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The Marriage of Finance and Order: Changes in the Mexican Political Elite

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Miguel Angel Centeno  and
Sylvia Maxfield
Sylvia Maxfield
Affiliation:
Miguel Angel Centeno is Assistant Professor of Sociology, Princeton University. Sylvia Maxfield is Assistant Professor of Political Science atYale University.
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Extract

Recent literature on Latin American political economy appears to echo work of the 1960s and 1970s emphasising technical expertise in government. Sikkink and Geddes, for example, suggest that the role of technical experts and professionalisation of the bureaucracy explain Brazil's relative economic successes in the 1960s.1 Conaghan, Malloy and Abugattas focus on the role of technocrats in economic policy—making in the Central Andes.2 Following seminal work by Camp and Smith, Hernández Rodríguez presents the latest data on the role of technocrats in the Mexican political elite.3 To a large extent, this recent literature on technocrats in Latin America fails to address one of the main issues debated in the earlier literature: the political consequences of increasingly technocratic government. A second problem with recent work is that, when it does address causal issues, it tends to follow the functionalist logic of earlier literature. Using data on Mexican political elites, this article develops a new typology which carefully differentiates the new technobureaucratic elite from other elite groups. The aim is to shed new light on the debate over the implications of increasing technocratisation. Secondly, this study of the rise of a new elite emphasises the role of institutional changes within the government bureaucracy in addition to the state's functional response to changes in its politico—economic environment. This article begins with a brief discussion of earlier general — and Mexico—specific — literature on technocrats.

Some analysts of technocracy in the 1960s and 1970s saw technocrats as apolitical specialists whose growing role in society heralded ‘an end to ideology’ and increased efficiency in government.4

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , February 1992 , pp. 57 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

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12 The cientificos were a closely knit clique of intellectuals, professionals and businessmen who advised dictator Porfirio Díaz. Their leader from 1895 on was Finance Minister José Limantour. Their name stems from their insistence on ‘scientific’ administration of the state and espousal of positivism and the work of Comte and Saint-Simon. Their main policy focus was on economic development. They believed authoritarianism, was necessary to guarantee the peace needed for economic advance. Most científicos also believed that the Indian and mestizo population was inherently inferior and that Mexico would have to rely on the leadership and capital of the native white elite and foreigners to guide their country to modernity. Interestingly, there was a battle over the Díaz succession between the cientificos, led by Limantour, and what could be called politicos led by General Reyes.

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16 Grindle, , ‘Power, Expertise and the Técnico’, p. 402.Google Scholar Grindle's case-study of CONASUPO followed in the tradition of several other in-depth case-studies of ‘technocratic’ state agencies. These studies tended to see técnicos and politicos as distinct groups, although their conclusions about the relationship between technocracy and political representation either through corporatism or democracy differ. Benveniste concludes that educational planning in the 1960s seemed to ‘neither strengthen nor weaken Mexican democracy’ while Greenberg found that ‘Mexican corporatism’ had been detrimental to irrigation planning in the 1950s and 1960s: Greenberg, M., Bureaucracy and Development (Lexington, MA, 1970)Google Scholar Benveniste, G., Bureaucracy and National Planning (New York, 1970)Google Scholar see also Purcell, , The Mexican Profit-Sharing Decision (Berkeley, 1976)Google Scholar Camp, R. A., The Role of Economists in Policy Making (Tucson, 1977).Google Scholar

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18 Basañez, M., La lucha por la begemonía en México, 1968–1980 (México, 1981).Google Scholar

19 Luis Echeverría, President of Mexico from 1970 to 1976, was in many ways a perfect example of a burócrata político. While much has been made of the fact that he was the first modern president that had never served in an electoral office, he had a long career in the party and in what we define below as the ‘political control’ sector of the bureaucracy.

20 The tecnoburócratas participated in IEPES largely as part of the camarilla politics game. They used IEPES as a way to solidify their place in the de la Madrid circle. Once they achieved top government positions, IEPES was no longer important to them. Consequently IEPES played a limited role in the 1988 presidential campaign and was abolished following the 14th PRI assembly of September 1990.

