Postsovereign Governance in a Globalizing and Fragmenting World: The Case of Mexico

Globalization and “global governance” have become the buzzwords at the turn of the century in order to name and explain the emerging post‐Cold War international order. The first one makes reference to the technological revolution that is modifying our notions of space, time, and production, while the latter attempts to illustrate how power and its regulatory practices are being transformed among polities. We discuss these two notions in the first part of this essay to argue that, in fact, the emerging “global” order will be different from that grounded on state‐centered notions of territory and sovereignty. Our arguments focus on the Mexican case to highlight how this country is moving from an inward‐looking, state‐centered, authoritarian machinery of governance, to a postsovereign, principle‐based, multilayered governance structure. This transition has mainly manifested in the governance mechanisms of corporate and human rights. This does not mean that policy tools of the “ancient regime” have completely disappeared. State‐centered structures of governance will remain important during this stage of economic and political change. Areas moving into postsovereign and principled regulatory practices will overlap with those that remain under the monopoly of national bureaucracies. Though Mexico's economic and political change could be explained as a reactive movement against the collapse of the state‐centered authoritarian model, an important conclusion of this essay is that the emerging pattern of postsovereign and principled bureaucratic governance will play a major role in shaping the future of those changes.