Accountability Politics: Power and Voice in Rural Mexico

by Jonathan A. Fox

Overview

How can the seeds of accountability ever grow in authoritarian environments? Embedding accountability into the state is an inherently uneven, partial and contested process. Campaigns for public accountability often win limited concessions at best, but they can leave cracks in the system that serve as handholds for subsequent efforts to open up the state to public scrutiny. This book explores the how civil society "thickens" by comparing two decades of rural citizens' struggles to hold the Mexican state accountable, exploring both change and continuity before, during, and after national electoral turning points. The book addresses how much power-sharing really happens in policy innovations that include participatory social and environmental councils, citizen oversight of elections, local government social investment funds, participation reforms in World Bank projects, community-managed food programs, as well as new social oversight and public information access reforms. Meanwhile, efforts to exercise voice unfold at the same time as rural citizens consider their exit options, as millions migrate to the US, where many have since come together in a new migrant civil society. Since explanations of electoral change do not account for how people actually experience the state, this book concludes that new analytical frameworks are needed to understand "transitions to accountability." This involves unpacking the interaction between participation, transparency and accountability. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Official Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191607264
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	12/13/2007
Series:	Oxford Studies in Democratization
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Jonathan Fox was born in New York City and studied politics at Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is Professor in the interdisciplinary Latin American and Latino Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has published widely on issues of development policy, democratization, institutional reform and migrant civil society. He began carrying out field research in Mexico in 1982, and has also worked in Brazil, Central America, and the Philippines. He works with a diverse array of public interest groups, development agencies, social organizations, and private foundations.

Table of Contents

1. Accountability Challenges: Disentangling State and Regime2. Civil Society and Accountability Politics3. How Does Civil Society Thicken? The Political Construction of Social Capital4. Offsetting the "Iron Law of Oligarchy:" The Challenge of Internal Democracy5. The Invisible Problem of the Secret Ballot in the Countryside: What Counts as Free and Fair? 6. Contrasting Theory and Practice: The World Bank and Social Capital in Rural Mexico7. Decentralizing Decentralization: Mexico's Invisible Fourth Level of the State8. Comparing Regional Rural Development Councils: Do "Invited Spaces" Empower? 9. Accessing Accountability: Individual vs Collective Voices10. Mexico's Migrant Civil Society: Exit Followed by Voice11. Mapping Accountability PathwaysBibliography