Improving the mechanisms of global governance? the ideational impact of the World Bank on the national reform agenda in Mexico

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments I would like to thank Paul Cammack, Adam David Morton, Stuart Shields and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. Notes 1. James D. Wolfensohn & François Bourguignon, Development and Poverty Reduction: Looking Back, Looking Ahead (World Bank, 2004), p. 32. 2. Paul Cammack, ‘Neoliberalism, the World Bank, and the New Politics of Development’, in Uma Kothari & Martin Minogue (eds), Development Theory and Practice: Critical Perspectives (Palgrave, 2002), pp. 157–78; Paul Cammack, ‘The Mother of all Governments: The World Bank's Matrix for Global Governance’, in Rorden Wilkinson & Steve Hughes (eds), Global Governance: Critical Perspectives (Routledge, 2002), pp. 36–53; Paul Cammack, ‘The Governance of Global Capitalism’, Historical Materialism, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2003), pp. 37–59; and Paul Cammack, ‘What the World Bank Means by Poverty Reduction and Why it Matters’, New Political Economy, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2004), pp. 189–211. 3. Cammack, ‘Neoliberalism’, p. 178. 4. Cammack, ‘The Mother of all Governments’, p. 50. 5. Cammack, ‘What the World Bank Means by Poverty Reduction’, p. 197. Despite Stiglitz's somewhat acrimonious departure in January 2000, his legacy endures insofar as the logic of competition remains at the heart of World Bank political economy. The 2005 World Development Report, for example, states that that ‘a good investment climate encourages firms to invest by removing unjustified costs, risks, and barriers to competition’. What is required, therefore, is ‘an environment that fosters the competitive processes that Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction” – an environment in which firms have opportunities and incentives to test their ideas, strive for success, and prosper or fail’. World Bank, World Development Report 2005: A Better Investment Climate for Everyone (World Bank & Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 2. 6. Though the frame of reference for the central argument of this article is Cammack's scholarship on the governance of global capitalism, the utility of the analysis being presented certainly extends to fall within a variety of contemporary historical materialist scholarship. For example, the article could easily complement recent work on the ‘transnationalisation’ of the state. See William I. Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World (The John Hopkins University Press, 2004); and, for an application of the theory, William I. Robinson, Transnational Conflicts: Central America, Social Change, and Globalization (Verso, 2003). It could also serve as useful postscript to the analysis of the transnationalisation of the Mexican state by Adam David Morton, ‘Structural Change and Neoliberalism in Mexico: “Passive Revolution” in the Global Political Economy’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4 (2003), pp. 631–53. However, I should stress that my research seeks to develop an approach that places investigatory primacy upon the study of ‘social form’ in capitalism and, as such, advances a different kind of dialectical analysis to that operationalised by Robinson, Morton and other contemporary theorists of ‘global economy’. By approaching the question of national reforms from a different methodological standpoint, the wider research of which this article is constitutive has arrived at qualitatively different conclusions to those of Robinson and others. For further clarification of this methodological distinction and why it is important, see the exchange between Andreas Bieler & Adam David Morton, ‘Globalisation, the State and Class Struggle: A “Critical Economy” Engagement with Open Marxism’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol. 5, No. 4 (2003), pp. 467–99; and Werner Bonefeld, ‘Critical Economy and Social Constitution: A Reply to Bieler and Morton’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2004), pp. 231–37. 7. Mark E. Williams, Market Reforms in Mexico: Coalitions, Institutions, and the Politics of Policy Change (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), p. 3. 8. See Nora Lustig, Mexico: The Remaking of an Economy (Brookings Institution, 1995); Gerardo Otero (ed.), Neoliberalism Revisited: Economic Restructuring and Mexico's Political Future (Westview Press, 1996); and Susanne Soederberg, ‘State, Crisis, and Capital Accumulation in Mexico’, Historical Materialism, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2001), pp. 61–84. 