Yearly Archives: 2016

 Luis Rubio In the eighties, the title of a book on Indonesia summed up the moment in that society, not very distinct from that of today’s Mexico: “A Nation in Waiting”. In waiting for “a change”. Governments come and governments go, all avowing deliverance. But deliverance did not come and everything turned out being excuses: […]

Luis Rubio The anger is tangible and fully justified: the risks for Mexico of a Trump presidency are evident; the scathing offenses that the U.S. presidential candidate has lavished upon Mexico and Mexicans are plainly inadmissible. All of this is clear and indisputable. The question is whether Mexico has the possibility of “stopping” Trump and […]

Luis Rubio “Transitions are long, uncertain and complex, affirms Joaquín Villalobos. Worse yet, writes Australian novelist Nikki Rowe, “Transition isn’t pretty, but stagnation is hideous”. Mexico’s penal reform process is found in that limbo: significant advances in some aspects but without consolidating the port of arrival. The country undertook an extraordinarily ambitious transformation in matters […]

Luis Rubio Dogmas and factiousness forge the educative strategy. Some policy makers advance a reform that cannot in reality be applied, others undermine it to upset a rival in the presidential-succession race; some demand absolute compliance with what, simply, cannot be complied with and the rest just take advantage of the troubled waters to impose […]

Luis Rubio Whoever has walked down the streets of a European city knows that sidewalk cafés are the social and community lifeblood. The cafés extend out to and onto the sidewalks, where customers coexist peaceably with passersby, without the least conflict arising between them. The cafés occupy the sidewalks but do not invade them, a […]

 Luis Rubio In memory of Professor Stephen Zamora Defying the reality is a sport engaged in by all politicians of the universe. However, sooner or later comes the day to pay the piper. Dilma Rousseff was removed because of alleged “crimes of responsibility” in fiscal matters, but her true crime was sustaining a cadence of […]

 Luis Rubio   The great lesson of the British vote is that no one has control of political processes.  In a world where information is horizontal and everyone has access to it -as receivers and as informers- no one can limit what is known (be it true or false), what is discussed or what is […]

 Luis Rubio    It is no secret that the government of President Peña has responded poorly to several problems and challenges in its tenure. A symbolic, but revealing, example of this was the decision to remove a government advertisement whose message was “ya chole con tus quejas” (roughly translated as “enough with your complaints”) as a […]

Luis Rubio The traditional question that political scientists posed in decades past was who gets what, when and how. This economy-driven focus derived from the principle that economic performance (national or by region) exerted a direct impact on the perspective of the voters and allowed for the development of models of predictability of electoral behavior. […]

Luis Rubio Corruption has become the nodal leitmotif of Mexican politics. Although overwhelming evidence does not exist with respect to the degree that the former affects, facilitates or impedes the functioning of the economy, the political factum is that corruption has metamorphosed into the factor around which public discussion, electoral processes, and decisions on savings […]