Academic mobility is critical for robust collaborations in education, research and innovation between the U.S. and Mexico. Governments in both countries, in cooperation with nongovernmental actors, should provide a framework to develop mechanisms that generate and sustain a meaningful exchange of students, faculty, and staff from educational institutions at all levels of post-secondary education.
Marijuana decriminalization and legalization have gone past being a trend and are settling in as federal policy, writes nonresident fellow Gary Hale, a 31-year veteran of the Drug Enforcement Administration. This policy brief includes recommendations for how the DEA can adjust its policies to adopt a new paradigm on marijuana policy.
Under proposed legislation to implement Mexico’s energy reforms, Pemex will remain a privileged state operator supporting exploration and production in most of the country's proven onshore and shallow water fields. It is not known if energy reform will effectively turn Pemex into a firm able to compete without policy bias against private investors.
This paper explores some of the issues that confront the full realization of the benefits of energy resource development in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, collectively.
Mexico's organized crime groups have expanded into areas that include the theft of crude oil, gas and gasoline. The impact of organized crime on the energy sector is a real threat to the intended effects of Mexico's energy reforms.
Fossil fuel subsidies have allowed energy exporting countries to distribute resource revenue, bolstering legitimacy for governments, many of which are not democratically elected. But subsidy benefits are dwarfed by the harmful consequences of encouraging uneconomic use of energy. Now, with consumption posing a threat to long-term exports, governments face a heightened need to raise prices that have come to be viewed as entitlements. While reforms of state benefits are notoriously politically dangerous, previous experience shows that subsidies can be rolled back without undermining government legitimacy — even in autocratic settings — given proper preparation.
The violent struggle between rival Mexican drug cartels and other criminal groups has left tens of thousands dead and towns across Mexico paralyzed with fear. With overwhelmed police forces relatively powerless to control drug-related murders and kidnappings, a growing number of vigilante organizations, or self-defense
groups, aim to restore order — but now even they are fighting, and killing, among themselves.
Mexico’s 2013–2014 energy reform promises to bring the country’s economic drivers and regulatory institutions in line with the global practices of free market democracies. If successful, this development would be a 180-degree turn. The accomplishment of such realignment is hardly assured, however.
Erika de la Garza, program director of the Latin America Initiative, discusses the political fragmentation and need for coalition building in Costa Rica, where the recent presidential election resulted in a runoff.
On Monday, three committees in Mexico’s senate — constitutional issues, energy and legislative studies — voted to bring an energy reform bill to the chamber’s floor for debate. The legislation would provide international oil companies the opportunity to participate in profit-sharing contracts and concession-like licenses for energy operations in Mexico, and it is expected to become law by the end of the legislative session Dec. 15.
