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Social Welfare Policy and Political Opening in Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Peter M. Ward
Peter M. Ward
Affiliation:
Professor in the Department of Sociology and in the LBJ School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin.
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Extract

In this article I wish to provide an overview of the changing priorities that successive Mexican governments have given the social development sector since the administration of President Echeverria (1970–6). This will be set against a backcloth of political reform and an opening of the political space in which parties other than the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) have been allowed to function, albeit under certain constraints. In addition I will examine important changes that have been undertaken both in the nature of social policies themselves, but also in the patterns and efficiency with which public agencies have delivered this particular social good. I argue that in Mexico, as in many advanced capitalist countries since Bismarck's Prussia during the late nineteenth century, social welfare provision is an important element in the understanding of political management and 'statecraft'.1 As well as providing a temporary palliative to offset some of the negative outcomes of rapid urbanisation and economic growth based upon low wage rates and trickle-down, social policy provides an arena through which scarce societal resources may be negotiated. As I will describe, those patterns of negotiation change for a variety of reasons: as power relations shift; as economies reflate or turn into recession; as the level of state intervention and control intensifies or slackens; as our diagnosis of specific problems and the policy instruments we develop become more sophisticated and sensitive to local needs; and last, but not least in the context of Mexico, are included changes that arise from human agency as different presidents take executive office.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , October 1993 , pp. 613 - 628
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Midgley, James, Social Security, Inequality and the Third World (Chichester, 1984)Google Scholar; Malloy, James, ‘Statecraft and Social Security Policy and Crisis: A Comparison of Latin America and the United States’, in Lago, Carmelo Mesa (ed.), The Crisis of Social Security and Health Care: Latin American Experiences and Lessons (Pittsburgh, 1985), pp. 313–61Google Scholar; Bailey, John J., Governing Mexico: The Statecraft of Crisis Management (New York, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ward, Peter, Welfare Politics in Mexico: Papering over the Cracks (London, 1986)Google Scholar; translated and revised edition, Poli'ticas de Bienestar Social en Mexico 1970–1989 (Mexico, 1989).

3 See Ward, Welfare Politics in Mexico and Lago, Carmelo Mesa, Economic and Financial Aspects of Social Security in Latin America and the Caribbean: Tendencies, Problems and Alternatives for the Year 2000 (Washington, DC, 1992)Google Scholar for recent discussions of these broad comparative data.

4 G. Tamburi, ‘Social Security in Latin America: Trends and Outlook’, in Carmelo Mesa Lago (ed.), The Crisis of Social Security and Health Care: hatin American Experiences and Lessons, pp. 757–83, correctly argues that there seems little chance that Latin American countries will move towards income support programmes for those out of work or for the very needy. It would impose too heavy a burden upon the treasury department.

5 United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, Equidady Transformacidn Productiva: Un Enfoque Integrado (Santiago de Chile, 1992)Google Scholar, Cuadro IV-7.

6 Ball, N., 'Measuring Third World Security Expenditure: A Research Note, World Development, vol. 12, no, 2 (1984), pp. 157–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See especially Horcasitas, Juan Molinar, El Tiempo de la Legitimidad (Mexico, 1991)Google Scholar and the various authors in Mendoza, Artuto Alvarado (ed.), Electoral Patterns and Perspectives in Mexico (La Jolla, 1985)Google Scholar, and in Cornelius, Wayne, Gentleman, Judith and Smith, Peter, (eds.), Mexico's Alternative Political Futures (La Jolla, 1989)Google Scholar.

8 Ward, Welfare Politics in Mexico; Molinar, El Tiempo de la Legitimidad.

9 Whitehead, Laurence, ‘Mexico from Bust to Boom: A Political Evaluation of the 1976–79 Stabilization Program’, World Development, vol. 8 (1980), pp. 843–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Teichman, Judith, Policymaking in Mexico: Boom to Crisis (Boston, 1988)Google Scholar.

10 Lustig, Nora, Mexico: The Remaking of an Economy (Washington D.C., 1992)Google Scholar.

11 There are many possible (and interconnected) reasons for the PRI's success in the 1991 mid-term elections and which emphasise the internal reform and restructuring undertaken by the Party itself: the admiration and respect that President Salinas has won both at home and abroad; the disorganisation within and among the opposition parties; and, of most concern for this article, effective targeting of social welfare benefits and resources.

12 Rodriguez, Victoria and Ward, Peter, Policymaking, Politics, and Urban Governance in Chihuahua: The Experience of Recent PANista Governments (Austin, 1992)Google Scholar.

13 Entitled, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Partisan political rationality takes account of who (individual or group) is trying to influence an outcome rather than basing that judgement upon the technical merits of the case according to criteria that are laid down and which are expected to guide public administration. See Gilbert, Alan and Ward, Peter, Housing, the State and the Poor (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 140–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a more detailed discussion of political versus technical rationalities in public administration in Mexico. Also, see Victoria Rodriguez and Peter Ward (eds.), Opposition Government in Mexico: Past Experiences and Future Opportunities (Albuquerque, forthcoming) for a analysis of partisanship under PANista municipal governments during the 1980s.

14 O'Connor, James, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 His analysis focuses upon the allocation of resources that are scarce, not in the sense that these are in short absolute supply, but that such resources are not ‘unlimited’, and once allocated there is no guarantee that they will be renewed or replaced; Who Gets What, When, How (Cleveland, 1958).

