Book's chapter

De Alba, Felipe and Bernard Jouve. 2006. « Mexico in global flows, politic domination and the exploration of the « third way». In Jouve, Bernard (coord.), 2005, The flow and the territories. To a society without States?. Presses de l’Université de Quebec. 2006

Resumé
Ce livre, issu de la collection Géographie contemporaine, se consacre à la géopolitique des flux globaux et a été réalisé grâce au soutien financier de l’Observatoire international de géopolitique de l’UQAM. L’objectif de l’ouvrage est d’alimenter une réflexion collective sur les flux globaux à la base de la mondialisation et de la recomposition des rapports de force à différentes échelles géographiques.Depuis une vingtaine d’années, le champ des relations internationales s’est largement complexifié, passant d’un modèle bipolaire basé sur les seuls acteurs légitimes des États-nations, à un mode de gouvernance à l’échelle globale où interviennent une série d’acteurs aux statuts divers, allant des organisations non gouvernementales, aux médias en passant par les villes. Référant à ces transformations, il est dorénavant question de « politique globale » ou de « gouvernance globale » plutôt que de « relations internationales ». La recomposition des rapports de force politiques n’est plus logique de confrontation territoriale, mais bien affaire de maîtrise des flux globaux de différentes natures, flux qui définissent de nouvelles territorialités. Car c’est à travers la maîtrise de ces flux globaux que se recomposent la politique globale, le rôle des États et celui des autres acteurs pouvant prétendre à agir sur la scène internationale. L’hypothèse poursuivit dans ce volume est que les États, à la fois fragilisés et renforcés par les flux globaux, continuent de peser de tout leur poids sur la régulation politique des sociétés modernes.Les textes, aux horizons géographiques et disciplinaires différents, colligés dans cet ouvrage se rattachent tous à l’un ou l’autre des flux globaux. D’abord, les différents chapitres qui abordent les flux démographiques insistent sur l’importance du cadre national dans la structuration des logiques politiques. Ensuite, les flux financiers, qui constituent un moteur de la mondialisation où le rôle des États demeure également déterminant. La mondialisation par les flux globaux a pour corollaire une réactivation des structures politiques et sociologiques que l’on croyait dépassée par le paradigme de la post-modernité et où l’État-nation est considéré comme l’instance pouvant assurer la pérennité d’identités collectives territorialisées. C’est là le sens des chapitres portant sur les flux idéologiques. Suivent les flux technologiques, principalement axés sur le développement des nouvelles technologies de l’information. Les auteurs s’entendent pour dire que la fracture numérique, porteuse d’inégalités sociales supplémentaires, doit appeler à la mise en place de politiques redistributives dans le domaine. Enfin, les flux de matières premières qui s’établissent à différentes échelles géographiques et où, là encore, les États jouent un rôle certain.En définitive, la politique globale, qui a pour enjeu la maîtrise des flux globaux, est loin de constituer un champ cohérent dans lequel les règles du jeu sont identiques pour tous les acteurs. La territorialité correspond à la projection sur un espace géographique multiscalaire d’une configuration d’acteurs et d’un mode de régulation associé à cette configuration. C’est par cette démarche qu’il sera peut-être possible de mettre à jour la nouvelle division du travail entre acteurs gouvernementaux et non gouvernementaux dans la politique globale
(Source: www.vrm.ca)


Territorios review 13, 2005, Colombia

Territorios Review 13, Colombia Enero de 2005, 31-52 pp.
Ciudad y políticas urbanas
¿Es manejable la megalópolis de México?: cuando la modernidad se transforma en disputa clientelar (análisis de la ''crisis'' de Texcoco
Felipe de Alba

Abstract
This paper explores the conflicts or metropolitan crisis in the local governments and, likewise, the new importance acquired by them. The author aims to study the relations between the phenomenon of the declination of the Mexican political regime and the appearance of cities like an explosive phenomenon, particularly the case of the metropolis of Mexico, which, according to the main hypothesis, modified the relations among parties, organizations, and government. In fact, it is suggested that the metropolis of Mexico is a phenomenon defining the country’s new political territory. The analysis of these critical situations is important for any process of decision-making,which is the reason why the circumstances surrounding the decision to construct or not a new metropolitan airport in Texcoco, as well as its effects in the political environment, are analyzed. The author concludes that new metropolitan political actors will allow new variables of analysis to incorporate into the phenomenon of the national politic from the social-institutional relations of the metropolis.
Keywords: Political territory, decisional crisis, Mexico city

