Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy (University of California Press, 2021) uncovers the surprising influence of post-revolutionary Mexico on the twentieth century’s most important international economic institutions. Drawing on extensive archival research in Mexico, the United States, and Great Britain, Revolution in Development meticulously traces how Mexican officials repeatedly rallied Third World leaders to campaign for representation in global organizations and redistribution through multilateral institutions, from the 1920s through the 1970s. By decentering the United States and Europe in the history of global economic governance, Revolution in Development shows how Mexican economists, diplomats, and politicians fought for more than five decades to reform the rules and institutions of the global capitalist economy. In so doing, the book demonstrates, Mexican officials shaped not only their own domestic economic prospects, they shaped the contours of the project of international development itself.
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Christy Thornton is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Program in Latin American Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She received her PhD from NYU in 2015, and before coming to Hopkins was an assistant professor at Rowan University and a fellow at the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History at Harvard University. Before graduate school, she was the Executive Director of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), a 50-year old research and advocacy organization.