Mexico: economic transformation without democracy

Abstract

This paper discusses the manner in which a capitalist modernization period established the basis fora bourgeois class to rule Mexico in the 20th century, allowing the development of a State thatneither turned into a democratic or republican regime. Also, it explains how this modernizationstrategy led to State reforms, but largely controlled by the government, whose main objective wasn’tto push for democracy, but rather to prevent the decaying of the old regime. Today the current stateof affair is running again against the same generation of people who are the most importantelements for building up a democratic regime. Thus, throughout the 20th and the 21st centuries,Mexico has been transforming its economy, keeping up its same authoritarian apparatus and walkingonto a half-way modernization path.