ABSTRACT

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is formally a trilateral agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada, yet nothing about the agreement seems to be trilateral in the conventional sense. Economic, political and social developments are part of a single linear process characterised by economic liberalism and political democracy. The historical contingencies that would supposedly limit Argentina's democratic development to a centre-right coalition were simply not there. Modernisation scholars roughly believe that democratisation is a by-product of development. From a modernisation perspective, Robert Kaufman's analysis explains how an accurate indicator of political change is the way a country deals with the internationalisation of its economy. As such, from a strictly modernisation perspective, analysing the impact of NAFTA on Mexico's democracy is the same as analysing NAFTA's impact on Mexico's economic development. In many ways Mexico is a text-book example of a 'dual transition', which involved the almost simultaneous breaking of political and economic monopolies.