostly unarmed, and staffed with only 160 agents nationwide, their capability to protect migrants against dangers such as assaults by criminals or extortion by corrupt Mexican police officers, is really limited. Its main role today as a state unit is mostly to serve as a publicly recognized evidence for a created Mexican self-image as a state that acts sensibly and actively in the field of protection of human rights, especially regarding its migration policy. This "double framed migracion policy" by the Mexican state, as I will call it, focuses at the same time on migration control, and human rights discourse and symbolic actions. Thereby this policy functions as an important legitimizing strategy to satisfy both domestic and foreign interests. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remittances - the money that migrants send home to their families, a transnational phenomenon par excellence - have grown at extraordinary rates in the last two decades. Because of their development potential they have gained considerable attention by scholars and policymakers recently. Whereas up to now many studies have focused on the use of remittances and their impact on poverty and inequality, the potential contributions of remittances to the financial development of receiving countries is an emerging research field. Remittances can be a gateway to the financial sector for hitherto excluded individuals and households, though, especially when they are accompanied by specific governance initiatives. The paper presents an overview of such initiatives capitalizing on remittances for financial development from Mexico, one of the largest receiving countries in the world with significant sums of remittances from the United States. As a first step for a future analysis of factors of success, the initiatives are presented focusing on their different actor constellations, i.e. on the varying forms, in which state, market, and civil society actors from the remittance sending and receiving countries cooperate in these new forms of transnational governance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberal trade policies between the United States and Mexico of the last ten years produced a domino effect within the "ma(i)ze of globalization," that began with a reduction in support for farmers and the removal of laws that regulated prices of corn. These changes resulted in a series of interconnected problems, including restrictions on Mexican farmers' ability to sell maize. I explore how the negative effects of free trade, especially the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has increased poverty, thus resulting in increased migration, searches for alternative job opportunities, and changes in gendered divisions of labor. In this paper, I stop at different points in the ma(i)ze of globalization to illustrate how globalization and free trade have affected the lives of women in Oaxaca, Mexico, resulted in increased immigration and changed gender divisions of labor. My analysis draws on a nine-month ethnographic study in Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Mexico City and 50 interviews with corn farmers, tortilla makers, women, and members of environmental, indigenous, and farmers' rights organizations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just as globalization takes many forms and extends its hegemony through varous processes, resistance to globalization takes many forms and works through various counterhegemonic processes. This paper examines the forms and processes of changing consciousness brought about through women's grassroots activism in Morelos, Mexico. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pursuit of greater security in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 has sharpened the debate in the United States about policy issues related to the southwest border. Matters of trade, immigration and physical security collide as never before with transnational threats to security continuing to pose significant challenges to policymakers on both sides of the border. Even as the United States is making substantial investments in a Secure Border Initiative, public opinion is conflicted on immigration reform and the imperative for facilitated trade is powerful. These dynamics raise a host of questions about what the term “secure border” means now and can mean in the future. This paper explores the current state of governance along the U.S./Mexico border and considers the factors that will influence the future state of border control on the Southwest Border. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formulation of foreign policy is vital in order to define Mexico's participation within the world scenario. This paper studies Mexico's role in the North American region during Vicente Fox's term. Given the analyzed variables, a trilateral approach is privileged albeit recognizing USA's importance for Mexico's insertion in the region. Throughout this study, known foreign policy lines for the region are studied while some others are introduced. Mexico's presence in the world is an obligatory condition for this country to achieve favorable economic, cultural, political and diplomatic development. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its growing prominence among policy-makers (not to mention hundreds of millions of the world's poor), remittances is a topic much ignored among scholars. Arguably among the most important but most underappreciated phenomena in international political economy, migration and remittances involve enormous transfers of people and money. Most analysis to date is concerned with the relevance of such transfers to economic development at the household level, and early indicators seem promising. However, to spur long-term development such transfers will need to increase political responsiveness and the provision of public goods. This paper develops a theory for how such an interaction might occur and conducts preliminary tests using municipal-level data from Mexico. Using instrumental variables and a two-stage least squares estimation, I conclude that remittances have a positive though moderate effect on the provision of public infrastructure such as sanitary sewer systems. This effect is only realized, however, in municipalities that have both high poverty and high electoral contestation. In addition to calling for additional analysis, the absence of stronger impact is taken to suggest that to date remittances have done little to increase electoral participation or political responsiveness. