Downsizing the State: Privatization and the Limits of Neoliberal Reform in Mexico. By Dag MacLeod. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. 320p. $65.00 cloth, $29.00 paper.

Democratization Without Representation: The Politics of Small Industry in Mexico. By Kenneth C. Shadlen. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. 224p. $65.00 cloth, $27.00 paper.

Mexico's dramatic shift from state-led development to neoliberalism in the 1980s and subsequent transition to democracy in the 1990s has been the subject of extensive scholarly research. These two well-researched and empirically rich books further our understanding of these important processes by providing in-depth analyses of privatization and the decline of small industry. They represent a new generation of scholarship that presents a long-term perspective on Mexico's political economy, beginning with the emergence of state-led development and corporatism in the early twentieth century through to the contemporary era of neoliberalism and multiparty democracy.