What Kind of Democracy? What Kind of Market? by Philip D. Oxhorn Graciela Ducatenzeiler

Author:Philip D. Oxhorn, Graciela Ducatenzeiler [Philip D. Oxhorn, Graciela Ducatenzeiler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics, Economic Conditions, Political Science, Public Policy, Economic Policy
ISBN: 9780271017990
Google: i-RCAAAAYAAJ
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
Published: 1998-01-15T02:55:47+00:00

Concertation and Political Reform

The previous argument, however, oversimplifies the situation somewhat. We should keep in mind that the politics of social concertation was conceived of as the form that the corporatist pact would assume in the current period, and in which official unionism has played the role of guarantor. Concertation has been successful in curbing inflation, stabilizing the prices of public services, maintaining control over the exchange rate, and creating favorable expectations for the country’s economic future. The uncertainty that dominated the economy at the end of 1987, and the impact on the political legitimacy of the 1988 presidential elections and the 1994–95 crisis have been replaced by a climate of relative certainty in economic matters and by the restoration of the PRI’s predominance in electoral matters, as the 1994 presidential election clearly demonstrated.

In the Latin American context, the importance of the PECE mechanism as an instrument for social harmony and its apparent success have made Mexico the only case in which economic stabilization has followed attempts to harmonize relations among the principal corporatist actors. A comparative evaluation of these pacts for the cases of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico demonstrates that the success in the latter has been directly related to the existence of the corporatist structure that predated the pact’s implementation. In the other two countries from 1986 to 1991, various pacts were put into place, all of which have failed due to the absence of a substantive agreement between the interests of the state, businesses, and unionized workers.

Furthermore, it must be emphasized that the stability of the political system in Mexico does not rest only on the signing of pacts or agreements among the members of the corporatist structure. There also exists the constant efforts by the state and the workers movement to reiterate, frequently and rhetorically, the central role of unionized workers in the political alliance that sustains the system, and the movement’s weight in determining the limits within which demands can be made in Mexico. Moreover, this stability is founded on the existence of institutions in the areas of social security, health care, and education that provide compensation for losses in buying power through collective mechanisms while the salary levels of the population shrink. Economic recuperation, which occurred from 1988 through December 1994, and is apparently advancing at a fast pace in 1997, as well as the support of workers for the political system, can be best explained by the renovated role these institutions assumed in the corporatist pact, rather than by strict analysis of the operation or functioning of labor unions.

A good indicator of the state’s capacity to consolidate this alliance has been the inability of the opposition to recruit support among unionized workers. They have not substantially changed workers’ pattern of political alliances.12 The PRI continues to maintain a virtual monopoly over the ideological vision of workers, more because of the absence of a visible and viable alternative than as a result of their allegiance to the official project. After 1988, when public opinion

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