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Admiration and resentment of America are deeply rooted in the political traditions of the United States' nearest neighbors. As in other parts of the world, resentment has been on the rise in recent years. This paper distinguishes in its first part between critical opinion, skepticism, and prejudice on the one hand, and different types of anti-Americanism on the other. In the paper's next two parts, these general categories are confronted with data from Canada and Mexico and the dramatically different historical trajectories in the evolution of anti-Americanism in these two countries. In the fourth and final section, the paper seeks to identify commonalities, if any, in these radically different political settings. The expected finding is that even in close proximity to the United States, we find a plurality of different types of anti-Americanisms, a condition that characterizes world politics more generally. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Mexico’s historical human rights culture – discursive agreement with the Northern understanding of human rights coupled with passive or conflictive action – is the result of a desire to please the international community and domestic constituents while either covering up violations or trying not to rock the boat after a democratic transition. In the past ten years, this culture has begun to coexist with an opposing culture, one of concurring action coupled with discursive disagreement. A growing human rights community agitating in favor of judicial reform has been interpreted by various political actors as interfering with the fight on crime in Mexico. This interference has led to claims that human rights benefit criminals as well as the argument that criminals, because they have committed a violation against society, lose the human rights protection that society provides. This paper examines Grondona’s theory that undersecure countries must decide between public security and human rights as a possible explanation for the new culture of human rights in Mexico but concludes that the situation in Mexico has actually moved beyond this decision by altering the concept of human rights. The social and political permission for this discursive disagreement with the universality and inalienability of human rights may arise from the legacies of sovereignty’s limits on international consensus interpretation of human rights as well as the use of human rights as a tool to achieve political goals. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations (UN) member states' support for the responsibility to protect (R2P) norm is arranged within a spectrum that spans from those who are detractors of the concept to those who have taken a proactive position and, as such, have assembled a Group of Friends. There have been countries that have moved from the former category to the latter and Mexico is one of them. In 1999, its position regarding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombings against Serbia was based on a very strict interpretation of the non-intervention principle, however, it has recently become a committed member of the Group of Friends of the R2P norm. Therefore the question that arises is: what were the conditions that made possible this shift? The argument proposed in this article is that the transition to democracy brought changes in Mexico's foreign policy in general, and towards human rights -specifically to mass atrocities- in particular. However, this does not mean that Mexico has embraced the "three-pillar" strategy proposed by the Secretary-General (SG) in his report Implementing the responsibility to protect uncritically and in a vacuum. In order to understand Mexico's position towards R2P it is indispensable to contextualize the foreign policy shift experienced since the end of the 1990s in the framework of other Mexican experiences in foreign policy. These include, amongst others, an active role in the search of a lasting peace for the protracted conflicts in Central America, and a pattern of interventions by the United States in the region. Thus, it is safe to say that the recent changes in foreign policy, including the position towards R2P, are limited or bolstered by previous events. Additionally, this piece will also suggest that there is a domestic limit to the active role of Mexico in the promotion of this norm, namely, the battle against drug-trafficking. