Long-term relationships between business interests and the state in Mexico

Abstract

This text presents an overall and long-term vision of the relations between business and the state in Mexico. The analysis aims to explain how business mobilize their interests, what influence they have on public policies that affect the entire society, why and how they have participated in party politics and the expansion of democracy in Mexico. It shows how they started the twentieth century with a legitimacy deficit, expelled from the political scene because of the Revolution (1910–1921), and how they managed to grow and create powerful companies and organizations that allowed them to transnationalize and start the twenty-first century at the top of the power, not only economic, but also political. It examines the political participation of business to face the growing interventionism of the State in the economy during the period of industrialization by import substitution and shows how many business people left their companies to enter partisan politics from the local and regional spheres to the National. Their involvement in public policies that led to privatization, deregulation, and economic openness is also examined. The relations of business interests with the four governments of the twenty-first century is analyzed in a particular way: the two of the PAN (Vicente Fox, 2000–2006 and Felipe Calderón 2006–2012), that of the PRI (Enrique Peña Nieto, 2012–2018) and that of Morena (Andrés Manuel López, 2018…).