This chapter discusses how the Mexican public administration is being affected by a backsliding process triggered by the current government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. It argues that Mexico is experiencing a case of what could labelled “doublespeak populism,” which is transforming in profound ways the country’s public administration. López Obrador’s agenda has been embedded in terms and phrases traditionally associated with the political left, but his policy measures actually reflect topics closer to the right. Moreover, these measures have been introduced whilst deliberately concealing their ultimate intentions and potential effects.As a result, López Obrador’s reforms have further deteriorated bureaucratic institutions and public services, thus affecting the overall welfare and basic rights of the people they are supposed to help. The chapter draws on policy proposals, presidential speeches, analyses from academics and policy experts, and news reports to assess the broader administrative consequences of López Obrador’s doublespeak populism on Mexico’s democratic governance.

Citizens are central in any account of democracy. Any limitations on the capacity of citizens to exercise formative agency on complex matters of global justice can be overcome in inclusive deliberative settings. The citizen consultations conducted in the connection with the Sustainable Development Goals are assessed in this light. While pioneering, these consultations proved problematic in deliberative terms. We show how citizen deliberation could be promoted through transnational and global forums – most ambitiously, a Deliberative Global Citizens’ Assembly. We argue on both ethical and problem-solving grounds for the agency of the poor, currently often missing in global governance – though again the process for the Sustainable Development Goals tried to reach them more than did any previous global process. The agency of the poor can be promoted by poor-led social movements and institutional design to deliver on the need for the poor to act as a global community of interest. The poor from different parts of the world should deliberate together on what global justice requires on the ground, in contrast to national exercises that are limited in both democratic and epistemic terms.

Focuses on consumer protection in the context of energy market reform. Given the region’s energy poverty, consumer protection must be placed at the centre of the reforms. From a procedural perspective, public consultation could make an important contribution to the public acceptability of tariff reforms, but this would require a frank admission of the real causes of energy insecurity in Central Asia, including the highly sensitive topics of corruption and discrimination in favour of strategic enterprises. Judicial practice in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan demonstrates that courts have a role to play in enforcing consumers’ procedural rights. In addition to procedural protection, subsidies are necessary to protect the most vulnerable segments of the population against tariff increases. However, subsidizing the use of energy traps consumers into energy dependency and thus exacerbates the financial impact of future tariff increases. In order to break the vicious circle of low energy pricing that currently undermines Central Asian energy security, subsidies must be channelled away from energy consumption and into efficiency improvements.