9. Here, I am paraphrasing Wolfensohn & Bourguignon, Development and Poverty Reduction, p. 2. 10. Joseph Stiglitz, ‘More Instruments and Broader Goals: Moving Toward the Post-Washington Consensus’, The WIDER Annual Lecture, Helsinki, Finland, 7 January 1998; and Joseph Stiglitz, ‘Towards a New Paradigm for Development Strategies, Policies and Processes’, Prebisch Lecture, UNCTAD, Geneva, 19 October 1998. 11. Joseph Stiglitz, ‘Distribution, Efficiency, and Voice: Designing the Second Generation of Reforms’, speech delivered during conference sponsored by the Brazilian Ministry of Land Reform and the World Bank, Asset Distribution, Poverty and Economic Growth, Brasilia, 14 July 1998. 12. Principal authors of the Viewpoints reports have included Shahid Javed Burki, a former finance minister for Pakistan, former World Bank vice president for the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region, and most recently the chief executive officer of Washington DC-based EMP Financial Advisors; Sebastian Edwards, a Chicago-trained economist, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, consultant to numerous international organisations and multinational firms, former World Bank Chief Economist for the LAC, and currently Henry Ford II Professor of International Business Economics at the Anderson School of Management, California; Guillermo E. Perry, former Colombian minister of finance and public credit, former Colombian senator and constitutional assemblyman, and director of LAC policy research at the Bank since 1996; and David de Ferranti, chair of the Rockefeller Foundation's finance committee, former director at the Rand policy research institute, and current Bank vice president for LAC. 13. This ‘unfinished’/‘second generation’/‘incomplete’ discourse is not confined to the Viewpoints series. See, for example, José Luis Guasch, Labor Market Reform and Job Creation: The Unfinished Agenda in Latin American and Caribbean Countries (World Bank, 1999); and Indermit S. Gill, Claudio E. Montenegro & Dörte Dömeland (eds), Crafting Labor Policy: Techniques and Lessons from Latin America (World Bank & Oxford University Press, 2002). Nor is it confined to World Bank reports for the LAC region – see, for example, United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Productive Development in Open Economies (ECLAC, 2004). 14. Shahid Javed Burki & Sebastian Edwards, Latin America after Mexico: Quickening the Pace, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Viewpoints (World Bank, 1996), p. 11. 15. Shahid Javed Burki & Sebastian Edwards, Dismantling the Populist State: The Unfinished Revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Viewpoints (World Bank, 1996), p. 25. 16. The most explicit and, at the same time, accessible exposition of this ‘deep interventionist’ competition logic can be found in World Bank, Transition – The First Ten Years: Analysis and Lessons for Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (World Bank, 2002). 17. Burki & Edwards, Dismantling the Populist State, p. 27. 18. See, for example, Juan Luis Londoño, Poverty, Inequality, and Human Capital Development in Latin America, 1950–2025, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Viewpoints (World Bank, 1996). 19. Shahid Javed Burki & Guillermo E. Perry, The Long March: A Reform Agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean in the Next Decade, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Viewpoints (World Bank, 1997). 20. Ibid., p. 57. 21. Shahid Javed Burki & Guillermo E. Perry, Beyond the Washington Consensus: Institutions Matter, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Viewpoints (World Bank, 1998). 22. Ibid., p. 25. 23. Ibid., pp. 34–6. 24. Shahid Javed Burki, Guillermo E. Perry & William Dillinger, Beyond the Center: Decentralizing the State, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Viewpoints (World Bank, 1999), pp. 1–7. 25. David de Ferranti, Guillermo E. Perry, Indermit S. Gill & Luis Servén, with Francisco H. G. Ferreira, Nadeem Ilah, William F. Maloney & Martin Rama, Securing our Future in a Global Economy, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Viewpoints (World Bank, 2000), pp. 1–12. 26. Ibid., p. 123. 27. Ibid., p. 125. 