21 Interview, Mexico City, March 1988.

22 Notable exceptions include Cleaves, , Professions and the State, p.98Google Scholar; Basañez, M., La lucha por la hegemonía en México, 1968–1980Google Scholar; Kelley, G., ‘Politics and Administration in Mexico: Recruitment and Promotion of the Politico-Administrative Class’, Technical Papers Series no. 33, Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas, Austin, 1981Google Scholar Bailey, J., ‘Presidency, Bureaucracy and Administrative Reform in Mexico: The Secretariat of Programming and Budget’, Inter-American Economic Affairs, vol. 34, no. 1 (Summer 1980).Google Scholar There is also considerable work on the institutional parameters of policymaking which does not focus specifically on the relationship between institutional change and change in the characteristics of government personnel. See Purcell, S. K. and Purcell, J., ‘State and Society in Mexico: Must a Stable Polity Be Institutionalized?’ World Politics, vol. 32, no. 1 (Jan. 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar Bailey, J., Governing Mexico (New York, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar Spalding, R., ‘Welfare Policy Making: Theoretical Implications of a Mexican Case Study’, Comparative Politics, vol. 12, no. 2 (July 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar Street, S., ‘Burocracia y educación: hacia un análisis político de la desconcentratión administrative en la SEP’, Estudios Sociológies, vol. 1, no. 2 (May-Aug. 1983)Google Scholar Grindle, M., Bureaucrats, Politicians, and Peasants in Mexico (Berkeley, 1977)Google Scholar Aldrete, J. A., ‘Hacia un nuevo enfoque para el estudio de la acción burócrata estatal: la politica de vivienda del INFONAVIT’, Estudios Sociológies, vol. 1, no. 2 (May-Aug. 1983)Google Scholar Maxfield, Sylvia, Governing Capital: International Finance and Mexican Politics (Ithaca, NY, 1990).Google Scholar

23 Kelley also suggests that the complexity of issues facing the state is an insufficient explanation of rising technocracy. Kelley, G., ‘Politics and Administration in Mexico’, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

24 While previous studies which have focused on bureaucratic personnel have dealt only with the composition of the cabinet (e.g. J. Cochrane, 1967; Rodríguez, Rogelio Hernández, ‘Los Hombres de Miguel de la Madrid’, Foro International, vol. 28, no. 2 (July-Sept. 1987))Google Scholar we have chosen a wider definition of the bureaucratic elite. The only exceptions are analyses of specific sectors inside the bureaucracy. See Benveniste, Bureaucracy and National Planning, and Greenberg, Bureaucracy and Development. Camp's, Roderic ‘The Middle Level Technocrat in Mexico’ (Journal of Developing Areas, no. 6 (July 1972), pp. 571–582)Google Scholar concentrates on the Banco de México. While those in the cabinet are responsible for setting overall policy, ‘Director Generals’ have a great deal of hierarchical autonomy. Moreover, since future cabinets are largely drawn from this group, the analysis of the larger population provides a clearer indication of the future directions of the Mexican state. Other studies of the Mexican elite use samples which include party and military leaders; we restrict ours to government elites because of the relative weakness of these other institutions in the Mexican context. Details on the preparation of this data set may be found in Centeno, Miguel Angel, ‘The New Cientificos: Technocratic Politics in Mexico’, PhD diss., Yale University, 1990.Google Scholar

25 Smith, , Labyrinths of Power.Google Scholar

26 de Sheinbaum, Bertha Lerner, ‘La tecnocracía en México’, Revista Mexicana de Sociología, vol. 45, no. 2 (1983).Google Scholar

27 Ibid., Smith, 1979. The percentage whose fathers were politically involved might be much higher than ‘government’ figures indicate, but is obscured by the number of respondents who list father's original profession as opposed to the role for which he is best known. Such origins may play a prominent role in access to the top levels of the bureaucracy. For example, the fathers of the three leading pre-candidates for the 1988 presidential elections (Salinas, Bartlett and del Mazo) were all politicians. We also lack data on non-paternal family connections, and these may serve as a critical factor in determining access and entry to the elite. See Centeno, M. A. and Weldon, J., ‘A Small Circle of Friends’, paper presented at LASA meetings, Crystal City, Virginia, April 1991.Google Scholar

28 A breakdown of US universities where bureaucrats with a Masters of PhD who worked in agencies of the planning and banking sectors studied is as follows: Harvard, 24; Stanford, 18; Columbia, 12; Yale, 10; MIT, 7; University of Colorado, 6; University of Wisconsin, 6; University of Pennsylvania, 6; USC, 5; Cornell, 5; University of California, Berkeley, 5; University of Chicago, 3; NYU, 3; and I or 2 at others including Georgetown, Princeton, Purdue, University of Michigan, North-western, George Washington, Notre Dame, Williams and Vanderbilt.

