Mexico is one of the Latin American states that are considered to be emerging states. After having experienced a tremendous economic and financial crisis in the 1980s a technocratic state elite together with the support of national business elites and international donors promoted the liberalization and privatization of the economy. Especially the export-oriented sector was increasingly subsidized with the crisis and adjustment policies. Together with the economic crisis, the country experienced a transition of its political regime. Although economic reforms and political openings could have led in theory to democratization, I argue, the transition process got stuck in the grey zone between democracy and authoritarianism - despite strengthened state institutions. A revision of economic developments since the 1980s, that includes not only the relationship between the state and the business sector but also between the state and workers on the on hand and the relationship between economic elites and workers on the other hand, demonstrates how political and economic transition processes are interrelated.
In order to be able to link state-society relations to neopatrimonialism, the respective term need to be revisited and specified. It is argued in this paper, that a focus on clientelism provides a possibility to link development-economic aspects with political-institutional developments. As Mexico is no longer authoritarian and as it seemed to be on its way to democracy during the 1990s, it provides a good case to study how non-democratic and developing hindering structures have survived even though the economic sector was reformed, a political transition processes occurred and the state institutions are strong. Going beyond the mere institutional (bureaucratic) level of states and a sharpening of the concept of clientelism allows for an explanation why phenomena typically related to neopatrimonialism do not necessarily go hand in hand with state failure.
