Political Discourse and Neoliberal Reform in Mexico 1988-1994.
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This thesis examines the impact of economic liberalism on the dominant source of
legitimation in Mexico - nationalism - during the presidency of Carlos Salinas de
Gortari (1988-94). It asks whether national ideology remained of value as a
legitimising force given the ways in which neoliberalism challenged its social rationale
and looks at the search for a new basis of consensus. The thesis argues that salinismo
continued to find nationalism valuable to maintaining consensus by providing a
formula which could mediate rival individual and social claims. It analyses
nationalism through the content attributed to the individual and the social in political
discourse of the period.
Chapter 1 argues that a relationship has existed between political economy and
national ideology since Mexico's independence. This has been determined by elites
seeking to establish a state sufficiently stable to enable economic development. In the
20th century, conceptions of nationality provided criteria for "nation-building", the
creation of an integrated citizenry free of divisions which threatened stability. Chapter
2 argues that Salinas continued to find nationalism of legitimising value to his own
state reforms, but adapted it to neoliberal priorities.
Chapters 3 and 4 focus on how Salinas dealt in two instances - landholding and
free trade - with conflicts generated by rival conceptions within nationalism and
neoliberalism of the individual and sovereignty. Chapter 5 examines how intellectuals
reassessed nationalist ideology, and how the new models of community they imagined
reflected the search for a legitimising formula functional to the new political economy.
Chapters 6 and 7 argue that opposition parties on Left and Right also sought such a
formula and assessedth e need to mediate individual and social claims.
The thesis contributes to an understanding of the role nationalism has played in
Mexico's capitalist development, shedding light upon its fate within accelerated
modernisation.
Authors
O'Toole, Gavin Eugene BernardCollections
- Theses [4235]