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Business plays a critical yet poorly understood role in trade policymaking. This paper develops an analytical framework that focuses on the distribution of business trade preferences, the forces that cause those preferences to change, and the ability of different groups to exert political influence over policy. It then applies this framework to Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s. Large, exporting firms increased their weight due to shifts in the international context, the condition of the domestic economy, and previous government policies. Policymakers granted political access to actors whose economic and political leverage had risen, typically those who controlled numerous investment resources and sought out a direct role in policymaking. Many of these actors also favored free trade. Business participation in trade policy reflects these patterns. Large, outward-oriented firms played an increasingly important role in Mexico's adoption of free trade policies over the 1980s and early 1990s.

Analysts have long suspected that politics affects the lending patterns of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but none have adequately specified or systematically tested competing explanations. This paper develops a political explanation of IMF lending and tests it statistically on the developing countries between 1985 and 1994. It finds that political realignment toward the United States, the largest power in the IMF, increases a country's probability of receiving an IMF loan. A country's static political alignment position has no significant impact during this period, suggesting that these processes are best modeled dynamically. An analysis of two subsamples rejects the hypothesis that the IMF has become less politicized since the end of the cold war and suggests that the influence of politics has actually increased since 1990. The behavior of multilateral organizations is still driven by the political interests of their more powerful member states.

The process of political coalition building surrounding trade reform in Mexico had implications for the 1994-95 peso crisis. This article traces the formation of a free trade coalition between state and business elites across several episodes of trade opening, focusing on the NAFTA negotiations. The consolidation of this powerful but narrow coalition helped to cement the Salinas government's neoliberal reform agenda, boost investor confidence, and restore moderate levels of low-inflation growth in the early 1990s, but it also gave rise to the macroeconomic imbalances and political instability that led to the 1994 crisis. Since then, the economic basis of the neoliberal coalition may have recovered, but its political viability may be questionable.

Do neoliberal economic policies help or hinder human development? Many have argued that such policies promote economic stability and growth, which may have indirect positive effects on human welfare. Others claim that neoliberal policies retard human development. We argue that neoliberal economic policies may improve the human welfare in ways that are independent of their effects on economic performance. Specifically, this paper hypothesizes that open international trade policies, low-inflation macroeconomic environments, and market-oriented property rights regimes promote human development across the world. We test this argument by examining the impact of several measures of neoliberal policies on infant mortality rates across the world between 1960 and 1999. Results suggest that openness to imports, long-term membership in the GATT and WTO, low rates of inflation, and effective contract enforcement are each associated with lower rates of infant mortality across the world, even when controlling for countries' economic performance.