16 See for example Fernando Cortes and Rosa Maria Rubacalva, 'Cambio Estructural y Concentration: un Analisis de la Distribution del Ingreso Familiar en Mexico, 1984–1989% paper presented at the conference 'Social Effects of the Crisis', The University of Texas at Austin, 23–25 April 1992.1 should point out that some statistics indicate a sharply rising curve in which social development occupied the following proportions of total spending: 14.9%, 17.9%, 21.8% and 26.5 % during each of the years 1988–91 respectively, according to Dresser, Denise, Neopopulist Solutions to Neoliberal Problems (La Jolla, 1991), p. 6Google Scholar; see also Mesa Lago for the World Bank, Economic and Social Aspects, 1992. The differences between Dresser's and my data (see 1988 for example) arise because in the Presidential lnformes from 1987 onwards debt repayments were no longer included within the total expenditure. Calculations for sectoral expenditures, therefore, appeared to rise dramatically - in the case of desarrollo social for example an apparent doubling. My data in Table 1 include debt repayment expenditure and this was done in order to sustain the comparative analysis back through the 1970s. The same discrepancy occurs in Nora Lustig's analysis, Mexico: The Remaking of an Economy, p. 79, where she notes a recovery in social welfare provision from 1985 onwards, and a sharp upturn in 1989 and 1990 which, she argues, is coupled to Salinas's commitment to improve social conditions. Certainly whatever the base level one uses, there does appear to have been a rise in the share accorded to social development (including as it does PRONASOL) since 1989.

17 United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, Equidad y transformation productiva. 18 'Cambio EstructuraP, p. 8.

18 ‘Cambio Estructural’, p. 8.

19 Ibid.

20 It is also proving to be a principal mechanism whereby non-PRI governments at the state and municipal levels are managing to do ‘more with less’ (see Rodriguez, and Ward, , Policy making, Politics, and Urban Governance, and ‘Disentangling the PRI from the Government in Mexico’, unpublished paper, 1993)Google Scholar.

21 See Ward, , Welfare Politics in Mexico and Mexico City: The Production and Reproduction of an Urban Environment (London, 1990)Google Scholar for various examples in the field of health care, housing, land regularisation, planning, and the provision of basic infrastructure.

22 See Ward, , Mexico City (London, 1990)Google Scholar.

23 Ward, Welfare Politics in Mexico.

24 Ibid.

25 Acuña, D. López, La Salud Desigual en México (Mexico, 1980), p. 182Google Scholar.

26 Gilbert, Alan and Varley, Ann, Landlord and Tenant: Housing the Poor in Urban Mexico (London, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Ward, Welfare Politics in Mexico, p. 57.

28 Several agency directors and ministers whom I interviewed in the late 1970s used this term to describe one of the key functions and overriding goals of their institution.

29 Cornelius, Wayne, Politics and the Migrant Poor in Mexico (Stanford, Calif., 1975)Google Scholar; Montaño, Jorge, Los Pobres de la Ciudad de México en los Asentamientos espontáneos (Mexico, 1976)Google Scholar; Eckstein, Susan, The Poverty of Revolution: The State and the Urban Poor in Mexico (Princeton, 1977)Google Scholar.

30 Montaña, Los pobres de la Ciudad de México.

31 Cornelius, Politics and the Migrant Poor in Mexico.

32 Teichman, Policymaking in Mexico; Lustig, Mexico: The Remaking of an Economy.

33 See also Gilbert and Ward, Housing, the State and the Poor.

34 Ward, Peter, ‘Political Pressure for Urban Services: the Response of two Mexican City Administrations’, Development and Change, vol. 12 (1981), pp. 379–407CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Welfare Politics in Mexico. Of course this was not total, and many opportunities for particularistic decisions continued to exist especially in certain areas of administration (such as land regularisation for example), as well as in certain states whose governors continued to rely upon ‘populist’ support.

35 Rodríguez and Ward, Policymaking, Politics, and Urban Governance in Chihuahua.

36 Peter Ward, Edith Jiménez and Gareth Jones, ‘Residential Land Price Changes in Mexican Cities and the Affordability of Land for Lower-income Groups’, Urban Studies, vol. 30, no. 10 (forthcoming).

37 Dresser, Neopopulist Solutions to Neoliberal Problems.

38 Rodríguez and Ward, ‘Disentangling the PRI from the Government in Mexico’.

39 Chávez, E., ‘Michoacán: Cada Voto del PRI Costó 239, 188 Pesos; Cada Uno del PRD Costó 6,916 pesos’, Proceso, No. 821 (27 07 1992), pp. 22–7Google Scholar.

40 Fox and Moguel, ‘Pluralism and Anti-Poverty Policy’.

41 Ibid. Naturally, directing resources to opposition parties may also help the PRI in so far as it may persuade people to take a more positive view of the Government. It may also be directed at certain softer opposition groups in attempt to strip support away from those groups that are intransigent or more threatening. We still await research that allows us to make any definitive statement on the question of partisanship and Solidaridad.

42 Note, also, how this new Secretaría ‘flags’ PRONASOL. Strictly speaking the acronym should be SEDESO, but instead, it conveniently embraces the ‘L’ of social.

43 SEDESOL, Solidarity in National Development: New Relations between Society and Government (Mexico, 1993)Google Scholar.

44 Lustig, Mexico: The Remaking of an Economy, pp. 80–1.

45 Contreras, Oscar, Paper presented to the Panel ‘The Recuperation of One-Party Dominance in Mexico, 1988–1992: The “National Solidarity” Strategy’, Latin American Studies Association, Los Angeles, 24 09 1992Google Scholar.

46 See also SEDESOL, Solidarity in National Development. for detailed year-by-year achievements of PRONASOL since 1989.

47 Ward, Welfare Politics in Mexico; Mexico City.

48 I am grateful to DrVerduzco, Gustavo for pointing this out to me at a recent conference on the ‘Social Effects of the Crisis’ organised by the Mexican Center of The University of Austin, 23–25 04 1992Google Scholar.