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The Political Technocrat in Mexico and the Survival of the Political System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Roderic A. Camp
Roderic A. Camp*
Affiliation:
The Wilson Center Washington, D.C.
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No issue in Mexican politics received more attention in selecting the 1982 presidential candidate than the role of the technocrat. The technocrat's influence on the Mexican state has had widespread consequences, such as changing political recruitment patterns, altering the socialization of political leaders, shifting career channels essential to advancement within the political system, and most significantly, causing adjustments in the stability of the political system. Crucial to any discussion of the changing role played by the technocrat in Mexican politics is a clear understanding of the term technocrat. This essay therefore will discuss conceptualizations of the technocrat, attempt a working definition of the term in the Mexican context, provide empirical evidence as to the presence of technocrats in Mexican politics, and suggest possible consequences for the political system.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , 1985 , pp. 97 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. Nelson Polsby laid out these issues in his discussions of the theoretical debates among students of local government. For examples, see his Community Power and Political Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).

2. For a discussion of this issue, see Norman Birnbaum, “Problem of a Knowledge Elite,” Massachusetts Review 12 (Summer 1971):620-36; and Bennet M. Berger, “Sociology and the Intellectuals: An Analysis of a Stereotype,” Antioch Review 17 (1957):275–90.

3. Merilee S. Grindle, “Power, Expertise, and the ‘Técnico‘: Suggestions from a Mexican Case Study,” Journal of Politics 39 (May 1977):402.

4. Ibid., p. 426.

5. Recognition of the importance of the political technician (or técnico) in Mexican political life was first noted in the work of Raymond Vernon, The Dilemma of Mexico's Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), most notably in his chapter “The Políticos and the Técnicos since 1940.” This discussion was followed by the author's “Role of the Técnico in Policy Making in Mexico: A Comparative Study of a Developing Bureaucracy,” Ph.D. diss., University of Arizona, 1970. Analyses grounded in empirical examinations in the Mexican context include James D. Cochrane, “Mexico's New Científicos: The Díaz Ordaz Cabinet,” Inter-American Economic Affairs 21 (Summer 1967):61–72. Also, Roderic A. Camp, “The Cabinet and the Técnico in Mexico and the United States,” Journal of Comparative Administration 3 (August 1971):188-213; “The Middle-Level Technocrat in Mexico,” Journal of Developing Areas 6 (July 1972):571-82; The Role of Economists in Policy-Making, A Comparative Case Study of Mexico and the United States (Tucson: Institute of Government Research, University of Arizona Press, 1977). For a recent discussion of the differences between the technocrat and the bureaucrat, see Guillermo Kelley, “Politics and Administration in Mexico: Recruitment and Promotion of the Politico-Administrative Class,” Technical Paper Series No. 33 (Austin: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1982).

6. For evidence of this trend in Mexico since the 1960s in the policy-making process, see Miguel S. Wionczek, “Electoral Power: The Uneasy Partnership,” in Public Policy and Private Enterprise in Mexico, edited by Raymond Vernon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 55–58; Thomas T. Poleman, The Papaloapan Project (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964); Philippe Schmitter and Ernest B. Haas, Mexico and Latin American Economic Integration (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1964); Merilee S. Grindle, Bureaucrats, Politicians, and Peasants in Mexico: A Case Study in Public Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); and Miguel Basáñez, La lucha por la hegemonía en México (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1981), pp. 67–70.

7. Data for these figures are taken from the author's Mexican Political Biographies Project (MPBP). See table 1, note c, for a brief description of the information contained in this data set.

8. For evidence of this assertion, see studies by Susan K. Purcell, The Mexican Profit-Sharing Decision; Politics in an Authoritarian Regime (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975); Martin H. Greenberg, Bureaucracy and Development: A Mexican Case Study (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1970); and Guy Benveniste, Bureaucracy and National Planning: A Sociological Case Study (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970).

9. The only group of officeholders who provide an exception to this statement are supreme court justices, who must have law degrees. Thus by definition all justices have a minimal education at the university level. Their impact on Mexican policy is quite small, however.

10. Roderic A. Camp, Mexico's Leaders: Their Education and Recruitment (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980), p. 68.

11. A preliminary analysis of politicians who were elected to be federal deputies in the 1982–85 legislature reveals similar trends as well as a rapid increase in degrees in economics for this group.

12. Among the contenders whom de la Madrid defeated for the official party nomination for the presidency (which virtually guarantees being the next president) was David Ibarra, who holds a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford.

