The Marriage of Finance and Order: Changes in the Mexican Political Elite

Abstract

Recent literature on Latin American political economy appears to echo work of the 1960s and 1970s emphasising technical expertise in government. Sikkink and Geddes, for example, suggest that the role of technical experts and professionalisation of the bureaucracy explain Brazil's relative economic successes in the 1960s. 1 Conaghan, Malloy and Abugattas focus on the role of technocrats in economic policy—making in the Central Andes. 2 Following seminal work by Camp and Smith, Hernández Rodríguez presents the latest data on the role of technocrats in the Mexican political elite. 3 To a large extent, this recent literature on technocrats in Latin America fails to address one of the main issues debated in the earlier literature: the political consequences of increasingly technocratic government. A second problem with recent work is that, when it does address causal issues, it tends to follow the functionalist logic of earlier literature. Using data on Mexican political elites, this article develops a new typology which carefully differentiates the new technobureaucratic elite from other elite groups. The aim is to shed new light on the debate over the implications of increasing technocratisation. Secondly, this study of the rise of a new elite emphasises the role of institutional changes within the government bureaucracy in addition to the state's functional response to changes in its politico—economic environment. This article begins with a brief discussion of earlier general — and Mexico—specific — literature on technocrats. Some analysts of technocracy in the 1960s and 1970s saw technocrats as apolitical specialists whose growing role in society heralded ‘an end to ideology’ and increased efficiency in government. 4

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