Research Library

The populist government under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has largely discounted the threat of COVID-19,  and the true extent of the outbreak Mexico may not yet be known. If conditions significantly change for the worse, the president faces not only a public health crisis but also the possible undoing of the country's populist experiment.

President Trump's plan to designate Mexican drugs cartels as foreign terrorist organizations is a mistake, says nonresident fellow Gary Hale. Read why in the Baker Institute Blog.

While sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline project would be very well received in Central and Eastern Europe, they could make the already strained relationship between U.S. and its Western European allies even more challenging, the author writes in a Forbes blog post: http://bit.ly/305Cc1F and the Baker Institute Blog.

If the country is to be economically successful and democratically viable, it would require learning from past mistakes and developing its significant potential in other economic sectors, writes energy policy fellow Francisco J. Monaldi. Forbes blog: http://bit.ly/2R80KU3.

The Trump administration's family reunification policy is insufficient to address the lasting impacts of the president's zero-tolerance immigration policy, writes Erika de la Garza, program director for the Latin America Initiative, in the Baker Institute Blog: https://bit.ly/2NMQnCU.

A scandal that involves high-ranking officials from Costa Rica's three branches of government is testing the country's reputation for democratic stability. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has signed into law a controversial "sanctuary cities" measure that allows police officers to ask people during routine stops if they are in the U.S. legally. Research analyst Pamela Cruz describes the legal fight to prevent the law's enforcement.

Mexico initiated a series of structural reforms in 2013, including major changes to policies governing telecommunications. Nonresident scholar Clara Luz Álvarez explores the implications of a recent ruling by Mexico’s Supreme Court on one of the related laws passed by Congress in a blog post for the Baker Institute Blog.