Resumen

BIZBERG, Ilán. The failure of continuity. Political economy in the Enrique Peña Nieto administration. Foro int [online]. 2020, vol.60, n.2, pp.629-682.  Epub 14-Ago-2020. ISSN 0185-013X.  https://doi.org/10.24201/fi.v60i2.2735.

The presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto was supposed to mark a 180-degree turn with respect to the dominant issue of the previous government: the war on organized crime. To achieve this, a decision was made to focus on structural economic reforms, by expanding the model first implemented in the 1980s and that had continued undisturbed over four governments. This is despite the fact that over the past thirty years the performance of the Mexican economy, together with its socioeconomic impact, has been disappointing. This under-performance is all the more marked in light of the exceptional conditions in which the global economy developed between 2000 and 2014, known as the commodities super cycle. This was characterized by accelerated growth in China that provided a huge stimulus for the demand and prices of raw materials, together with the expansion of financial resources from the United States, which led the majority of countries in Latin America to grow faster and, above all, to do so while reducing poverty and inequality. By contrast, Mexico failed to take advantage of the very favorable global economic conditions to improve the socioeconomic situation of its population.

Palabras llave : political economy; Enrique Peña Nieto administration; Mexico; growth; inequality.