Richard Snyder's well-crafted study substantiates what most political scientists suspected all along: that neoliberal reforms lead to new institutions of market governance, rather than to unregulated markets. Snyder sheds light on this understudied topic by examining the reregulation of the coffee sector by four state governments after the Mexican government dismantled the Instituto Mexicano del Café (INMECAFE), the state-owned enterprise that dominated the coffee industry during the 1970s and 1980s. By the late 1980s, when deregulation began, INMECAFE was providing production supports, price controls, and government-managed marketing channels for nearly 200 thousand small coffee producers. Most of these producers were located among the poorest states in southern Mexico.
