“There
are few books on the contemporary Mexican political economy that
combine the theoretical sophistication, analytical insight, and
wealth of information that this study brings to its exploration
of privatization and of the implications of neoliberal reform
for state-market relations. I’m not aware of any book that
deals with the Mexican privatization process at this level; in
this sense it is in a class by itself.”–Nora Hamilton,
University of Southern California
"This
is sociology of development as it should be practiced: close to
the ground and unafraid of complexities."—Alejandro
Portes, Princeton University
"I
very much like this book. It is the best account of Mexican privatization
I have read. It is a masterful account of how the Mexican bureaucracy
operates and has fantastic data to support its overall points."—Miguel
Angel Centeno, Princeton University
Beginning
in 1983, the Mexican government implemented one of the most extensive
programs of market-oriented reform in the developing world. Downsizing
the State examines a key element of this reform program: the
privatization of public firms.
After
providing a broad overview of the growth and decline of public
ownership in Mexico, Dag MacLeod analyzes the process of privatization
in three key industries—aviation, telecommunications, and
railroads. Drawing upon interviews with government officials,
business executives, and labor leaders as well data from government
archives and corporate documents, MacLeod highlights the difficulties
of linking market reforms to improved public welfare. Privatization
failed to live up to its promise of raising living standards or
decentralizing the economy. Indeed, privatization actually increased
the concentration of wealth in Mexico while redirecting the economy
toward foreign markets.
These
findings contribute to theoretical debates regarding state autonomy
and the embeddedness of economic action. MacLeod calls into question
the autonomy of the Mexican state in its privatization program.
And, while accepting the basic premises of economic sociology,
he shows that the creation of markets where public firms once
dominated has involved both the destruction of social relations
and the construction of new relations and institutions to regulate
the market.
Downsizing
the State is a theoretically innovative account of how actors
and institutions may construct capitalist markets so that they
actually resemble the asocial ideal of neoclassical economics:
facilitating exchange among actors while denying the obligations
and commitments that attach to other types of social relations.
