In Mexico, most of the reforms we've seen under Calderón have already outlived their usefulness. A further fiscal reform is urgent as soon as possible. The electoral reform seems unlikely to live to see the end of Calderón's term. Another oil reform package is inevitable, though not imminent. Another judicial reform wouldn't be much of a surprise. The only reform that was final in the way that we expect most American congressional reforms to be would seem to be the IMSS reform from early 2007. I don't see this as being held against Calderón or the Mexican Congress the way incomplete reforms would be in the States.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Different Approaches to Reform
A big difference between the American and Mexican legislative approaches was on display in the most recent Paul Krugman column. (At least, half of that difference was on display.) Krugman wondered if Obama's conciliatory side would make the eventual health care reform passed in Congress too tepid to complete the task at hand, i.e. giving the US a cost-effective health care system without a significant number of uninsured people. This idea, that any reform should be final, is also evident in the frustration about the Reagan immigration reform in 1986, as well as in the reaction to No Child Left Behind. None of the three cases are the same, but they all seem to me to reflect a rather binary style of assessment: either it worked or it didn't.
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3 comments:
Could one difference be some level of resignation in Mexico to the power of poderes facticos? I mean, none of those reforms came close to fixing the structural problems. The fiscal reform didn't pretend to bring Mexico's tax/GDP ratio even anywhere near OECD norms (i.e. take on rich tax minimizers). The electoral reform was undertaken without dealing with Televisa et al, which leaves as much of an elephant in the room as would the US enacting health care reform without addressing costs. The oil reform was a bit different in terms of the opposition coalition but the indispensable aspect of taking on the Pemex union never really came close to fruition. In the US, with NCLB and health care, we expect that real reform will bring a fight with the teachers unions or big health care or whoever, and are disappointed with watered down versions that emerge from the sausage factory and leave the big players unscathed.
Or something.
I'm not sure that I agree with the premise. Oh, I agree with Krugman's premise about health care, but that's because people like us our worried that a halfway reform will make full reform harder later. The reason for that isn't because Obama will be seen to be failure if he gets a good health reform act passed. Rather, it's because he'll be seen as a success, taking the wind out of the sails of future reformers.
Similarly, the two acts you mentioned probably aren't great examples. Nobody remembers Simpson-Rodino these days, except when the idea of an "amnesty" comes up. And even then the debate is more visceral, less "we tried that in '86 and it didn't work."
Ditto NCLB. It has some failures, some successes, and the Bush Administration failed to fund it, but the political reaction doesn't seem to be any different that the Mexican reaction to halfway-successful reforms. (And it certainly has little to do with why the Bush Administration lost its credibility, no?)
Meanwhile, there are all these dogs that didn't bark. Big at the time, only partially successful, not viewed in black-and-white terms. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, say, or the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
"I'm not sure that I agree with the premise. Oh, I agree with Krugman's premise about health care, but that's because people like us our worried that a halfway reform will make full reform harder later."
I'm chewing on that one, you may be right. I kind of wrote this thinking out loud, so allow me to continue doing so. There's a definite difference into the way in which reform is conceived in the two countries IMO, even if I can't put my finger onto exactly how that manifests itself. I guess it's not so much in the nature of the assessment of the reform. It's almost like the US reforms move down a to-do list...education, check; health care, check; immigration, check. In Mexico, there's more of a sense of God making the Earth in seven days, of creating from whole cloth new regimes rather than just addressing an isolated problem. (Please don't ask me to support that idea with anything further.) Part of the way I think that manifests itself is in a willingness in Mexico to revisit reforms just a couple of years later. The idea that a half-assed reform will make a complete one harder to pull of down the line seems more ingrained in the US than in Mexico.
"Ditto NCLB. It has some failures, some successes, and the Bush Administration failed to fund it, but the political reaction doesn't seem to be any different that the Mexican reaction to halfway-successful reforms."
For me, it remains to be seen if there is a substantial difference between the Mexican and the US response to only partially successful reforms. I suspect that Mexico in the next six years will revisit at least three of the five halfway successful reforms undertaken since Calderón arrived, which would reflect a different approach than in the US.
As far as what you said JD, I think there's probably something to that. A lot to that actually. Similarly, I also think that satisfying three major parties instead of two, in a nation without a long history of cross-party dealing, and where legislators can't build a career out of being wheeler-dealer types, also contributes to watering down legislation.
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