This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to explain policy change towards decentralization in Mexico by examining different class strategies in the face of 'hegemony crisis' in the course of the 1970s. It shows that strategies of northern factions of Mexican bourgeoisie and dominated masses especially in the southern states shaped the particular extent and content of decentralization. The analyses put an emphasis on how and why these class strategies were framed by the specific stage and phase of capitalism. The book demonstrates that the nature of the state-economy relationship prevalent with the local social formation is an important explanans. It employs a subnational comparative method which proves to be effective in examining the spatially uneven nature of major processes of political and economic transformation such as the impact of decentralization in different regions of a country.