Interaçoes review 12, 2006, Brazil

Revista Internacional de Desenvolvimento Local, No. 12 - Março 2006, 165-176 pp.
¿Are the metropolis governable? New social paradigm and the "social fights" for the public services in Mexico as a redefinition of the political space.
Felipe de Alba

Abstract
During the last few decades, a new polarization of the world system appears. This polarization prevailed less and less by the State before conceived as the main space of the economic regulation. In consequence the metropolisation and the sprouting of megalopolis on planetary scale appeared. In this article we discussed the governability of the public services in Mexico by analyzing the new paradigm of the social fights as one of the results and effects of the globalization which accumulate new tensions and inequalities into its social and political space.
Keywords: metropolisation, Mexico City, global process, social paradigm, social struggles, public services. political territory,

Territorios review, N. 14, 2005, Colombia

Territorios Review 14, Colombia Julio 2005, 119-142 pp.
Ciudad: servicios y ordenamiento
Geopolítica metropolitana y gobernabilidad del conflicto en la metrópoli de México: seis hipótesis para discutirla
Felipe de Alba

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to propose six hypotheses for an interdisciplinary discussion regarding the metropolis de Mexico. Particularly on its linkages with the socioinstitutional conflict as well as with the political regulation and the enduring urban services crisis. We argue within this state of the things, the metropolis has achieved a major roll in the recent Mexican politic regime evolution. This made of the metropolis a privileged space to seek for new agreements and regulations, as well as for the socials actors imaginative analysis. We conclude metropolis is a new space in disagreement because of its actual relevance in the national political agenda and of the major roll it will accomplish, particularly in the 2006 presidential elections. But mainly, because the Mexico’s metropolis is a questioned political space under different pressions and because its positioning as a new political actor who will establish some of the main rules of the Mexican regime configuration within the next years.

Keywords: Metropolitan geopolitics, conflict, Mexico city

Anuarios Espacios Urbanos review, N. 1 2005, Mexico

Anuarios Espacios Urbanos. Historia, Cultura, Diseño 2005 (1) Mexico 59-78 pp.
Espacio urbano y ambiente

Metropolitan geopolitics of Mexico: the handling of the conflict in the enviroment in the national political changes and the water conflicting management
Felipe de Alba

Abstract

This article suggests some elements of reflection for a research work about the multiphased character of the general metropolitan conflict and also the water conflict. These conflicts and their relationship with the political regime crisis will be addressed within the context of the megalopolis of Mexico. Furthermore, it will be discussed the metropolitan conflict and its socioinstitutional character as wells as the decision - absence and inefficiency- regarding water publics policies matters.From an interdisciplinary standpoint, it is argued that the "state of things" in the metropolitan treatment of the conflict in general, the water conflict in particular and the changes in the Mexican political regime have played a central function. This situation has made of the metropolis a privileged space to try new agreements and new regulations, as well as imaginative analysis of the social actors. This exercise serves to support the idea that the metropolis is a new space in dispute, given the importance and projection in the elections of 2006 in Mexico. Mainly, the metropolis of México is also a political space in permanent question, subject to different pressures and to itself positioning as a new political actor which will fix some of the main rules in the configuration of the Mexican regime in the future.
Keywords: Political territory, decisional crisis, Mexico city

Ciudades review 66, 2006, Mexico

Ciudades. Analisis de la coyuntura, teoria e historia urbana 2005 N. 66 :27-32
¿Hidropolitica en la crisis decisional: Coyuntura o sintomas de colapso
Felipe de Alba