13. A brochure sent to prominent North Americans as a profile of president-elect de la Madrid had this to say about his experiences at Harvard University: “There, he showed a strong interest in economics and political science, and was a student of John Kenneth Galbraith, Arthur Smithies, Don K. Price and Calvin Blair. He exchanged ideas with students from Latin America and other parts of the world and came into contact with Latin American intellectuals, such as the Brazilian Hélio Jaguanbe, with whom he has maintained a close friendship over the years.” Miguel de la Madrid: The Next President of Mexico, 1982–1988 (Mexico: Communications and Public Affairs Office of the President-Elect of Mexico, 1982), pp. 7–8.

14. Roderic A. Camp, La formación de un gobernante: la socialización de los líderes políticos en el Mexico postrevolucionario (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1981), p. 176. For other examples of the specific effects on distinguished Mexicans of living and studying abroad, see such autobiographies as Daniel Cosío Villegas, Memorias (Mexico: Joaquín Mortiz, 1976), pp. 101ff.; and José Vasconcelos, Ulises Criollo (Mexico: Editorial Jus, 1978). See also José Joaquín Blanco, Se llamaba Vasconcelos (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1977), for an excellent analysis of significant events in Vasconcelos's life.

15. Roderic A. Camp, “Intellectuals and the State in Mexico, 1920–1980: The Influence of Family and Education,” paper presented at the Sixth Conference of Mexican-United States Historians, Chicago, 8–12 September 1981, p. 12.

16. The best recent North American view of the negative consequences of imitation for Mexico and Latin America is E. Bradford Burns, The Poverty of Progress: Latin America in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). The current views of several prominent Mexican intellectuals are presented in Mexico Today, edited by Tommie Sue Montgomery (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1982).

17. Personal interviews in May, August, September, and October 1983.

18. Excélsior, 9 November 1981, 18A.

19. Dirección General de Communicación Social de la Presidencia de la República, Quien es quien en la administración pública (Mexico, 1982).

20. Paul H. Lewis, “The Spanish Ministerial Elite, 1938–1969,” Comparative Politics 5 (October 1972):97; and the author's “The Cabinet and the Técnico in Mexico and the United States,” Journal of Comparative Administration, pp. 188–213.

21. Peter H. Smith, Labyrinths of Power: Political Recruitment in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 247.

22. Roderic A. Camp, “Losers in Mexican Politics: A Comparative Study of Official Party Precandidates for Gubernatorial Elections, 1970–75,” in Quantitative Latin American Studies: Methods and Findings, edited by James W. Wilkie and Kenneth Ruddle, vol. 6 of Statistical Abstract of Latin America (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1977), pp. 23–24.

23. See my discussion in Mexico's Leaders and “Intellectuals and the State.”

24. For a discussion of the Colegio's goals, see the biography of Daniel Cosío Villegas, the intellectual force behind the Colegio's curriculum. Enrique Krauze, Daniel Cosío Villegas, una biografía intelectual (Mexico: Joaquín Mortiz, 1980). The influence of the Colegio presages that of private schools in general on the Mexican leadership. As Daniel Levy argues, “private-sector graduates are generally more suitably trained than their public counterparts for positions in a State that is much more strongly inclined to mainstream Western than to Marxist economics.” See Levy's manuscript, “The State and Higher Education in Latin America: Private-Public Patterns,” 1982. Levy's assertion is supported by the fact that the present cabinet for the first time includes two graduates of the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and that de la Madrid's appointments secretary is an alumnus of the Universidad Iberoamericana.

25. Camp, “State and Higher Education in Latin America.”

26. This last comment is based on personal interviews that I conducted in May, August, September, and October of 1983.

27. During a presentation I made at the Instituto de Estudios Jurídicos at UNAM in September 1983, the audience, which was composed largely of professors and full-time researchers, reported that dozens of students in the previous six months had returned from abroad because of economic difficulties.

28. For some of these generational changes in the 1920s and 1930s, see Luis González's study, Los artífices del cardenismo: historia de la revolución mexicana, vol. 14 of La historia de la Revolución Mexicana, 1934–1940 (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 1979), pp. 113ff.

29. This trend now applies even to presidential precandidates. See my forthcoming article, “Mexican Presidential Candidates: Changes and Portents for the Future,” Polity 14 (Summer 1984).

30. De la Madrid removed Javier García Paniagua as President of the Comité Ejecutivo Nacional (CEN) of the PRI only days after he had been approved by the National Assembly of the party. It was widely reported in the press that mutual animosity existed between the two men because of García's Paniagua's distaste for political technicians, whom he believed de la Madrid to represent. Excélsior, 14 October 1981, p. 1; Latin America, 23 October 1981, p. 1.

31. See Excélsior, 6 July 1981, pp. 1, 10A; Tiempo, 5 October 1981, p. 4; Tiempo, 15 May 1972, p. 31; Excélsior, 4 May 1972, p. 4; Tiempo, 28 May 1979, 13; The New York Times, 26 September 1981, pp. 1, 4; Excélsior, 6 October 1981, p. 10A; and Excélsior, 26 September 1981, p. 13A.

