Politics: Institutional weakening – a severe threat to Mexico’s development
Policies to promote economic modernity since the 1980s and political democratization from the beginning of the century until 2018 created a good, but fragile and insufficient institutional framework in Mexico. Such policies included expanded freedoms for private sector participation in previously prohibited activities; the Banco de México's being granted autonomy; measures designed and successfully implemented to maintain macroeconomic stability; the creation of the anti-monopoly regulatory agency, the Federal Competition Commission, and the Federal Telecommunications Institute as autonomous bodies; and the liberalization in 2013 of the energy sector to allow domestic and foreign private investment.
However, current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has slowed down and reversed the process of institution building and strengthening. His open disdain for many of the country’s institutions is a major cause for concern. The arguments he has advanced to support this are ideological and political, namely, that the country’s institutions, including the electoral authority, universities and research centers and the justice system, are the product of the neoliberal past, and function to perpetuate inequality, corruption and the interests of the privileged few.
A series of events in the past few weeks have highlighted what many consider to be steps in the wrong direction on a political and social level. These include attacks on the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE), a small but high-caliber research institution, collaboration between government officials and organized crime, a rise in unpunished killings of journalists, and a deterioration in prison conditions.
This process of the destruction, weakening, or stagnation of many institutions has thus far not fueled a major crisis of governance. But it has, nonetheless, gradually and persistently undermined the government’s weakened capacity to act and worsened the situation of millions of Mexicans. The reconstruction of the country’s institutions and the recovery of levels of economic activity and social welfare will take years, perhaps decades, as AMLO still has three years left to go in his administration, and there is no indication that he will stop with his plans to continue attacking several of the institutions he considers an obstacle to his Fourth Transformation project.
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