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since World War II, the United States' military capabilities have surpassed those of any other country. However, its room for maneuver is not infinite. Through their interactions with the United States, other countries assist and constrain its actions. By virtue of geographic contiguity to their mutual neighbor, Canada and Mexico are uniquely placed to serve as either buffers against external threats or conduits of insecurity. Their participation (or lack thereof) in continental defense initiatives thus lowers or raises the costs of US security. Congruent Canadian and American interests have facilitated the largely complimentary workings of their bilateral defense regime. Although sometimes critical of its neighbor, Canada's material and strategic assistance has proved vital to US defensive projects. Meanwhile, Mexican security relations with the United States have been marked by intermittent cooperation and disagreement, due partly to the absence of an institutional framework, but also to historical anxiety about US domination. By highlighting Canada and Mexico's role in securing North America against continental threats - from the Axis Powers to the Soviet Union to terrorist cells - this study illuminates the external construction and constraint of US military power, an area with significant implications for both academia and policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politics in Canada and in Mexico are defined in large part by the way that they relate to the United States, and the way that the US relates to Canada and Mexico can tell us a lot about the way that the US thinks about its place in the world. We look comparatively at the US-Canada and US-Mexico relationships, through the concept of the "special relationship." ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Martin draws on research with 600 migrants coming through or to Mexico, along with faith-based shelter staff and the Tamaulipas, Mexico, human rights agency. Migrants are subject to great risks for robbery and gender-based violence, both from municipal po ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although little studied as a laboratory for nuclear management, Latin America is a particularly appropriate place on which to focus issues of nuclear proliferation. Numerous Latin American states have historically followed different nuclear paths and logics, ranging from covert (Argentina) to overt nuclear strategies (Brazil), as well as non-proliferation strategies (Mexico). In spite of these variations, little is known as to why so many similar states in Latin America have followed such diverse and dissimilar nuclear patterns. This project attempts to explain divergent nuclear logics by examining how the evolution of civil-military relations has shaped regional nuclear policy preferences. Since most nuclear weapon projects in Latin America were once handled by military institutions, we need to know how the armed forces and their civilian counterparts have grappled for control over nuclear policy during different historical periods. In particular, we need to know how civilian control of the armed forces affects (or not) nuclear strategies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a common belief that because of the right to veto of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the margin of action for the non-permanent members is scarce or basically non existent. The general perception is that elect ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its inception, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has assumed one of the most influential roles in the global political economy. As with many large, powerful actors, the IMF is often subject to criticism. But is the IMF really deserving of this ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regressive globalization and global change have created new threats for global and local food security. Reductions in crop yields, drought and floods have limited food supply, while the demand for biofuels, food imports in China and India, and speculative ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modernization theorists in the 1960s and 1970s predicted that One-Party Revolutionary regimes would tend to evolve into more competitive party systems because of the institutional and cultural consequences of industrialization. Industrialization would produce an urban middle class and a complex society demanding representation best achieved by a competitive party system. The political leadership would transition from populist to technocratic in response to changes demanding greater economic efficiency. Mexico had industrialized and produced a large middle class by the late 1960s but did not democratize as predicted. This study argues that state led industrialization produced a state-dependent middle class that helped prolong pre-modern politics and slowed down the transition. Evidence from local transitions confirms the powerful relationship between level of industrialization and the level of democratic change, as long as economic growth leads to an independent middle class. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the global context of the fisheries overexploitation crisis it is crucial to understand how small-scale fishing communities in developing countries can govern themselves to limit fishing effort to their fishing grounds. We conducted a comparative analysis to assess the performance of two policy tools: individual-single-species fishing permits and multi-species-specific concessions. We compared two neighboring small-scale fishing communities in the Gulf of California Mexico that use the same harvesting technology, exploit the same species in roughly the same ecological conditions, but have devised very different institutional arrangement at the local level to control access to their fishing grounds. We found that the community using fishing permits as its main policy tool operated under an open access regime and had overexploited its fishery, while the other community had been able to successfully control access to its fishing grounds and avoid overexploitation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the relationship between institutionalized citizen participation at the municipal level, empowerment and patterns of clientelism. I argue that, contrarily to what has been suggested by the literature, observations show that citizens' local participation does not necessarily lead to the erosion of political clientelism. Why? Drawing for the comparative case study of the participatory experience of two Mexican municipalities, León (Guanajuato) and Nezahualcóyotl (Estado de México), I argue that participation does matter, but not all types of participation have the same effect on state-society relationships. I assume that, even though formal institutional design is important to consider while assessing the importance of popular participation on the definition of the relationship between the state and its citizens, informal practices are even more determining in the level of autonomy citizens have within the structure of institutionalized participatory mechanisms, which in turn determines the potential for such local institutions to become a means toward overcoming the patterns of clientelism traditionally characterizing the state-society relationships in Mexico. