In Mexico, the capitalist state continues to maintain an authoritarian administration whose policies, particularly since the 1980s, reflect the demands of the neo-liberal dominated international economic system. Nora Hamilton in her article "State-Class Alliances and Conflicts," in the Latin American Perspectives issue Modern Mexico: State, Economy and Social Conflict discussed the decline of the nationalist model and the emergence of the internationalist model. She mentioned this came about due to "agencies, institutions, and personnel of the state that reflect, represent, or reproduce social forces external to it: class and group interests, alliances and conflicts." These forces then constitute the actors in the process of change. In her conclusion, she states that a coalition of labor and peasant organizations would be necessary for finding an alternative to the internationalist model. (1)

This paper discusses how the internationalist model has been able to survive and provide for its future in Mexico by building and maintaining an international coalition between capitalist groups in the U.S. and Mexico. This work utilizes Hamilton as the starting point to explain the beginning of the change in social forces that continue to influence policy today in Mexico. Furthermore, there is a discussion of how a combination of international and domestic groups united to form a dominant internationalist coalition. This coalition not only facilitated the passage of NAFTA but the formation of a new corporatist structure COECE (Commercial Export Business Organizations or Coordinadora de la Organizaciones Empresariales de Comercio Exterior) which is structured to maintain the internationalist development model in state policy in Mexico through an alliance of industry and commercial classes through trade agreements. This organization facilitated and continues to help maintain the multiple networks of capitalist groups between the U.S. bureaucracy, the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico (Amcham Mexico), Mexican business, and the Mexican bureaucracy, in particular, SECOFI (Ministry of Trade and Industry) that facilitated negotiations of the treaty. These networks reveal how international capital groups are required to influence domestic policy in lesser-developed states and do this by uniting with domestic policy groups in the bureaucracy and business groups in civil society. These coalitions marginalize the larger population of working class and indigenous persons by implementing unemployment or low wage neo-liberal policies which serve to strengthen primarily international capitalist interests.

Essential to international capitalist interests is the compliance of the domestic government to their need for third world resources. Mexico does this through changes in bureaucratic personnel reflecting neo-liberal ideology and with ties to U.S. and international lending institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. The process of increasing technical officials in the bureaucracy was begun under President Luis Echeverria, however, with the presidency of Miguel De la Madrid, increasing numbers of technocrats entered into the bureaucracy, particularly those with weak ties to the PRI and those with minimal electoral experience. This new influx of technocrats helped to create a neo-liberal coalition within bureaucracy that would facilitate passage of policies in support of the internationalist model. Many of the heads of ministries now...