29 These private schools include Anahuac, ITAM, Universidad Ibéroamericana, IPADE, ITESM and the Colégio de México.

30 Even these relatively low figures may be inflated. According to interviews conducted in Mexico City in February 1988, a previous survey of de la Madrid administration personnel found much lower levels of membership and participation. When the results were announced, de la Madrid ordered a second survey which asked more specific questions regarding party activity in order to obtain ‘better results’.

31 Camp, , ‘The Political Technocrat’.Google Scholar

32 Interview, New Haven, Jan. 1987.

33 See Centeno, , ‘The New Cientificos’, pp. 176 and 280–281.Google Scholar

34 There are a considerable number of other authors who come to similar conclusions. See Cleaves, , Professions and the State, p. 99Google Scholar Luna, M., Tirado, R. and Valeés, F., ‘Businessmen and Politics in Mexico, 1982–6’, in Maxfield, S. and Anzaldua, R., Government and Private Sector in Contemporary Mexico (San Diego, 1987)Google Scholar Rodríguez, R. Hernández, ‘La conducta empresarial en el gobierno de Miguel de la Madrid’, Foro International, vol. 30, no. 4 (1990), pp. 736–764.Google Scholar Camp's definitive work concludes that the level of public-private exchange in post-revolutionary Mexican governments was not as high as in pre-revolutionary governments but that the exchange was ‘quickly restored’ after being temporarily disrupted by the revolution. He finds no evidence of an increase in the 1970s or early 1980s but does say that ‘changes… that affect the proclivity toward such an exchange… are already in place’: Camp, R. A., Entrepreneurs and Politics in Twentieth Century Mexico (New York, 1989).Google Scholar Peter Smith, whose early work showed little public-private elite circulation feels the situation has changed. In the 1990s he sees ‘a new private sector government alliance’ and ‘a remarkable business presence in government’. Smith, P., ‘Tensions within the National Political Elite’, paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association meetings, Crystal City, Virginia, 4–6 April 1991.Google Scholar

35 We have utilised institutional association as an indication of the bureaucrats' function in the government. While this is not a perfect measure, the vagueness of job titles and the extent to which these disguise ‘real’ jobs leave no other alternative. ‘Banking’ includes Treasury, Banco de México, the development banks (e.g. Nafinsa) and the nationalised banks. ‘Planning’ includes Programming and Budget, Energy, Presidency, Auditing and Commerce. ‘Managing’ includes Agriculture, Communications and Transport, Health, Tourism, Urban Development, Social Security and all parastatals. ‘Control’ consists of Interior, Education, Labour, Agrarian Reform, Justice, the Department of the Federal District, and most local government posts. Our categories are partly based on those of Basañez, La lucha por la hegemonia, and Bailey, Governing Mexico.

36 The key role of personnel from planning and banking ministries has been noted by other researchers also. See Bailey, Governing Mexico, p. 60Google Scholar, and Hernández, , ‘Los hombres del presidente De la Madrid’, pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

37 See n.a., ‘El sistema político mexicano’, Revista de Administración Pública, vol. 44 (Oct-Dec. 1980), pp. 37–60.Google Scholar See also Centeno, M. A., ‘The New Cientificos’, for analysis of cabinet data based on Camp's, R. Mexican Political Biographies 1935–1981 (Tucson, 1982).Google Scholar

38 On the role of camarillas in recent years see Camp, R., ‘Camarillas in Mexican Politics’, Estudios Mexicanos, vol. 6, no. 1 (Winter 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rodríguez, R. Hernández, ‘Los Hombres del Presidente de la Madrid’Google Scholar Centeno, M. A. and Weldon, J., ‘Networks of Experts: Survival in the Mexican Elite’, paper presented at American Sociology Association Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., Aug. 1990.Google Scholar

39 Ex-personal secretary of López Portillo quoted in Ramos, A., Martinez, J. and Ramírez, C., Salinas de Gortari: Candidate de la crisis (México, 1987).Google Scholar

40 They are also much less likely than their SHCP counterparts to have worked in the private sector, and are much more likely to have worked in other public institutions, both in the planning sector and outside it.

