ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines Mexico's economic restructuring program and argues that it has had an important role in accelerating the transformation of Mexico's corporatist-clientelist political arrangements—arrangements that have ensured the political dominance of the official Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Although a form of neocorporatism is likely to replace the old corporatist structures in at least some sectors, this new form of corporatism is considerably weaker in its ability to control societal pressures than its older variant. The economic project of increased competitiveness through industrial reconversion produced ever increasing confrontation with Mexico's powerful labor unions and ultimately a forceful government assault against labor unions and collective contracts. The chapter demonstrates that Mexico's program of economic restructuring has severely undermined the corporatist-clientelist relations largely responsible for the predominance of the PRI.
