Conclusions

Abstract

The principal aim of my research was to investigate the nature of the relationship between economic and political change in the case of Mexico. I questioned in particular whether the policies of economic liberalization pursued by the Mexican government since the mid-1980s would prove to be fundamentally incompatible with the corporatist system and might, in turn, bring about a democratization of the relationship between state and society, as has been argued by the ‘rentseekers’ and those influenced by the modernization school, such as Berins Collier, Bizberg, Baer, Morici, Roett and Rubio.¹ In order to do this, a detailed study was made of the privatization of TELMEX, which was the first large public enterprise to be sold in Mexico, and the single most lucrative instance of privatization in that country.² The questions asked were important in regard to the political system for two principal reasons. First, the arrangement of society into a corporatist system, dating from the administration of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40), has been interpreted broadly as one of the major keys to the PRI’s stability. Thus, if economic reform threatened to unravel the corporatist system, this would have serious consequences for the continuity of the regime. Second, if the corporatist system was dismantled or loosened, this would render society less dependent upon the state, and at the same time, more autonomous and thus democratic.