41 The centrality of SHCP, as opposed to SPP, in the planning ‘network’ might appear to contradict the ascendancy of SPP we have described above. Yet SHCP's centrality is misleading. It is due partly to the facts that SHCP has a much longer institutional history and that a great deal of SPP's personnel began in SHCP before the income/expenditure split of 1977. Recent developments in Mexico also indicate that SHCP (under the leadership of SPP alumnus Pedro Aspe) may be re-establishing its predominance, but two critical factors make us doubt this resurgence. First, a similar trend evident during Silva Herzog's tenure at SHCP from 1981 to 1986 ended as he became the first person eliminated from the presidential sweepstakes. Secondly, an Aspe-led renaissance would probably involve an SHCP which resembled the 1979–88 SPP more than its classic predecessors. If the division of income and expenditure continues during the next sexenio, it will provide an excellent opportunity to measure the explanatory weight of the institutional factors in determining power within the bureaucracy. Manuel Camacho and Pedro Aspe certainly have much closer relationships to Salinas, but SPP Minister Ernesto Zedillo heads what has been the dominant agency. Their relative position later in the history of the administration will give us an excellent indication of the importance of the organisational element.

42 Vernon, , Public Policy and Private Enterprise.Google Scholar

43 Cardoso, F. and Faletto, E., Dependencia y desarollo en América Latina (México, 1969).Google Scholar

44 Schmitter, P. C. and Haas, E. B., Mexico and Latin American Economic Integration (Berkeley, 1964).Google Scholar

45 Maxfield, S., Governing Capital develops this argument in depth.Google Scholar

46 Fligstein, N., ‘The Intraorganizational Power Struggle: Rise of Finance Personnel to Top Leadership in Large Corporations, 1919–1979’, American Sociological Review, vol. 52 (1987), p. 44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 See Chavez, A. Hernández, Historia de la revolutión mexicana: El conflicto social y los gobiernos del Maximato (México, 1978)Google Scholar Córdova, A., La político de masas del cardenismo (México, 1974)Google Scholar Villegas, D. Cosío, El sistema politico Mexicano (México, 1975).Google Scholar

48 Kaufman, R., ‘Industrial Change and Authoritarian Rule in Latin America’, in Collier, D. (ed.), The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton, 1979), pp. 221–222.Google Scholar

49 The concept of co-presidency was first suggested by a mid-level PRI politician interviewed in Mexico City, Feb. 1988. See also Zaid, G., La economía presidential (México, 1987).Google Scholar

50 Ezcurdia, M., Hubo alguna vez un gobierno paralelo? (México, 1982).Google Scholar

51 See Smith, P., Labyrinths of Power, p. 165Google Scholar Camp, R., ‘El sistema mexicano y las decisiones sobre el personal político’, Foro International, vol. 27, no. 1 (July-Sept. 1976), pp. 51–83Google Scholar Luna, M., ‘Las transformaciones del régimen político mexicano en la década de 1970’, Revista Mexicana de Sociología, vol. 14, no. 7 (April-June 1983).Google Scholar

52 This was part of Echeverría's effort to reappropriate the ‘revolutionary mantle’ by enlarging the scope of government activity in both the economy and society and increasing the size of the bureaucracy.

53 See film interview with Margáin, Hugo in Mexico 1940–1982: from Boom to Bust, PBS documentary, aired October 1988.Google Scholar

54 The relative youth of these individuals led many observers to describe the system as a efoburocracía or ‘youthocracy’. See Smith, P., Labyrinths…Google Scholar;, pp. 281–282.

55 See Bailey, J., Governing Mexico, pp. 33 and 121Google Scholar Newell, R. and Rubio, L., Mexico's Dilemma: The Political Origins of Economic Crisis (Boulder, 1984), p. 141Google Scholar Millan, F. Zamora, Mexico: Ahora hacia dónde? (México, 1977), p. 67.Google Scholar Zamora Millan states that Echeverría ‘admitted the heads of the '68 movement into the ranks of government técnicos’.

