51. Foreign Policy Strategies in a Globalized World: The Case of Mexico
- Author:
- Guadalupe González
- Publication Date:
- 02-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- This document analyses the impact of the end of the Cold-War, and the processes of economic and political liberalization on Mexico's foreign policy. The first section identifies the consequences for the so-called intermediate countries of the three most important post-Cold War trends: the emergence of hybrid structure of global power, the wave of globalization, and the growing importance of international institutions. The second section evaluates the explanatory value of three systemic approaches to the study of the foreign policy of intermediate states: systemic-structuralism, middle powers, and pivotal states. In the third section, I evaluate Kahler's alternative approach centered on the interaction between systemic and domestic variables, in particular on the foreign policy consequences of economic liberalization and democratization such as the adoption of external cooperative strategies and the deepening to engagement with international institution. The fourth section describes the main changes that have taken place in Mexico's foreign policy during the 1990s: pragmatism, primacy of economics, closer alignment with the United States, segmented multilateralism, fragmentation of the decision-making process, and new instruments. There are two arguments in this document. First, in contrast to other intermediate liberalizing countries, Mexico's efforts to adapt to the new post-Cold War international system, followed an uneven and partial pattern. While Mexican political leaders pursued the full integration of the country to the international economy, in the security realm they maintain a less than open policy based on the defense of the traditional notion of sovereignty. Mexico's partial adaptation is explained by the different pace of the raid economic reform on the one hand, and the gradual and slow opening of the post-revolutionary political regime, on the other. Second, as Kahler's model predicted, Mexico adopted strategies of cooperation and institutional engagement in order to solve credibility roblems. The need to enhance the credibility of the programs of economic reform pushed the Mexican government to engage actively with economic international institutions.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Africa, United States, Middle East, North America, and Mexico