A Vision that Transcended Developmental Boundaries 

Who governs the global economy? Who establishes the agenda, makes the decisions, and structures the institutions that set the rules of the game? According to the conventional wisdom, such governance has been largely the purview of the most powerful nations and empires in the world. Rich countries set the rules, and the poorer and weaker ones are compelled to follow them.

In this story, the idea that a country like México could influence the governance of the global economy seems a dubious proposition. Wracked by devaluations and debt crises, México experienced a thorough reorientation of its economy in the last decades of the twentieth century, as the United States and international financial institutions prescribed privatization, liberalization, and austerity as conditions for debt relief. …. What role could such a country play on the world stage?

Against the conventional narrative, this book presents the little-known history of how officials in Mexico seized moments of profound international change during the twentieth century to assume a leadership role in the struggle for a different kind of world economic order.

The Mexican vision for global economic governance was one that afforded representation to the countries of what would become the Global South and enabled redistribution of the surplus capital of the Global North. As they looked to reconstruct their war-torn country in the aftermath of the twentieth century’s first social revolution, Mexican leaders quickly came to understand that their national economic progress was deeply dependent on the rules and institutions that governed global capitalism, and they therefore set out to change those rules to favor their country and others like it. In so doing, they advanced early demands for institutions to promote international economic development — and compelled the powerful countries of the world to respond.

They argued for new multilateral agreements, outlined innovative new international institutions, and fought during crucial global negotiations for both the rights of the poorer states and the duties of the richer ones. This fight, waged over more than five decades, was Mexico’s revolution in development…

México put forward a vision that transcended the boundaries of the national developmentalist project, seeking not just to transform the domestic economy but to devise new rules and institutions for managing the global economic systems into which Mexico was increasingly integrated. It is a dream that still echoes to this day: that the global capitalist economy, managed under the proper institutions and rules, could allow the poorer, weaker, indebted countries of the world to overcome their structural disadvantages and enjoy a share of the returns of capitalist progress…

However, the unintended consequences of Mexico’s vision need to be underscored, as the pursuit of this dream ultimately led its leaders to defend precisely the institutions that would be used to dismantle the country’s state-led developmentalist project during the crisis of the 1980s. This history, then, should serve as a cautionary tale for today’s dreamers.