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commodification of environmental services - carbon storage, water filtration, flood control, wildlife habitats, genetic diversity, and scenic beauty - is a leading environmental policy trend. A new generation of projects aimed at "selling nature to save it" in the global South has been launched under the rubric of payment for environmental services (PES). Most of these PES projects rest on the premise that markets in biodiversity, carbon storage, and hydrological services can simultaneously slow climate change, promote conservation, and reduce poverty. However, they have been beset by conflicts that cast doubt on the idea that environmental services trading can produce the promised "triple win" of profitability, greening, and benefits for the poor. The World Bank-supported national PES program in Mexico was planned as a model of market-based management aimed at optimizing efficiency in conservation spending. But genuine markets have not materialized and efficiency criteria have clashed with anti-poverty goals and the agendas of Mexican state agencies. Consequently, like other neoliberal-inspired projects, the Mexican PES scheme is hybrid of market-like mechanisms, state regulations, and public subsidies. PES in Mexico has been further reshaped by the engagement of rural social movements that have arisen in opposition to neoliberal restructuring. These activist campesinos and their allies insist that ecosystem services are co-produced by nature and rural communities and that their values derive mainly from their contributions to rural life and Mexican society, not their market prices. These divergent conceptualizations of environmental values are linked to disparate views of the role of forestry, agriculture, and rural life, and the state in development, as well as contrasting understandings of nature-society relationships. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of globalization, as well as different internal processes such as democratization, decentralization and economic liberalization, there has been a growing participation of Mexican federal entities in international activities. However, unlike the rest of the entities, the Federal District remained foreign to these bonds with the exterior. Past administrations under Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Alejandro Encinas kept an austerity policy which left the capital distant from the rest of the world. It was until Marcelo Ebrard's administration in 2006, that international activities became a priority. This change in policies was not only due to different internal and external processes, but also to Ebrard´s academic formation and his desire to position himself politically, both nationally and internationally, leading the Federal District from isolationism to a high level of international participation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Keohane and Nye have noticed, norms are increasingly becoming important tools for managing global governance (Keohane and Nye, 2000). In fact, norms constitute one of the main intermestic channels between global governance and domestic governance. In this view, they are playing a significant role in the two-level games in Putnam’s terms (Putnam, 1988). In the Americas as well as other parts of the world, norms are used to promote ideas and principles especially about core values such as liberal democracy and human rights. Civil-military relations were always an essential component of liberal democracy (Burk, 2002) like the recent political crisis in Venezuela illustrates. Indeed, the link between democracy and civilian control of the military is clearly established in the literature on the subject. Nevertheless, the study of civilian control of the military in the Americas has neglected to take into account a new but significant aspect of the problem. This concerns the relation between regional democratic norms and the evolution of civil-military relations at the national level (Mace and Loiseau, 2002). In general, this aspect concerns particularly civil-military relations studies which have omitted, until now, to examinate the significant influence of the international factors on the domestic dynamic of civil-military relations (Martin, 1999). In order to fill this gap in the literature, the research question suggested here is the following: Did the regional and international diffusion of norms of democratic civil-military relations have a measurable impact observable by an improvement of the civilian control of the military in Latin America between 1990 and 2000, most particularly in Mexico? Asking this question is to determine if and how the Latin American political regimes in their process of democratic transition/consolidation interiorized the norms of democratic and liberal management of the armed forces conveyed by the international and the regional normative environment for more than fifteen years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid 1990s, problems of criminality and insecurity have represented a serious challenge to the processes of democratic transition taking place in many Latin American countries. By drawing on contemporary