32. Excélsior, 8 January 1982, p. 16A.

33. Concerning their values and the problems they created, see the case study done by James Cockcroft, Intellectual Precursors of the Mexican Revolution, 1900–1913 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968).

34. Several politicians complained vociferously about the incompetence of this younger generation. More recently, a prominent governor admitted to me that the personal warmth of the traditional politician was a quality that should be acquired by the politicial technicians. Moreover, even lower-level employees of certain goverment agencies have indicated a difference in the style of the technocrat versus the traditional politician. They used the word cold to describe the political technician. Interviews in Mexico, May-August 1978; May 1982; and February and March 1983.

35. This situation is one of the reasons why so much attention is paid to Fidel Velázquez, longtime head of the Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM) and his possible successor. In the 1950s, the government led by the president could manipulate the labor leadership at will, guiding them within its own economic framework. Today Velázquez has gained enough autonomy, as well as a reputation for an iron hand over this large labor federation, to pressure the government. There is probably no one in the present cabinet who has sufficient experience in labor matters to influence directly the transition in leadership or mobilize the union. Thus the consequence of political technocratic leadership for the unions is to allow them greater autonomy and to force the government leadership to rely on union leaders for support.

36. Robert E. Beck, “The Liberal Arts Major in the Bell System Management,” Project Quill Report (Washington, D.C.: Association of American Colleges, 1981), pp. 227–39. Beck found that graduates in the humanities were especially strong in interpersonal skills when compared with those graduating in sciences, math, engineering, and business.

37. This belief has spread to other educated groups in Mexico. For example, León García Soler, in his popular Excélsior column, “La Mitad del Foro,” recently remarked sarcastically, “Este, García Paniagua, demuestra que en la Secretaría del Trabajo la virtud principal de un político es serlo.” 3 January 1982, p. 18.

38. For some interesting explanations of the consequences of these changes, as well as their impact on organized labor, see Kevin Middlebrook, “Political Change in Mexico,” in Mexico-United States Relations, edited by Susan K. Purcell (New York: Academy of Political Science, 1981), pp. 55–65; and Middlebrook's “The Political Economy of State-Labor Relations in Mexico,” a paper presented at the meetings of the Latin American Studies Association, Washington, D.C., 3–6 March 1982.

39. Recent views predicting some of these responses were made by a group of North American scholars before the CEN of the PRI in November 1982. Their interpretations and the Mexican response to them have been reprinted in the publication by the Comité Ejecutivo Nacional del PRI, Perspectivas del sistema político mexicano (Mexico: PRI, 1982), pp. 61–66. For the English version, see the entire issue of The Mexican Forum (December 1982).

40. Evidence of this situation can be found in Susan Purcell, The Mexican Profit-Sharing Decision; Christopher Mitchell, “The Role of Technocrats in Latin American Integration,” Inter-American Economic Affairs 21 (Summer 1967):3-30; and Roderic A. Camp, The Role of Economists in Policy-Making; A Comparative Case Study of Mexico and the United States (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977).

41. “Development Strategies in an Oil Exporting Nation: The Case of Mexico,” paper presented at the International Studies Association, Cincinnati, 24–27 March 1982, p. 4.

42. For example, Herberto Castillo, a professor at the School of Engineering and longtime political activist, became the leader of the Partido de Trabajadores Mexicanos (PTM). See Daniel Levy and Gabriel Székely, Mexico, Paradoxes of Stability and Change (Boulder: Westview, 1983), pp. 75–76. Another example is that of Luis Villoro, a member of the Colegio Nacional and a leading essayist who also became militant in the opposition parties in the late 1970s. For his justification of why an intellectual should be involved in political life, see his interview with Rodolfo Guzmán, “La organización política independiente, única vía de cambio sin violencia: Villoro,” Proceso 14 August 1978, pp. 6–8.

43. For some insights into the consequences of the importation of foreign values, see Cinna Lomnitz, “Science and Social Change in Latin America,” paper presented at the International Symposium on Intellectuals as Agents of Change in Mexico and Latin America, Central College, 19–20 October 1980; and Larissa Lomnitz, Leticia Mayer, and Martha Rees, “Recruitment and Training of Mexican Professional Leaders: The School of Veterinary Medicine of the National University of Mexico,” manuscript, 1981.

44. One of the most crafty Mexican presidents, Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, was asked about the influx of political technicians during his successor's regime. He remarked that one always had to be very careful with técnicos but that they should be used. Those who should make the decisions, however, should always be the politicians. See “Red privada,” Excélsior, 3 March 1980, p. 27A.