28. David de Ferranti, Guillermo E. Perry, Daniel Lederman & William F. Maloney, From Natural Resources to the Knowledge Economy: Trade and Job Quality (World Bank, 2002). 29. Ibid., p. 2. 30. David de Ferranti, Guillermo E. Perry, Indermit Gill, J. Luis Guasch, William F. Maloney, Carolina Sánchez-Páramo & Norbert Schady, Closing the Gap in Education and Technology, Latin American and Caribbean Studies (World Bank, 2003). 31. Ibid., p. 10. 32. David de Ferranti, Guillermo E. Perry, Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Michael Walton, Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean: Breaking with History?, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Viewpoints (World Bank, 2004). 33. Nikki Craske, ‘Another Mexican Earthquake? An Assessment of the 2 July 2000 Elections’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 36, No. 1 (2001), pp. 40–1. 34. Vicente Fox Quesada, A Los Pinos: Recuento autobiográfico y politico (Editorial Oceano de México, 1999), pp. 112–3. 35. Ramón Muñoz Gutiérrez, Pasión por un Buen Gobierno: Administración por Calidad en el gobierno de Vicente Fox, en Guanajuato (Editorial Grijalbo, 2003), pp. 9–35, 57–62, and 23. Further evidence of Fox's politics can be found in his involvement with prominent Latin American ‘third way’ political forums, such as the Grupo Mangabeira and the Grupo San Angel. Fox's first foreign minister discusses this involvement, and the content of the resulting ‘Buenos Aires consensus’, in Jorge G. Castañeda, ‘Mexico: Permuting Power’, New Left Review, No. 7 (2001), pp. 17–32. Such forums have been criticised for espousing ‘the ultimate goal of a market society of possessive individuals’: see John Gledhill, ‘Some Conceptual and Substantive Limitations of Contemporary Western (Global) Discourses of Rights and Social Justice’, in Christopher Abel & Colin M. Lewis (eds), Exclusion & Engagement: Social Policy in Latin America (Institute of Latin American Studies, 2002), pp. 131–47. 36. The Mexican Employers' Confederation (COPARMEX) had been formed in 1929 by conservative, and predominantly Catholic, Monterrey-based industrialists united in their opposition to the social reformism of the Mexican government at this time and, in particular, to the newly adopted Federal Labour Law. COPARMEX went on to cultivate a number of voluntary organisations that would later provide support for the National Action Party (PAN) and form the neopanista wing of the party, to which Fox is most closely aligned. 37. Roderic Ai Camp, Mexico's Mandarins: Crafting a Power Elite for the Twenty-First Century (University of California Press, 2002), p. 269. 38. Ibid., p. 270. 39. Roderic Ai Camp, Politics in Mexico: The Democratic Transformation (Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 183. 40. Poder Ejecutivo Federal, Plan Nacional de Desarrollo, 2001–2006 (Poder Ejecutivo Federal, 2001). 41. Ibid., pp. 21–2, my translation. 42. Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social, Programa Nacional de Política Laboral, 2001–6 (Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social, 2001). 43. Ibid., p. 112, my translation. 44. The discursive correspondence between the Fox government's policy documents and World Bank, World Development Report 2005: A Better Investment Climate for Everyone, is striking: ‘An investment climate that encourages growth creates sustainable jobs and opportunities for microentrepreneurs – the key pathways out of poverty for poor people, pathways that will become more crowded with coming demographic changes (p. 19). … It also encourages people to invest more in their own education and skills to take advantage of better jobs in the future. There is thus a two-way link between skills and jobs, with an improved investment climate complementing efforts to improve human development (p. 33). … There are, however, short-term costs due to changes in job characteristics and greater labour mobility in a modern, productive economy. This reinforces the importance of looking at labour market policies in the context of broader strategies, including efforts to foster a more skilled and adaptable workforce and to help workers cope with change’ (p. 142). 45. Gustavo Castro Soto, ‘The World Bank in Mexico’, Chiapas al Día, No. 236, 22 March 2001, http://www.ciepac.org/bulletins/ingles/ing236.htm, accessed on 31 January 2005. 46. ‘Directivos del Banco Mundial se reúnen con presidente de México y reafirman confianza en la economía del país’, World Bank press release, 20 January 2003. 