Mexico as a paradigmatic case, this paper ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As post-neo-liberal scholars have pointed out, social investment targeting risk groups has become the focus of social spending by states in many countries around the world, and children, given their inherent potential, have increasingly become the focus of state investments aimed at enhancing their future integration into the market economy. This paper details the results of two case studies which examine the regulation of motherhood in very different contexts where neo-liberal techniques target investment in children. In Canada recent campaigns have urged mothers to invest heavily in their children during their early years in order to enhance brain development and future market success. In Mexico, the state-sponsored anti-poverty programme aims to increase children?s human capital development through the educational system as a way to ensure the future insertion of rural Mexicans into the market economy. The results of in-depth interviews with mothers in southern Ontario and rural Mexico are compared and while the there are many class-based and cultural differences in the experiences of these mothers, there are also some surprising similarities in terms of the effects of a social investment framework on the regulation of motherhood. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s there has been a world-wide trend towards commodification and since the 1990s this policy has also reached public services. In the implementation of commodification policies, specific knowledge of experts and scientists plays an important role, as they convey the relevance of these policies to citizens and state agencies. We term this kind of knowledge ?legitimizing knowledge? as it helps to garner support for commodification policies - and to overcome resistance against it. Furthermore we assume that this knowledge is linked to and propagated by specific institutions, which either have a high scientific reputation or employ ?structural power? for the diffusion of this knowledge. In our paper we focus on the commodification of public services in the field of elec-tricity and education in developing countries. In the literature on privatisation the role of knowledge is often neglected, as emphasis is put on the role played by institutions. By focusing on two branches, we aim at acquiring broader insights concerning the role of knowledge and institutions in the commodification of public services. In the field of electricity, New Institutional Economics (such as Public Choice and Principal Agent Theory) and in the field of education Human Capital Theory play an important role as legitimating theoretical approaches. A key institution diffusing this knowledge is the World Bank and it plays a crucial role in the commodification of electricity and educational services in developing countries. As the World Bank, over the last decade, has redefined itself as a ?knowledge institution?, it focuses specifically on the circulation of knowledge in the form of written information and by sending experts into the field. With these activities the World Bank shapes the implementation of commodification processes through the diffusion of a specific type of knowledge. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the process of identity formation of the Minutemen, a self-proclaimed "border enforcement" organization that patrols the U.S.-Mexico border and organizes for stricter enforcement of US immigration laws. In performing the border and thus the role of the citizen soldier, the Minutemen both draw on and reproduce meanings that are fundamental to American identity and particularly white masculinity within this country. Moreover, the emergence of the Minuteman Project can be seen as a function of the intersection of several processes. These include: racial ambiguities within a post-Civil Rights Era, economic insecurity resulting from globalization processes, and a glamorization of the American military in media coverage of the War on Terror. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the perceptions, preferences, and interests of Mexicans regarding Mexico?s foreign policy in general, and the process of North American integration in particular. Using the 2004 and 2006 ?Mexico and the World? surveys conducted by CIDE and COMEXI, it argues, contrary to common knowledge, that Mexicans are 1) significantly interested in international affairs; 2) more internationalist and globalized than Mexico?s current foreign policy; 3) more pro- than anti-U.S.; and, 4) have closer affinities with North America than Latin America. It further argues that the current process of increasing Mexican integration with North America will prevail over other available options, independently of which political party holds the Presidency in Mexico or the U.S., and that the latter can only catalyze or slow down, but not stop or derail, North American integration. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings forward the experiences of women and feminist groups in Mexico and Latin America that have addressed the question of gender and trade as deeply interrelated to ongoing processes of democratization. Accordingly, it is developed an initial argument in favor of analytically differentiating the context where women collective interventions across borders are taking place to engender while democratizing global trade politics from the very nature of these interventions. This differentiation is advanced with two purposes in mind: a) to argue in favor of linking gender, trade and democracy as way to push forward a re-politicization of trade policy and market relations; and b) to set an analytical basis that can help us to identify which are the possible contributions (lessons learned) of women and feminist groups to forge open, participative and gender-sensitive alternatives to prevailing practices/discourse/institutions of global trade governance under high levels of impunity, gender inequality and non-consolidated democratic systems in the South. