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When the Environmental Displaces the Social: The Project for a New Airport in Mexico City During the Fox Administration
Author(s) -
Virgen J. Carlos Domínguez
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
latin american policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.195
H-Index - 4
eISSN - 2041-7373
pISSN - 2041-7365
DOI - 10.1111/j.2041-7373.2012.00072.x
Subject(s) - bureaucracy , public administration , administration (probate law) , politics , work (physics) , political science , obstacle , christian ministry , public relations , sociology , engineering , law , mechanical engineering
This article analyzes the project for a new international airport in Mexico City (NIAMC), promoted in 2001 and cancelled 1 year later after opposing groups mobilized against the infrastructure initiative. The work focuses on a policy perspective and offers three explanations that are not mutually exclusive. First, a compartmentalized division of bureaucratic tasks became a significant obstacle to designing an implementation strategy that included environmental and sociopolitical concerns. Second, there was a conflict between environmental considerations and other policy values, which contributed to the displacing of critical aspects of the project. Third, the concept of the environment that was taken into account as part of the project design, and appraisal was limited to rational administrative considerations that were insufficient to anticipate the full range of social and political implications. Based on these explanations, the article suggests that policy makers minimized the social implications of the project and underestimated the potential for mobilization that contentious groups could gather to oppose the NIAMC. The work is based on semistructured interviews with key actors. Further insight comes from the author's participation as a middle‐rank public servant in Mexico's Ministry of the Environment in 2001 and 2002.