ABSTRACT
A conjuncture of globalisation and democratisation during the past decades has increasingly diffused power and attributions throughout the different levels of the State. This has led to a reassessment of the analytical perspectives necessary for the study of the state based on elements of space, geography and international political economy. How, then, has this state reconfiguration impacted developing countries’ industrialisation projects? This chapter will argue that this diffusion of state attributions has been even more acute in the developing world, where states have traditionally failed at consolidating an effective centre. Furthermore, the chapter will argue that this lack of an effective centre in the developing world led, even before the globalisation-democratisation conjuncture, to more multileveled dynamics of development.
This chapter will likewise give a concise overview of Mexico’s fragmented development, with a brief assessment of the main implications that the nationalist agenda of Mexico’s new President Elect could have for the country’s development trajectory.
