Poverty of Democracy: The Institutional Roots of Political Participation in Mexico

3. Neoliberal Reforms, the State, and Opportunities for Political Participation

51     ChaPTER 3     neoliberal reforms, tHe state, anD oPPortunities for Political ParticiPation One of the difficulties of developing and applying an institutional framework is identifying which institutions matter most for citizen political activism . This problem is particularly acute in the case of Mexico because so much changed between 1990 and 2000. Reforms that opened the political system will certainly impact people’s political activity, but it is much less clear whether and to what extent neoliberal reforms like the privatization of state-owned enterprises, cutbacks in state spending, free-trade agreements, and a shift to targeted poverty-alleviation programs matter for political participation . Existing research provides some guidance, but much of the terrain remains unmapped (see Kurtz 2004, Posner 2008, and Shefner 2008). I asked people directly about their experiences with neoliberal reforms and how those massive institutional changes impacted their desire and their ability to become politically involved. By listening to the poor, we can uncover and trace the complex links between big structural changes and individual decisions about what kind of political strategies (if any) to pursue. In-depth interviews allow people to describe which institutional changes— those associated with increased political competition or with the structure and action of the state—are foremost on their minds when thinking about protesting, petitioning, or otherwise trying to influence the state. In this way holzner text-3.indd 51 8/6/10 10:52 AM 52  Neoliberal Reforms, the State, and Opportunities for Political Participation I tease out the effects of structural reforms associated with neoliberal policies from the effects of reforms associated with democratization. This shift in development models involved much more than a change in macroeconomic and spending policies. It also required a radical transformation of the institutions of the state, reshaping the ways in which it interacted with individuals and groups in society. My interviews point to several mechanisms through which reforms of the state discouraged Mexico’s poor from participating in democratic politics. During the decade when neoliberal reforms were first implemented and consolidated, the incomes of most Mexicans declined, with some of the steepest declines occurring among the lower classes. Although most people suffered through this period, declines in income matter more for the poor because they have so little to spare. Even apparently trivial declines in resources are enough to make many kinds of political activity impossible for the poor. Consequently, despite significant improvements in political liberties and party competition, the poor with whom I spoke found it increasingly difficult to muster the material resources necessary to participate in Mexico’s more open political process. The combination of free-market reforms and the government’s practice of dividing and weakening popular organizations had a devastating effect on the organizational resources available to the poor, since many of the traditional organizations that had mobilized the poor into politics lost resources, membership, and access to policymakers. Although Mexico experienced a revitalization of civil society during the 1990s, much of the new organizational energy was the domain of the middle class, with few interest groups able to aggregate the interests of the poor. Those that did seek to organize the poor suffered from small memberships, small budgets, and little capacity to access policymakers. The declining relevance of government policy in the lives of the poor has perhaps been the most damaging to lower-class political mobilization. The switch from a development strategy characterized by heavy state intervention in the economy to a free-market model brought about important changes in the structure and the activities of the state. These changes—which centralized policymaking decisions in a few ministries in Mexico City, institutionalized the use of predetermined formulas to determine spending levels for education, health care, and poverty-alleviation programs, and reduced the size and scope of state activities—decreased the potential benefits of political action. At one point it made sense for people in Mexico to turn to politics to satisfy needs as diverse as affordable housing, better pay, lower prices for food for consumers and subsidies for inputs for farmers, for land, for jobs, holzner text-3.indd 52 8/6/10 10:52 AM Neoliberal Reforms, the State, and Opportunities for Political Participation  53 for health care, for titles to land, for water, sewage and other services, and so on. But now, because the state has dismantled most of its subsidy and poverty -alleviation programs, the poor simply have less stake in the...