The Mexico City Policy in US Development Policy and Its Backlash-Frontlash-Logic

Abstract

The Mexico City Policy provides for the discontinuation of U.S. government funding for foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that provide legal abortion services. While Republican administrations have repeatedly pushed for the introduction of the Mexico City Policy after their re-election, those regulations have been rescinded by Democratic administrations. All in all, numerous introductions and abolitions of the Mexico City Policy resulted during the last 40 years since the Reagan administration had introduced this law. Thus, NGOs working in this field are always dependent on these political fluctuations in the United States for funding and are thus exposed to an uncertain political environment. This article pursues the following research interest: It seeks to analyse the reasons along which the Mexico City Policy is introduced and abolished. The theoretical perspective of the political “backlash” is used for this, whereby the Mexico City Policy, in contrast to other backlash policies, has the particularity that it has been introduced and cancelled several times over the years. The focus here is primarily on the causes of a backlash policy: On the base of three phases, the Mexico City Policy is analysed along the republican as well as democratic administrations under certain structural conditions of the political and social system. The structural conditions are characterized by a pluralistic interest mediation structure, societal cleavages and its deepening through populist action. The three phases show that the Mexico City Policy is not primarily characterized by a backlash policy, but by a backlash-frontlash logic in which the Mexico City Policy is cancelled and reintroduced. The backlash-frontlash movement has led to tense Government–NGO Relations. In this context, this article also takes into account the counter-reactions of the international NGOs concerned, where the strategy of “successful failure” is obvious.