Mexico’s Welfare State: Birth, Growth and Retrenchment (1822–2002)

In north-western Europe, the Welfare State (WS) grew out of the struggles of subaltern groups (workers, peasants, women) within states that had been consolidated for centuries and were slowly opening up to these groups as a consequence of the protests, social movements, strikes and other types of collective actions these organized (Esping-Andersen, 1990; Hicks, 1999; Huber and Stevens, 2001). After they achieved universal male suffrage in the early twentieth century, these groups began to constitute power centres of their own within the dynamics of democratic politics, and to obtain, in alliance with others (mainly peasants and middle sectors), public services and rights to welfare programmes Of course, this pattern differed between liberal democracies, such as the United Kingdom, and countries with a state-led tradition such as France, Germany, and Italy, or social democratic Scandinavian countries (Huber, Ragin and Stevens, 1993). But without following Marshall’s lead, it can be asserted that in Western Europe, a more or less continuous line may be drawn between the granting of basic civic rights and the adoption of public policies designed to reduce social inequalities and protect families from the vagaries of the labour market.