Romeo R. Flores Caballero is uniquely qualified to write about Mexican politics and administration in historical context. He holds a doctorate in Mexican history from the University of Texas at Austin, and has taught at the prestigious Colegio de México and, as a visitor, at various United States universities. His publications cover Mexico’s independence period as well as the contemporary economy. In the 1970s he took an indefinite sabbatical leave from academia to plunge into his country’s political administration—not recommended for those overly concerned with personal security—as a director in Patrimonio Nacional, as an advisor to presidents, and currently as secretary of education for his home state of Nuevo León.
The dual nature of his career has both augmented and limited the value of this book. Public administration may be studied both from within and without; that is, from the viewpoint of an insider involved in the workings of the machinery or from that of an observer alert to the changing perspectives of successive administrations—or, of course, from both positions. Flores Caballero in this study stands for the most part on the outside. He relates how administrations reacted to the peculiar circumstances of their times at the uppermost levels of government from the colonial period to the present. It is not his intention to explore the functioning of these administrations or to analyze the results of the changes that they advocated. Instead, he tells us what they proposed to do and why, which in itself is a valuable contribution to our knowledge, despite our yearning to be invited into the inner sanctum of Mexico’s political and administrative behavior.
The book naturally is strongest on topics about which Flores Caballero is most knowledgeable: the turbulent early independence period characterized by its revolving political strongmen and treasury shortages that undermined administrative intentions; the advent of the Patrimonio Nacional in a determined effort to give post-World War II economic development an assuredly Mexican shape by preserving the nation’s resources and controlling foreign investments; and the far-ranging administrative reforms of the López-Portillo sexenio (1976-82) designed to make the federal bureaucracy an active agent in the nation’s economic and social development. By establishing detailed programs to meet specific goals (outlined in the book), the penultimate administration sought to democratize politics and to equalize the distribution of wealth. The government of Luis Echeverría had sought to do the same by assigning an increased portion of federal income to the states and municipalities.
In sum, reacting to increasing national stress created by international political and economic uncertainties, the heightened demands of domestic special-interest groups, substantial population growth, administrative overlap and corruption, and the knowledge that more Mexicans than ever find themselves alienated from (i.e., fed up with) their government, federal administrations have for at least the past three decades initiated reforms meant to stabilize the country politically, or, some would say, to keep the lid on. So far, assures the author, such procedures are admirable and have worked.
