Free Trade and Local Institutions: The Case of Mexican Peasants

Economic integration policies striving for more economic cooperation, efficiency and productivity have sometimes unintended and undesirable effects. Under a wide range of circumstances and by means of diverse trans-locational dynamics, market-oriented integration policies may account for local institutional deficiencies and failures, and be accompanied with more social fragmentation, marginalization, inefficiency and differentiation, and hence with an increased feeling of injustice. As such, it may be a cause, and not only a consequence, of local and global problems. Furthermore, in some cases the lack of ideas and instruments to successfully confront problems at the global level may be a problem itself on account of the loss of institutions at the local and trans-local level.