56 Farias, F. Suarez, ‘The Political Elite of Mexico’, PhD diss., Department of Government, University of Essex, 1989.Google Scholar

57 For example, Miguel de la Madrid supported López Portillo's ‘pride of nepotism’ by giving the president's son a high-level post in SPP. He also downplayed the pessimistic scenarios presented by SHCP-head David Ibarra even when all the other economic experts were warning López Portillo of the consequences of deficit spending. Carlos Salinas followed the same strategy, permitting consistent underestimation of government budgets and was always careful to play the role of ‘good soldier’. He never overshadowed de la Madrid or proposed policies contrary to the political interests of the president. (Interviews, Mexico City, Feb. and March 1988.)

58 Maxfield, and Anzaldua, , Government and Private Sector…Google Scholar

59 López Portillo also followed a very different course in order to resolve the regime's political crisis. He substituted a strategy of trying to achieve legitimacy through efficient government for Echeverría's effort to recapture the ‘revolutionary mantle’ by expanding state intervention in the economy. This search for efficiency, and Mexico's new-found wealth, partly explain the emphasis on defining and elaborating complex economic plans which we detect in Mexican policy-making after 1976. But as we discussed above, the new elite which controls the Mexican bureaucracy does not consist of a generic group of technocrats or even planners, but of personnel possessing financial, planning and policing skills.

60 With the collapse of the oil boom in 1981–2, their only potential competitors, the petroleum technocrats, were deprived of both their most dynamic leader, Díaz Serrano, and their pivotal role in policy-making: providing the lion's share of income to the state. The finance organisations managed what was now the most critical issue for the Mexican state: the relations with the banks and international financial institutions.

61 Explanations of the rise to power of the technocrats which focus on increased economic and decision-making complexity may help explain the significant power of Treasury and the Banco de México prior to 1970. In his memoirs, López Portillo describes the Ortiz Mena Hacienda as ‘full of esoteric complications and led by sage and remote wisdom… the owner of all the intimate secrets of an exclusive area, which no one, not even the Presidents, dared enter’. Such explanations, however, cannot explain the relative decline in the Treasury's power. See Portillo, J. López, Mis Tiempos (Mexico City, 1988), pp. 286 and 316Google Scholar Solís, L., La realidad económica mexicana: retrovisión y panorama (México, 1970).Google Scholar

62 There is some debate, however, regarding whether SPP was meant to assume such a complete hold on the state apparatus. According to one of the men responsible for the design of SPP, it was originally conceived as a consultuing office, or at most, as an equivalent to the OMB in the US. Only in the later stages of its organisational development did SPP become a fully-fledged ministry. (Interview, Mexico City, April 1988.)

63 Bailey, J., Governing Mexico, 1988.Google Scholar

64 Ibid., pp. 206–2077, footnote 27.

65 The conflicts often involved competition for supremacy in the cabinet. The three most prominent battles were between Carlos Tello and R. Moctezuma Cid in 1977, Miguel de la Madrid and David Ibarra from 1979 to 1982, and between Carlos Salinas and Jesús Silva-Herzog from 1982 to 1986.

66 Interview, Mexico City, June 1988.

67 This does not necessarily mean that Salinas will dismantle this apparatus, but at the very least that he means to take it over. For the leadership's views on the party structure see Centeno, Miguel A., Mexico in the 1990s: Government and Opposition Speak Out (La. Jolla, CA, 1991).Google Scholar

68 A more optimistic, but less likely, scenario involves the PRI responding to the electoral challenge of Cárdenas by assuming the role more clearly associated with political parties in the Western democracies. This scenario would probably accompany a formal split in the party, with the left wing going into opposition and the rest moving somewhere to the right and establishing a legislative alliance with the PAN. If the PRI can maintain control of the southern and rural areas (difficult without patronage) it could follow the Italian Christian Democratic model and maintain control over the government, with a simple plurality. This would involve the tecnócratas and the burócratas politicos ceding power to a new generation of politicians able to function in a more open electoral environment (recruited from the PAN?), together with the re-establishment of a more técnico civil-service bureaucracy largely removed from the political arena and willing to follow, not make, government policy. This scenario would require not only an extremely favourable economic climate, incredible political virtuosity on the part of Salinas, and the PRI's willingness to relinquish power; it would also require the left, or at least those sectors associated with Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, to accept ‘the new rules of the game’ and to be willing to allow the more right-wing alliance probable control over the government.