Abstract
Este artículo presenta una discusión sobre la coyuntura de la gestión política del agua, denominada aquí como una crisis decisional, en la megalópolis de México, observada durante estos últimos años. Nuestro enfoque tiene por objeto incluir el marco actual de la crisis en la toma de decisiones que viven los gobiernos de la Zona metropolitana de la Ciudad de México (ZMCM). Reflexionamos sobre los vínculos entre los conflictos relativos a la gestión gubernamental del agua y las condiciones sociales metropolitanas que, concluimos, crean un clima explosivo en la metrópoli más grande del país.La conclusión es que la gestión política del agua en México desembocará en nuevos "formatos" gubernamentales de acción política, así como en nuevas “performances” institucionales, y ello parece no evitar el surgimiento de nuevos movimientos sociales de tendencia fuertemente radical.En general, en los próximos años, estas presiones socio-institucionales "obligarán" a los actores metropolitanos a tomar decisiones para encontrar solución al dilema siguiente: aumentar el precio del agua o aplicar medidas de privatización parcial o general de este recurso, teniendo en cuenta que algunas de esas decisiones causarían fuertes protestas populares.
Keywords: Water policies, hidropolitics, metropolitan decisions, Mexico city

Interaçoes review 1, 2007, Brazil

Interaçoes, revista Internacional de Desenvolvimento Local, No 1 - Março 2007, 95- 112 pp.
Geopolitic of water in Mexico. The opposition between hydropolitic and the socio-politic conflict. The new faces of the social struggles.
Felipe de Alba

Abstract

After the population’s changes that were a lived in the last decades in Mexico City, and the changes in Mexican politic administration of the years 1990, the decadence of the life conditions and of public services has increased. Mexico metropolitan area is now days a geopolitical laboratory that seems to stamp the discussion about the national politic agenda. A new modality of social protests appears progressively in the metropolis, and particularly, protests that have a relation with the problem of the water. These protests, different in their modality, are changing the social structure, the urban form and the politic relations. In its all, they are showings of new politics actors in scene that break ancient hegemonies and generate news customer’s spaces. In this work, it discusses the conflictive administration about the water that constitutes a pragmatic conjuncture of several slides: between the metropolitan governance, the same form of the conflict or about a true catastrophe in the next decades. The author has an explicative model of these principal tendencies about the conflict in the biggest metropolis of Latin America.

Keywords: Hydropolicy; the politic of water; decisive crisis;
Mexico metropolitan area

FLACSO review 29, Mexico 2007

Revista Perfiles Latinoamericanos 2007 de la FLACSO, Mexico. Enero-junio 2007 No. 29:137-160 pp
The factors of the social conflict in the water struggles in Mexico metropolitan area: the political fragmentation matter.
Felipe de Alba and Karina Kloster

Abstract

Since the 80´s Mexico experienced a deep reorganization on its political regime. A series of reforms of neoliberal direction change the actors, institutions and the representations of the Mexican State in process characterized by two major axes: In First, the State reform from a roll of welfare State to a reduced roll (Crozier, 1987). Secondly, a transformation on the relation State - society, ones broken the corporative practices which opened opportunities for the budding of a new and different social protests, in a context of great problems and social deficiencies. This is transformed into social conflicts, when engendering ineffective ways of water´s management. In this article we analyze these conflicts in the metropolis of Mexico. In this work these conflicts can be explained using concepts like decisional crisis, political fragmentation and rupture of the forms upon which traditionally conflicts were managing.
Keywords: metropolis, Mexico, crisis, water, conflict, fragmentation, natives.

Book's chapter

El desafío metropolitano Jordi Borja, Felipe de Alba Murrieta, Alfonso Iracheta Cenecorta, Esteban Wario Hernández, Carlos Morales Schechinger y Sara García Jiménez. PUEC, 2004.

Abstarct:
Las zonas metropolitanas son ciudades complejas, en las que más de una autoridad toma decisiones sobre su organización. La dificultad y la complejidad que representa el desarrollo metropolitano demandan diferentes formas de coordinación, administración y gobierno, así como el diseño de estrategias compartidas. Este ejercicio, promovido por la II Legislatura de la Asamblea Legislativa del Distrito Federal y realizado por el Programa, aporta reflexiones, críticas, sugerencias y propuestas que contribuyen a enfrentar este desafío metropolitano con madurez política, eficiencia administrativa y capacidad de adaptación. .