ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes some general propositions about interest group politics in Mexico and analyzes trends in government-business relations. It outlines the main actors involved in the renegotiation and then characterizes the terms of the dialog during the first half of Miguel de la Madrid's government. Authoritarianism has served as the reigning interpretive model for Mexican politics since the mid-1960s, replacing the previous and short-lived image of that nation as evolving toward something like pluralist democracy. The postwar emphasis on rapid industrialization through fomenting an import substitution industrial base created a working consensus that comprised an effective state interest. Lacking a career service and marked by high rates of turnover at the policy-making levels, the central bureaucracy is reasonably coherent and responsive to presidential leadership. Mexican "bureaucratic politics" are quite different from those of the United States. Complicating the analysis of government-business relations is the reality that much of the most significant contact and negotiation are carried on discreetly.