47. See Dan Morrow (Lead Researcher), ‘Mexico: Country Assistance Evaluation’, Operations Evaluation Department, World Bank, 28 June 2001; and the author's interview with a Senior Operations Officer, Colombia and Mexico Country Management Unit, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank Group), Mexico City, 1 December 2003. 48. Other Mexican officials present at the meetings included: Carlos Gadsen (Director General of the National Institute for Federalism and Municipal Development); Angel Gurría (Minister of Finance and Public Credit); Rodrigo Morales (Director of the Centre for Economic Investigation); Ricardo Ochoa (a Director General in the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit); Moises Pineda (now an executive at the World Bank); Cecilia Ramos (former Minister for Economic Affairs in the Mexican Embassy to the UK, and now a representative of Mexico at the World Bank); and Eduardo Sojo (the Presidential Coordinator of Public Policy). 49. Marcel M. Giugale, Olivier Lafourcade & Vinh H. Nguyen (eds), Mexico: A Comprehensive Development Agenda for the New Era (World Bank, 2001). 50. World Bank Comprehensive Development Secretariat, ‘Comprehensive Development Framework: Implementation Experience in Low- and Middle-Income Countries – Progress Report’, 26 April 2002, p. 59. 51. See Marcel M. Giugale, ‘A Comprehensive Development Agenda for the New Era: Synthesis’, in Giugale et al., Mexico: A Comprehensive Development Agenda, p. 3. 52. Ibid., pp. 15–16; also William F. Maloney, with Gladys Lopez-Acevedo & Ana Revenga, ‘Labor Markets’, in Giugale et al., Mexico: A Comprehensive Development Agenda, pp. 511–36. 53. World Bank, ‘Memorandum of the President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and International Finance Corporation to the Executive Directors on a Country Assistance Strategy of the World Bank Group for the United Mexican States’, Report No. 23849-ME, Colombia–Mexico–Venezuela Country Management Unit, Latin America and the Caribbean Region, 23 April 2002; Ulrich Lächler (Lead Researcher), ‘Mexico: Enhancing Factor Productivity Growth’, Country Economic Memorandum, Report No. 17392-ME, Mexico Department, Latin America and the Caribbean Region, World Bank, 31 August 1998; and World Bank, ‘Memorandum of the President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance Corporation to the Executive Directors on a Country Assistance Strategy Progress Report of the World Bank Group for the United Mexican States’, Report No. 22147-ME, Colombia–Mexico–Venezuela Country Management Unit, Latin America and the Caribbean Region, 21 May 2001. 54. Morrow, ‘Mexico: Country Assistance Evaluation’. 55. Ibid., p. iii. 56. ‘Memorandum to the Executive Directors and the President’, 28 June 2001, in Morrow, ‘Mexico: Country Assistance Evaluation’. 57. World Bank, ‘Memorandum of the President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and International Finance Corporation to the Executive Directors on a Country Assistance Strategy of the World Bank Group for the United Mexican States’, p. 1, emphasis added. 58. Ibid., pp. 43–50. 59. Ibid., p. 22, emphasis added. 60. Official Diary, Poder Ejecutivo Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 6 December 2001. 61. Gillette Hall (Lead Researcher), Estrategia Desarrollo de los Estados del Sur de México, Vols. I and II (World Bank, 2003). 62. ‘México necesita combatir la pobreza en el sur para consolidar su prosperidad económica’, World Bank press release, No. 2004/012/MEX, 25 September 2003. 63. Olivier Lafourcade cited in ‘World Bank Team Offers Policy Menu’, http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/LACEXT/MEXICOEXTN/0,,contentMDK:20018971∼menuPK:338416∼pagePK:141137∼piPK:141127∼theSitePK:338397,00.html (accessed on 31 January 2005). 64. The term ‘official’ here refers to those unions that were given privileged political access to state resources under the PRI and, as a result, were able to broaden membership and defeat their adversaries within the labour movement. The dominant position of these ‘state-corporatist’ unions remained unchallenged until the 1980s and the onset of neoliberal restructuring. 65. Lächler, ‘Mexico: Enhancing Factor Productivity Growth’, pp. 91–2; Graciela Bensusán, ‘A New Scenario for Mexican Trade Unions: Changes in the Structure of Political and Economic Opportunities’, in Kevin J. Middlebrook (ed.), Dilemmas of Political Change in Mexico (Institute of Latin American Studies and Center for US–Mexican Studies, 2004), pp. 261–5; see also James G. Samstad, ‘Corporatism and Democratic Transition: State and Labor During the Salinas and Zedillo Administrations’, Latin American Politics and Society, Vol. 44, No. 4 (2002), pp. 1–28. 