ABSTRACT
One of the first effects that globalisation and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had on Mexican industrialised states was the displacement of their domestic industries amid increasing international competition. Based on ongoing fieldwork undertaken in Mexico since 2014, this chapter will apply a Most Different Design System of comparison to highlight how two contrasting Mexican states relied on similar developmental policies and institutions to regain their industrial competitiveness in the new globalised context.
In an effort to trace this rise of developmental policies across subnational platforms following Mexico’s neoliberal turn, this chapter will first explore the case of Nuevo León – one of Mexico’s most industrialised states, which began to lose its competitiveness within the new internationalised context. As this chapter will examine, the policy regimes pursued at the federal level and at the subnational level experienced a growing divergence – the federal level was increasingly market-oriented, whilst the subnational level played a more proactive or state-activist role.
