Overview

Governments around the world face challenges when pursuing broad regulatory reform: identifying bottlenecks, obtaining political support, getting the resources needed, gaining buy-in from stakeholders, bringing agencies together in one coordinated effort. Mexico illustrates the challenges of regulatory policy making when it involves different levels of government and regulation.

Mexico’s 31 states and 2,441 municipalities, along with Mexico City, have extensive regulatory powers, allowing them to design, implement and enforce regulations. So regulatory reform has required not only horizontal coordination among ministries, agencies, and legislative and judicial bodies at the federal level, but vertical coordination with entities at the state and municipal levels. The regulatory reform initiative in Mexico has used an exercise of benchmarking business regulation in all 31 states and Mexico City to support this coordination and stimulate change.