Las finanzas públicas en los siglos XVIII-XIX

This volume of essays is one in a series of ten economic histories of Mexico recently published through the collaborative efforts of the Instituto Mora, El Colegio de Michoacán, El Colegio de México, and UNAM’s Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas. Most of the chapters in this collection (as in most of the other volumes) have been previously published—in this case, mostly in the 1980s and mostly in Mexico. Although many (perhaps most) historians might find the study of state finance somewhat tedious, I would urge careful attention to this volume and, indeed, to the series as a whole. What these essays tell us about broader themes in Mexico’s transition from colony to nation is impressive. Some of the broad themes include the desperate efforts of the Bourbon state to increase American revenues during the endemic European wars of 1778–1804; the central role of church wealth and finances in this story; the collapse of public revenues and a viable fiscal system well before 1821, foreshadowing a by-then inevitable independence; and the enduring inability of subsequent national governments to raise sufficient revenue to survive. Chapters by Andrés Lira González, Carlos Marichal, and John Jay TePaske trace the first three themes, while the remaining five chapters focus on the national period. These are familiar themes, but they are here given a logic and perspective that is both compelling and refreshing. More novel is the argument running through many chapters that federal fiscal weakness through the first half century of independence not only debilitated the federal state but also foregrounded the role of state-level fiscal policy. This trend began in the years just before and during the wars of independence, and the autonomy of states’ (or sometimes regional caudillos’) fiscal policies endured for much of the next half century. Only with the recuperation of federal fiscal potency after the 1870s were state policies relegated to a secondary level.I was struck by the overall unity of fiscal themes through nearly a century of major political transition and turmoil. However, while Marcello Carmagnani argues for a “profound continuity” (p. 160) in public finance through the nineteenth century, this does not necessarily constitute evidence of coherent or durable fiscal institutions. Continuity, in this case, may be the default result of political instability, weakness, and the inability to undertake substantial fiscal reform. Chapter after chapter highlight the weakness of the state at both federal and state levels. In addition to some of the better known examples of federal penury and debility, the regional views provided here by Barbara Corbett (San Luis Potosí) and Francisco Téllez Guerrero and Elvia Brito Martínez (Puebla) provide fascinating examples of the important but often neglected role of state governments vis-à-vis regional economic activity, as well as of their enduring struggles against centralizing interests. Economic activity in San Luis Potosí, for example, was affected more by state-level fiscal policies than by federal policies in the formative first decade of independence. At the same time, the developmentalist project of local elites in the 1820s was largely an impotent one, in the face of the state’s inability to consistently administer and enforce its own regulatory legislation.One of the implicit questions running through these essays is that of state formation and the emergence of a modern Mexico. From the perspective of public finance, this means determining whether the state conceived of fiscal policy as a coherent set of regulatory tools to achieve certain goals (most generally related to state building and economic development) and whether these policies were effective in achieving such ends. Although several authors find in the nominal structure of fiscal policy between 1770 and 1850 some evidence of modernizing (or “rationalizing”) intentions, there is scant evidence of any consistent ability to translate latent intent into anything close to effective policy. Nevertheless, the essays here suggest that the federal state’s success in achieving such goals by the 1880s owed much to fiscal precedents and objectives with roots running through the previous century—from the Bourbon reforms to the Second Empire. Despite the debility of the federal state and especially of public finance before 1870, rapidly growing state capacities thereafter would be largely built on existing ideas and infrastructure.As with most collections, there are limitations and unanswered questions in this one. Most generally, these previously published essays are a decade or so old, and while they still provide clear and convincing arguments, they are not representative of the extensive recent work in the “New Economic History” now actively pursued in Mexico and the United States. The reader will find relatively little quantitative analysis and no econometric modeling here. Although this may make these excellent studies accessible to a wider audience of historians, it also means that ample opportunities remain for careful investigations on the themes and questions raised herein.This book, and the series of which it is a part, provide Mexicanists with an essential reference to central topics in the country’s economic history. Together the series constitutes an impressive encyclopedia that should be on the shelf of any serious scholar of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Mexico

Art · Economic history · Economics · Humanities · Independence (probability theory) · Political science · Revenue · State (computer science) · Finance · Historical Studies in Latin America · History

• La apoteosis del Leviathan

  Open Access•Juan Carlos Garavaglia•Latin American Research Review•2003

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