In 2000, Nancy Plankey-Videla began an ethnography at a high-end men’s suit factory in central Mexico. Three months later, reacting to layoffs, bonus cuts, and an effort to break the union contract, which managers blamed on global competition and the U.S. recession, the largely female...

Political scientists, sociologists, and economists have all sought to analyze the spread of economic and political liberalism across countries in recent decades. This article documents this diffusion of liberal policies and politics and proposes four distinct theories to explain how the prior...

The diffusion of markets and democracy around the world was a defining feature of the late twentieth century. Many social scientists view this economic and political liberalization as the product of independent choices by national governments. This book argues that policy and political changes...