Statecraft

Chapter 5, “Statecraft,” focuses on the efforts of program administrators to overcome resistance to the RENAUT, CEDI, and REPUVE. To reduce popular resistance, state planners piggyback them onto existing institutions. To accommodate private-sector resistance, program administrators exercise technical resilience with program requirements to make them less onerous for companies. To respond to state resistance, program directors indulge local authorities’ taxing power to incentivize their participation, seemingly in violation of the law. These examples demonstrate how implementing surveillance technologies to remake the state requires authorities to engage in improvisational tactics that end up giving shape to the state. If such statecraft speaks to the chaotic nature of Mexican state formation, it also reveals a collaborative impulse that bodes well for Mexico’s democratic future.