This engaging book provides a broad and accessible analysis of Mexico's contemporary struggle for democratic development. Now completely revised, it brings up to date issues ranging from electoral reform and accountability to drug trafficking, migration, and NAFTA. It also considers the rapidly changing role of Mexico's mass and elite groups, and its national institutions, including the media, the military, and the Church.

This book focuses on the relationship between private and public education in a comparative context. The contributors emphasize the relationship between private choices and public policy as they affect the division of labor between public and private non-profit schools, colleges, and universities. Their essays examine the kinds of choices offered by each sector, as well as the effects of present and proposed public policies on the intersectoral division of labor. Written from neither a pro-private nor a pro-public point of view, the contributors point to the ways in which they believe one sector or the other may be preferable for certain goals or groups.

Latin America higher education has undergone an astonishing transformation in recent years, highlighted by the private sector's growth from 3 to 34 percent of the region's total enrollment. In this provocative work Daniel Levy examines the sources, characteristics, and consequences of the development and considers the privatization of higher education within the broader context of state-society relationships.
Levy shows how specific national circumstances cause variations and identifies three basic private-public patterns: one in which the private and public sectors are relatively similar and those in which one sector or the other is dominant. These patterns are analyzed in depth in case studies of Chile, Mexico, and Brazil. For each sector, Levy investigates origins and growth, and then who pays, who rules, and whose interests are served.
In addition to providing a wealth of information, Levy offers incisive analyses of the nature of public and private institutions. Finally, he explores the implications of his findings for concepts such as autonomy, corporatism, and privatization. His multifaceted study is a major contribution to the literature on Latin American studies, comparative politics, and higher education.