Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The rise of Andrés Manuel López Obrador to power marked a break with the trajectory of administrative reforms promoted by Mexican governments since democratization. In the realm of public employment and its professionalization, this break was evident in the further abandonment of the civil service career system, the marginalization of the traditional bureaucracy, and the reallocation of resources toward programs prioritized by the government. These changes led to a deterioration of both working conditions and compensation for federal public servants. These developments reflect, on the one hand, a profound distrust and disdain for the federal bureaucracy within the ruling political project and, on the other, a deliberate return to a system based on political loyalty, prioritizing it over considerations such as professional merit and equal opportunity in public service recruitment and retention. This article examines these changes and discusses their broader implications.

This article examines how President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) centralized various aspects of clientelism in Mexico during his six-year term in office (2018-2024). During this period, also known as the Fourth Transformation (4T), one sees a profound centralization of intermediation and clientelist exchange from the level of neighborhoods to the federal executive. One of the instruments used to achieve this was the Servants of the Nation, a group of approximately 20,000 federal employees who helped inform and affiliate millions of Mexicans to several federal social programs, making it clear that the president of the nation provided these goods. At the same time, the Servants also undertook (at the behest of their leaders) political and electoral tasks in several elections, supporting Morena and its candidates to remain in government six more years.

Mexico has had an exceptionally close relationship with the United States (US) for many decades. Recent calls in the US for a new wave of “nearshoring” to help the American economy rebuild its fragmented and vulnerable supply chains following a series of disruptions and geopolitical shifts linked to the COVID-19 global pandemic, the rise of economic nationalism, China’s emergence as a global technological superpower, and growing regional conflicts raise both opportunities and challenges for Mexico. This article reviews Mexico’s bilateral economic ties with the US economy in the postwar period to highlight patterns and lessons that can be learned to deal with the current conjuncture. The global value chains (GVC) approach is utilized to show how recent US industrial and trade policies focus on a series of strategic industries such as semiconductors, automobiles, pharmaceuticals, and critical minerals in which Mexico has much to offer. However, international competition and US political dynamics require a more active and comprehensive development strategy in Mexico to achieve both development and innovation benefits.

This article evaluates Mexico’s feminist foreign policy from two perspectives. First, the way this policy informs the work of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is analyzed, with a focus on its initiatives within multilateral organizations and the Ministry’s internal policies. The achievements and formulation of the main goals are considered. Second, the two main ideas underlying this policy are critically explored: gender equality and the promotion of human rights. The aim is to understand the epistemology that informs this policy, which is presented as transformative, intersectional, and from the “Global South”. Finally, a reflection is made on societies of care as a proposal for social transformation.

En este volumen se exponen ocho investigaciones que giran en torno de los conceptos de inclusión-integración para el caso de estudiantes venezolanos en Colombia. Los autores hacen un recorrido por este país con importantes hallazgos en el campo educativo en relación con la inclusión y la integración de estudiantes migrantes. ...

Hablar de un libro es hablar de muchos libros y más cuando de una obra colectiva se trata, como es el caso de esta Introducción al estudio de la política exterior comparada: un libro que es muchos libros, no sólo por su extensión, sino por el acercamiento que propone. De allí que sea admisible verlo como una suerte de caleidoscopio, un artefacto –o dispositivo, podría decirse hoy– que nos ofrece imágenes múltiples del mismo objeto. En este caso, un caleidoscopio con reflexiones diversas sobre 25 naciones, que reunidas o por separado nos conciernen, nos interpelan. ...

From Mexico’s democratic transition in 1997 until 2018, presidents without a legislative majority were forced to negotiate their agenda with the opposition or adjust it, based on their political party support in Congress, thus maintaining a relative balance between the Executive and Legislative branches. With the arrival to power of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), who implemented a direct confrontation strategy with the opposition, the balance was broken, weakening institutional checks and balances. Based on a comparative analysis of constitutional review actions (acciones de inconstitucionalidad) during the Peña Nieto and AMLO administrations, we identify three specific actions through which this conflict strategy was carried out and eventually transformed the Executive-Legislative relationship: the use of undemocratic Legislative procedures by the ruling coalition to pass key presidential initiatives; the approval of reforms aimed at weakening institutional checks and balances; and the opposition’s challenges of major reforms in the Supreme Court. The analysis reveals that the political conflict strategy hindered the potential cooperation between the branches of power and undermined fundamental components of the democratic system.

The article analyses Mexico’s participation in the United Nations Security Council during 2021-2022, from the perspective of elected members that face legal and political constraints vis-à-vis the five permanent ones. However, non-permanent members have a variety of formal and informal institutional means at their disposal to influence the Council’s work and outcomes. The 2021-2022 biennium was marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian aggression against Ukraine. While the former challenged the Council’s working methods, the latter has led it into a new era of impasse, reflecting the fragility of the current international disorder. The article assesses how the Mexican delegation made use of the means at its disposal in order to overcome the aforementioned difficulties and promote the priorities set by Mexican diplomacy, as well as the national interest. Overall, a positive balance can be struck of an active participation and modest achievements.

This article examines the legal and political strategy advanced by Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE, in Spanish) during the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in its unprecedented challenge to the U.S. arms industry. The strategy materialized in two lawsuits directed against firearms manufacturers, distributors, and retail outlets in the United States.Beyond reconstructing the process through which this Mexican strategy was conceived and subsequently navigated across distinct legal stages, the juridical and political merits of the lawsuits are questioned, and their broader repercussions within the United States are evaluated in the article.The central hypothesis is that Mexico’s litigation strategy constituted a significant innovation in its broader efforts to curb the illicit trafficking of firearms from the United States, representing a qualitative leap in the articulation of foreign policy instruments to address transnational security concerns.In doing so, we aim to enrich scholarly assessments of the López Obrador administration’s foreign policy by highlighting an issue that has been largely overlooked, while also contributing to a deeper understanding of the evolving strategies employed by the Mexican state over the last decade in relation to arms trafficking.

Despite its long-standing disrepute and the loss of executive power for the first time in 2000, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) managed to maintain a prominent political position among the electorate, as evidenced by its continued representation in the federal Congress and state governments. Its presence in the states, control over its electoral machinery, and the cultivation of local leadership around Enrique Peña Nieto enabled the party to regain the presidency in 2012. The new administration received favorable evaluations, which allowed it to propose policy initiatives and persuade opposition actors–helping the PRI to reclaim political ground. However, corruption scandals involving the president, his close associates, and several governors, along with his inability to respond effectively to political crises–most notably the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students–ultimately damaged not only the image of the president and his administration, but also that of the PRI, which has since experienced a steady decline in political standing. This article examines the relationship between Peña Nieto’s government and the party that brought him to power, under the premise that the executive’s actions, errors, and omissions have consequences for public perceptions of the party organization from which he emerged.