Mexico Inc.? Discourse Analysis and the Triumph of Managerialism

Multinational corporations have become players on the global stage, alongside nations. This article addresses one aspect of this development, the way leaders of nations now use discourses and ways of thinking formerly characteristic of business in major policy documents. The paper distinguishes different senses of ‘discourse’ to identify what is managerial discourse, using textbooks as data. It then looks at a specific instance, the Mexican Government’s ‘Plan-Puebla-Panama’, showing how it subordinates discourses of government to see Mexico as a commodity. Yet the contradictions this introduces act as an ideological complex, a functional set of contradictions implemented in dialogue.