Agrarian reform and populist politics : a discussion of Stephen Sanderson's "Agrarian populism and the Mexican state"

In: Latin American perspectives: a journal on capitalism and socialism, Band 12, Heft 3, S. 29-41

Abstract

"Agrarian populism" (Berkeley, 1981) deals with the subtleties of Mexican populism by weaving the case history of the struggle for land in the key state of Sonora into the analysis of the national experience. The state is bound by the contradictions between the revolutionary foundations of its political legitimacy and its commitment to capitalist economic development. Sanderson concludes that the state-sponsored development of private entrepreneurship now precludes the continuation of the agrarian reform. The future of the state's political legitimacy in the countryside may depend less on structural constraints than on the interplay between the regime's creativity and the increasingly autonomous peasant movement