66. Giugale, ‘A Comprehensive Development Agenda for the New Era’, p. 15. 67. Maloney, with Lopez-Acevedo & Revenga, ‘Labor Markets’, p. 513, emphasis added. 68. This follows the typology of Mexican labour unions in Bensusán, ‘A New Scenario’, pp. 237–85. Bensusán's third type is ‘movement unionism’, which refers to those unions that are insistent about their opposition to neoliberalism and openly seek to challenge the state. 69. Abascal was quoted as follows in La Jornada, 26 May 2001: ‘In effect, there is a shared vision about the necessity to modernize labor legislation. We are in agreement with the modernization of this legislation, but we are in agreement with everyone: national and international investors, the World Bank, and workers. Everyone is in agreement because it is necessary to do it’ (my translation). 70. Kevin J. Middlebrook, ‘Mexico's Democratic Transitions: Dynamics and Prospects’, in Kevin J. Middlebrook (ed), Dilemmas of Political Change in Mexico (Institute of Latin American Studies and Center for US–Mexican Studies, 2004), p. 36. The UNT stress in their counter-proposal for labour reform that ‘the choice is not flexibility versus justice’, and neither is it between ‘productivity and the profit of the firm versus the rights of workers’ – see Unión Nacional de Trabajadores, ‘Por un Nueva Ley Federal del Trabajo para la reestructuración productiva y la transición democrática’, Trabajadores, No. 30 (2002), my translation. The compulsion to make this clear testifies to the extent of the UNT's suspicion as regards the Fox government's motives for pursuing labour reform. The only empowerment the state wishes to grant to workers is that which derives from being active market actors, not that which derives from collectivism or unionism. 71. Mexico Labor News and Analysis, a co-publication of the Mexico City-based Authentic Labor Front (FAT), the Pittsburgh-based United Electrical Workers (UE) and the Resource Center of the Americas, Minneapolis, November 2002. 72. See UNT, ‘Por un Nueva Ley Federal del Trabajo para la reestructuración productiva y la transición democrática’. 73. Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, Programa Nacional de Financiamiento del Desarrollo, 2002–6 (Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, 2002). 74. World Bank, ‘Mexico Country Economic Memorandum: Challenges and Prospects for Tax Reform’, Report No: 22527-ME, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela Country Management Unit, Latin America and the Caribbean Region, 30 July 2002, p. 16. 75. See Rocío Ramos de Villarreal, ‘Presidential Leadership and Decision-Making in Policy Reforms: The First 150 Days of Vicente Fox’, Center for International Development at Harvard University Working Paper, No. 75 (September 2001). 76. Fox concentrated his efforts at swaying public support through high-profile media appearances, a television campaign and special radio broadcasts. He addressed the nation directly on television on two occasions in April. See Ramos de Villarreal, ‘Presidential Leadership’, pp. 64–65. Elsewhere, the case for reform was disseminated through the Chamber of Deputies in the form of a CD-ROM entitled ‘The New Public Treasury’ (La Jornada, 28 March 2001). 77. For a discussion of approved reforms, see Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, ‘Quarterly Report: First Quarter of 2001 and Approval of the Financial Reforms’, Investor Relations Office, 7 May 2001. 78. See Jeffrey Weldon, ‘The Political Sources of Presidencialismo in Mexico’, in Scott Mainwaring and Matthew S. Shugaft (eds), Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 225–58. 79. The term ‘delegative democracy’ was coined by Guillermo O'Donnell with particular reference to the presidencies of Alberto Fujimori in Peru and Carlos Menem in Argentina. A key characteristic of these regimes was the way in which ‘the congress often played the role of a “rubber stamp” institution, simply validating the decisions of the president’: Joe Foweraker, Todd Landman & Neil Harvey, Governing Latin America (Polity, 2003), p. 205. Interestingly, the parallels between Fox and Menem do not end here for Foweraker et al., who point out that both used their respective parties as vehicles for their own personal ambitions, only to struggle against the confines of the limits of party platforms and to craft policy in a pragmatic manner, ‘constrained only by market criteria’ (p. 107). 