Crisis and Social Change in Mexico's Political Economy

Olson, Wayne

doi:10.1177/0094582x8501200302

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Further, its markets correspond to a specijk combination qf local middle-class consumption, along with increasing workers' consumption of domestic durables, and cheup exports toward the center. (Lipietz, 1986, p. 32) The debate over whether Mexico's populism during the administration of Cardenas was capitalist, with its contribution to the construction of the institutions necessary for the growth of capitalism (Olson, 1985), or anticapitalist, with its policies of destruction o f monopolies, income distribution, and land reform (Cordera & Tello, 1983) is irrelevant because, as Jessop (1982) points out, "state power is capitalist to the extent that it creates, maintains o r restores the conditions required for capital accumulation . .…”

Section: Telecommunications and The Mexican Statementioning

confidence: 99%

State Intervention and Telecommunications in Mexico

Barrera

1995

Journal of Communication

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The liberalization of telecommunications in Mexico has parallels with the development of telecommunications in other countries as well as some characteristics particular t o the Mexican situation. Here I explore theoretical relationships between the state and telecommunications through an analysis of the Mexican case. As a sector, telecommunications is crucial to the insertion of the state into the international environment as well as to the exercise of political and econoniic power clomestically and internationally. This article opens with a review of the literature on telecommunications and the state before looking at the history of Mexican telecommunications policy from the perspective of its functions as a tool of state power. Telecommunications and the StateThe concept of the state has rarely heen explicitly dealt with in the literature on telecommunications. Conversely, little of the literature on the state looks at the implications of telecomiiiunications for the state. Those communication scholars who have examined this relationship include Braman (1989), who looked at the erosion of the nation-state; Mosco (1989), who discussed the state both as an instrument of capital and as a contested space; and Samarajiva (1990), who explored hegemony in the international arena. For others, however conceptions o f the state remain implicit.Implicit views of the state in telecommunications fall along a spectrum of positions, thal range from seeing the state as a monolithic entity that operates on behalf o f monopoly capital (e.g., Quibrera, 1984) to seeing the branches o f the state as inhibiting economic development through regulation (e.g., Huber, 1989; see Figure 1).In other analyses, the state is also viewed as fragmented, either intentionally, as in the ecology o f games (Dutton, 1992) and Borrego and Mody's (1989) conEc1u:ircIo Ekirrera is 21 rewarcher ;it El Colegio cle la Frontern Norte in Ciudad Juarez. Mexico, 3rd assistant professor in the Department of Conimunic;ition at the University of Texas ;it El Paso. He is a national researcher of the National Research System in Mexico. The author wishes t o thank Sandra Braman tor her numerous helpful suggestions and comments.Copyright 0 19C)j,/f)zlr7la/ ffCommunication 4 5 ( 4 ) . Autumn.

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Section: Telecommunications and The Mexican Statementioning

confidence: 99%

State Intervention and Telecommunications in Mexico

Barrera

1995

Journal of Communication

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“…Profit rates declined beginning in the 1960s as a result of (a) the rising organic composition of capital in agriculture and consumer durables as those industries became more capital-intensive in competition for weakened markets (Olson, 1986:100-101); (b) declining rates in the increase of labor productivity (Rivera Rios, 1986: 91 ); and (c) substantial wage hikes by the Echeverria administration in the 1970s (Alvarez, 1987: 57), which represented both an effort to resolve the economic crisis through increased demand and a response to the political crisis.…”

Section: Structural Originsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Olson (1986) suggests at least three reasons for this change. First, both the state enterprises and the ejidos removed areas of potential investment from the private sector.…”

Section: Structural Originsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We are witnessing a dynamic and dialectical process of class reformation in which, on the one hand, transnational capital has learned to take full advantage of the diverse conditions of labor that have always existed in Mexico and, on the other hand, households are discovering new survival strategies that involve pooled incomes from a wide variety of sources and substantial changes in gender roles (see Alvarez, 1987: 59; Beneria and Rolddn, 1987;Benitez, 1989;Gutierrez Garza, 1988: 129-173; Sotelo Valencia, 1988: 188-208 The state is promoting the export of manufactured goods, attempting to reduce its reliance on oil revenues, seeking to modernize industry, and furthering Mexico's integration with the world economy, particularly with the United States. State policy has included the subsidization of some export industries (Olson, 1986: 120-121), but more emphasis has been placed on reducing tariff barriers for imports in the hope of increasing imports of capital goods and thereby forcing efficiency, productivity, and greater labor intensity in national industry (1986: 118). In fact, the increased imports resulting from the nearly indiscriminate opening up of trade include a high portion of nondurable consumer goods, which contribute nothing to restructuring Mexico's productive plant.…”

Section: Flexible Labor and Reduction Of Labor Costsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mexico's Long Crisis

McCaughan

1993

Latin American Perspectives

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terms of its &dquo;flexibility&dquo;: more flexible labor processes-including increased reliance on part-time, temporary, and/or subcontracted work arrangements (to which female labor is central)―and more flexible industrial organization worldwide. Core capital has shifted its strategy from economies of scale to economies of scope-a flexible range of forms of capital from state-of-theart, high-tech production facilities to organized subcontracting that &dquo;in some instances permits older systems of domestic, artisanal, familial (patriarchal), and paternalistic ... labour systems to revive and flourish as centerpieces rather than as appendages of the production system&dquo; (1989: 152). In this sense, core capital has sought to take better advantage of the heterogeneous conditions of labor that have always characterized the world economy. Also central to Harvey's portrait of a new regime of accumulation is the increased relative autonomy of the banking and financial system vis-A-vis both industrial production and nation-states.Corresponding to these changes, we can identify certain features of a new mode of regulation in the core. If mass consumption by the core working class and a capital-(core) labor pact were at the heart of the old Fordist-

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The Mexican Civil Sphere and the Patrimonial Code

Botello

2022

Semantics of Violence

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Crisis and Social Change in Mexico's Political Economy

Cited by 5 publications

References 2 publications

State Intervention and Telecommunications in Mexico

State Intervention and Telecommunications in Mexico

Mexico's Long Crisis

The Mexican Civil Sphere and the Patrimonial Code

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