Labor Relations in Mexico (1988-2012): Explaining Continuity across Regime Types and Economic Models

Despite Mexico's shift to a market-based economic model and transition to democracy, two processes that should have yielded changes in labour legislation and the practice of labour relations, neither significant flexibilization of the labour code nor democratization of labour relations occurred between 1988 and 2012. My research indicates that this high degree of continuity is mainly attributable to the specific configuration taken by the country's neoliberal economic model. This configuration generated a structure of incentives for political and labour elites to favour the persistence of non-democratic patterns of labour relations and to leave the country's labour legislation essentially untouched.