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the rhetoric and symbolism employed by President Bush during the Bush/Fox era of U.S. Mexico relations and endeavors to situate his engagement in an historical context by comparing it to his predecessors in the post World War II era. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1920s the Standard Oil Company faced the hostility of the left-wing Mexican Revolutionary government, which eventually expropriated the company's properties in 1938. As nationalist rhetoric increased before 1938 in Mexico, Standard Oil explored new fields in Colombia, a country ruled by the foreign- business-friendly, right-wing Conservative Party. The Colombian Conservative Party had given very generous concessions to foreign multinationals, and Standard wanted to couple this political climate with the potential of the Colombian oil fields. In contrast with Mexico, during the first three decades of the twentieth-century, Colombia had enjoyed remarkable political stability. Escaping from nationalism in Mexico, however, Standard Oil faced a different kind of nationalism in Colombia, as the Conservative government ceded to the pressure of the opposition union-friendly Liberal Party's demands. Finally, the right-wing government of Venezuela showed to be the friendliest one towards Standard. However, the company did not trust the stability of the dictatorship and off-shored its refining activities. The paper compares Standard Oil's reaction to growing nationalism in two different political environments, and the way this affected its corporate strategy in both countries. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The North American Commission of Environmental Cooperation (NACEC) as the environmental side of NAFTA is a paradigmatic example of North-South public inclusion to achieve environmental protection in a free-trade integration project. NACEC includes as members Canada, Mexico and the United States (US). As the membership shows, NACEC represents (in a symbolic sense) the North-South divide and the asymmetries between them: two highly developed industrial countries (Canada and the US) and a third one, Mexico, still possessing many characteristics that place it within the ‘developing’ world. These asymmetries are also expressed in different capacities of their civic groups to engage in the activities of this organisation. There is a need to assess how participation of Mexican non-governmental actors (e.g. industry and environmental NGOs) has been implemented in practice after almost twelve years of NACEC’s existence. This paper engages with this analysis in cooperative initiatives under the Pollutants and Health program. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mexico is a country of transit migration for thousands of Central Americans trying to reach the US. Efforts to detain and deport irregular migrants have been intensified by the Mexican government due to the increased pressure of the US to enforce its sout ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1922, Lenin called for the Soviet Union to control "the commanding heights" of the economy -those critical industries which project tremendous political and economic power within and across borders. Lenin was talking about heavy industry, not high finance. But, in our generation, high finance has become the commanding heights. The importance of strong steel and chemical industries has declined and the power derived from moving capital nationally and across borders has grown in importance. Some suggest these commanding heights have come under attack in many countries. Banks have been targets since the mid-1990s, when the world witnessed a huge, seemingly coordinated worldwide wave of local bank acquisitions by foreigners. These acquisitions occurred after a series of financial crises in Mexico, Asia, Russia and Brazil culminated in the sales of many local banks in some countries, while other countries saw fewer sales. In all, over thirty countries were affected through this process of "financial liberalization." Latin America provided, perhaps, the most active gameboard on which this was played out in terms of both value and volume of acquisitions. Latin America had also provided the template for the sale of banks to foreigners in the 1990's, as Chile's experience in the late 1980's made it the poster child for both privatization and financial liberalization. But before their programs to sell banks to the highest bidder, though, Chile and Mexico had privatized banks in earlier, disastrous programs which had excluded foreign buying.Analyzing these waves of bank privatization and acquisition solely by using financial economics misses the most important aspect of this phenomenon: the processes were fundamentally political, and should be analyzed as such. Banks rely on governmental support and guidance. Banks are monitored and governed by national and international organizations established for that purpose and they lobby these organizations. Banks are also "privately monitored" by investors and other interested parties. In short, banks and financial systems operate in a complex web of politics. The power which banks derive from their informational asymmetry has long been recognized and appreciated by political leaders. The information derived from relationship banking is sought after by political leaders and other interested parties, who observe banks' actions. But this informational advantage comes to banks with a price--banks are subject to severe financial fragility. Barth, Caprio and Levine note, "banking crises are the train wrecks of finance," but these impacts are significantly deeper and wider than just in the world of finance. For these