80. Two problems have faced Fox with regard to his own party. First, the PAN has demonstrated an enduring lack of party cohesion in the legislative branch. On this, see Camp, Politics in Mexico, p. 173: ‘a study of the 1997–2000 legislature revealed that the entire PAN delegation stuck together on a legislative vote only 63 per cent of the time compared with 91 per cent for PRI’. Second, Fox has had an uneasy relationship with prominent PAN members and especially party and legislative leader Diego Fernández de Cevallos. Fernández de Cevallos had previously struck a bargain with then-president Carlos Salinas, which meant Fox had to accept a fraudulent election result that lost him the governorship of Guanajuato in 1992. In turn, Fox's decision to run for president using his ‘Amigos de Fox’ campaign vehicle, as opposed to the PAN, and his subsequent snubbing of powerful party members when forming his cabinet soured relations with the party even further. See Pamela K. Starr, ‘Fox's Mexico: Same as It Ever Was?’, Current History, Vol. 101, No. 652, February (2002), pp. 60–1. 81. For instance, Fox had pledged to 2,600 delegates at the SNTE congress that the VAT reforms would permit further funding of education, a pledge he reiterated to the teachers' union leaders during meetings a week later. See La Jornada, 14 December 2000 and 21 December 2000. 82. La Jornada, 6 April 2001. 83. La Jornada, 5 April 2001. 84. During 2002, Congress approved a reform to the development financial system; the Federal Law of Transparency and Access to Public Information; a reform to the Law of the Retirement Savings System; and the Law of the Settlements System. See Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, ‘The Executive submitted to Congress the Economic Program for 2003’, Investor Relations Office, 5 November 2002. 85. Gordillo had been a co-member of the Grupo San Angel with Fox and she had made public overtures of support for the government (Reuters, 9 July 2003). 86. El Universal, 24 November 2003; and Mexico & NAFTA Report, 13 January 2004. 87. ‘The presidency of Vicente Fox is over’, wrote Denise Dresser, ‘the president will continue to live in Los Pinos [the president's official residency], but he won't be orchestrating any changes from there. He'll leave his office like every other day, but he'll be a political corpse’ (quoted in CNN.com, 8 July 2003). The weekly Proceso carried a headline ‘Three Years: The Agony’ and portrayed Fox as a somewhat pathetic figure ‘in search of an epitaph’ (30 November 2003). 88. See Convención Nacional Hacendaria, Declaratoria a la Nación y Acuerdos de los Trabajos de la Primera Convención Nacional Hacendaria (Talleres Gráficos de México, 2004). 89. Estimates as to the exact number of protestors vary: according to the Ministry for the Interior there were 45,000 (BBC News, 28 November 2003), whereas organisers claimed there were 200,000 (Mexico Labor News & Analysis, November 2003). 90. Mexico Labor News & Analysis, December 2003; and La Jornada, 11 December 2003. 91. Quoted in El Financiero, 12 December 2003. 92. Elba Esther Gordillo, quoted in El Universal, 15 March 2004. For a further contextualisation of the failure of fiscal reform under Fox, see Greig Charnock, ‘The Crisis of Foxism: The Political Economy of Fiscal Reform in Mexico’, Capital & Class, No. 86 (2005), pp. 1–8. 93. La Jornada, 17 December 2000. 94. See, for example, World Bank, ‘Memorandum of the President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and International Finance Corporation to the Executive Directors on a Country Assistance Strategy of the World Bank Group in partnership with the United Mexican States’, Report No: 28141-ME, Colombia and Mexico Country Management Unit, Latin America and the Caribbean Region, 15 April 2004; and M. Delal Baer, ‘Mexico at an Impasse’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 84, No. 1 (2004), pp. 101–13. 95. To give but one other example, the ‘Kok Report’ on the European Union's Lisbon Strategy identifies key requisites for economic growth within the Eurozone: the removal of barriers to competition, creating the right climate for entrepreneurs, and building inclusive labour markets. See European Communities, Facing the Challenges: The Lisbon strategy for growth and employment, Report from the High Level Group chaired by Wim Kok (Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2004).