reasons, governmental actors are pulled and pushed toward banks and banks' power. They are pulled by banks' ability to deploy liquidity in productive ways, and pushed by the perceived need to regulate and monitor banking activity. These government officials experience an additional tug of war in that they face a conflict between acting for the public good and pursuing their private gain in their dealings with banks and banking regulation. The large variation in "cross-border" bank acquisitions is not adequately explained through regional expansion strategies of the acquiring banks, cultural affiliation between acquirer and target bank, size of country or type of government or international-level interactions. One can come much closer to an all-encompassing explanation of the pattern of cross-border bank acquisition by employing a different, more agnostic approach by considering the strategic interaction of the players in a cross-border acquisition game. Through examination of the actors' strategies, we find strategy, culture and, especially, politics all contribute to outcome... ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individual policy preferences are crucial long-run determinants of economic policy in democratic states. We analyze the preferences of ordinary Mexican citizens toward economic globalization using a new and unprecedented national-level public opinion survey: México y el Mundo/Global Views 2004. We examine preferences regarding two distinct dimensions of economic policy: international trade and foreign investment. We find weak support for the dominant economic models of policy preference formation, which posit that preferences are a straightforward function of relative economic advantage. We find strong support for the effect of non-economic values on trade and investment policy preferences. We also find some support for retrospective and sociotropic theories of attitude formation. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article elaborates upon the vast wage gap between the United States and Mexico asserting that solely economic explanations, i.e. New Economic Geography or the Theory of Comparative Advantage, trying to explain the low wage level in Mexico are not exhaustive. We show that Mexico is rather limited in undertaking economic policy measures to improve its international competitiveness due to its high dependence on the United States - the main trading partner. While an economic analysis can describe this situation and the recent developments, it regularly falls short of identifying the socio-economic and structural causes of the phenomenon. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate politico-economic and societal structures within the Mexican economy, state, and civil society. We argue that the main cause for the low wages is the existence of a state class able to generate rents. This state class uses a surplus, through which it has access due to the conjuncture of holding an office, to deliver loyalty and maintain its own privileged position. It does so by binding parts of society – especially the rural poor – clientelistically, what keeps them from political participation. These underprivileged, marginalised agricultural workers often migrate to industrial centres and offer their workforce accepting low wages. Redundant workers thus limit the bargaining power of the labour force. These circumstances, the incorporated labour unions and foreign – mostly US-American – maquila businesses interested in low labour costs had not only been very effective in keeping Mexican wages on a low level, they also successfully fragmented the working class. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the EU and Mexico prepare to enter a new period of enhanced dialogue and political cooperation, according to the new Commission Communication on Latin America 2007-2013, many questions remain as to whether all those structures and defined mechanisms of interaction will do any good to the consolidation of Mexico’s democracy. Indeed, the EU-Mexico partnership agreement includes provisions to that end, but so far the other beneficiaries of the agreement, government and business community, make big progress while the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) lag behind. The EU-Mexico agreement was born simultaneously with Mexico’s electoral democracy; and its implementation coincided with profound transformations in the political and administrative culture. The challenges posed by this changing landscape and the lack of experience with comparable situations demand additional focus and capability to discern and prioritize. Careful selection of projects and fields of action should support all branches of government and civil society. The selection should include the training of legislators in negotiation and coalition building skills, the creation of a European Foundation to prevent accusation of foreign meddling, are to the order, and the support of what remains of the traditional advocacy NGOs. More importantly, the experience of democracy aid agencies demonstrates a need to have a more modest view as to what effects exactly will their agents obtain. The EU and Mexico have to modify their expectations of “seeing results” to more modest ones. A pitfall to the best intentioned cooperation program remains on the fact that hardly a democratization program can do without a Judiciary system, and for the moment that is happening to Mexico: drug-related crimes mount in number and horror, incrementing resistance to reform from judges, public prosecutors and police. Although the EU acknowledges its shared responsibility by not reducing drug-demand effectively, Mexico, and Latin America as a whole, will need all the help they can get to overcome the challenge of building democracy on an unstable, two-legged platform without the Judiciary. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]