JAMES W. WILKIE
Professor of History & Policy Analysis
Chair, UCLA Program on Mexico
Associate Director, UCLA Latin American Center
Chair, Latin America Studies & Globalization
Editor, SALA - Statistical Abstract of Latin America &
Its Analytical Series
President
PROFMEX-Worldwide Network for Mexico Policy Research
Web Journal Editor, Mexico and the World
Series Editor:
Cycles and Trends in Mexico’s Development
(Publishers: PROFMEX, UCLA Program on Mexico, Universidad de
Guadalajara)
President, Historical Research & the Future:
NAFTA & MERCOSUR • EU-Eastern Europe • Asia-Pacific
• Elitelore & Oral
Interviews with World Leaders
• NPPOsGlobal
***
As UCLA Professor, Chair of the UCLA Program on Mexico,
and Chair of Latin American Studies & Globalization, James Wilkie specializes in analyzing the competing roles of the public and private sectors in Latin America and the World, especially as related to economic and social change.
As President of PROFMEX (a tax exempt policy research organization with over 95 international institutional members--over one-third of them in Mexico), since 1933 Wilkie has focused on research and interpreting to countries such as China, Hungary, and Russia the comparative experiences of Mexico in breaking the power of statism. This research is reflected in Mexico and the World (On-Line, Peer-Reviewed Journal), which he co-edits. Wilkie, who founded PROFMEX in 1982, is also the founder and co-editor of the PROFMEX-UCLA Program on Mexico Series entitled, “Cycles and Trends in Mexico’s Development,” which since 1990 has published 23 volumes.
PROFMEX’s current major project seeks to establish U.S.-Mexican Totalization of Social Security Benefits as well as U.S.-Mexican Personal Tax Harmonization in, respectively, via bilateral Agreement and Treaty.
As Editor of SALA (the world’s leading yearly source for, and analysis of time-series statistics on Latin America as it faces the challenge of global economic blocs), and the SALA Supplement Series of Analytical Studies since 1977, Wilkie has conducted extensive comparative research on the changing role of the state in Eastern Europe and Asia as well as in the 20 countries of Latin America. In SALA, Wilkie publishes and reorganizes official statistics to show data with new insight and interpretation. The SALA Analytical Studies take up thematic issues, as in Wilkie’s 1974 volume entitled Statistics and National Policy in Latin America and 1990 volume on Society and Economy in Mexico. The current thematic volume examines 12 indicators of Health, Education, and Communication to compare social change to the situation in the USA at ten-year intervals, 1940-2000.
As President
of HRF since 1968, Wilkie has conducted
historical research and advised government, business, and foundations on
realistic options for alternative future policies in the light of historical
trajectories. Wilkie’s activity here includes:
(a) defining the relationship of regional trade blocs (such as APEC) and the role of individual countries (Mexico-China-Japan);
(b) examining the policy lore of leaders worldwide;
(c) developing plans for and studies of micro-credit;
(d) analyzing the role of entrepreneurs and their role in national and global economic development
***
Wilkie’s research has the common theme of public policy analysis. Throughout his nine books, over twenty-five edited volumes, and over fifty-five articles he has tested the differences between perceptions of reality and ‘reality’ by making two methodological contributions:
1. His book on The Mexican Revolution (1910-1963): Federal Expenditure and Social Change developed the first index of social poverty; and it was the first work to show for any country how historical statistics can be used to reveal the extent to which actual expenditures (reality) differ from projected outlay (perception). This 1967 Bolton Prize work brought about Mexican government budgetary change and provided the methodology for the examination of budgets according to two dozen functions for other countries. The second edition in English was published in 1970; and the Brookings Institution, e.g., has followed his method to study U.S. budgeting.
In the Spanish-language edition (1978), Wilkie carried his projected and actual expenditure series for Mexico up to 1976; and for the World Bank (1989) he took the series to 1988.
2. Wilkie’s book on The Bolivian Revolution and U.S. Aid Since 1952 was the first two show the budgetary interaction between the U.S. Agency for International Development and a recipient country. This 1969 book helped U.S. and Bolivian officials understand how policy had gone astray: The United States spent its funds to emphasize social outlay rather than on its planned economic expenditure; and the Bolivian government did the reverse. In the meantime, U.S. officials in Washington and La Paz struggled with each other over U.S. policy, officials in La Paz implicitly “winning” but reporting that they had given in to the demands made from Washington.
3. His book on Measuring Land Reform in Bolivia and Venezuela provides the model for distinguishing between land title redistribution and agrarian reform (the latter including, e.g., credit and agricultural extension). This 1974 book based on Wilkie’s years in South America shows that Latin America has never had agrarian reform; and it shows that land title redistribution is finite in comparison to infinite population growth.
4. Wilkie’s four-volume Frente a la Revolución Mexicana: 17 Entrevistas de Historia Oral is the work that shows
(a) conceptually how leaders construct a lore that permits self-justification of their ‘historical role,’ and
(b) methodologically how researchers must engage in debate with leaders in order to test the meanings of ‘reality.’ Wilkie established the standards for oral history research that (i) encourage, rather than prohibit, the challenging of leaders’ views by oral historians; and (ii) require that the unedited interview tapes be saved, rather than erased. The Columbia University Oral History Program, e.g., now follows Wilkie’s lead in recognizing that contradiction between the taped and transcript versions itself offers a basis for analysis.
Vol 1: Intelectuales: Luis Chávez Orozco, Daniel Cosío
Villegas,
José Muñoz Cota, Jesús Silva Herzog (1995).
Vol 2. Ideólogos: Manuel Gómez Morín, Luis
L. León, Germán List
Arzubide,
Juan de Dios Bojórquez, Miguel Palomar y Vizcarra
Vol 3. Líderes: Salvador Abascal, Ramón Beteta,
Marte R. Gómez,
Jacinto B. Treviño (forthcoming in 2001)
Vol 4. Presidente y Candidatos: Vicente Lombardo Toledano,
Juan Andreu Almazán, Ezequiel Padilla, Emilio Portes Gil
Wilkie’s on-going oral history of contemporary Mexico is focused on
interviews with Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, President of Mexico’s Partido de la Revolución Democrática, 1988-1996.
His Central and South American oral history interviews include:
Rafael Caldera, President of Venezuela, 1968-74, 1994--
José Figueres, President of Costa Rica 1948-1949, 1953-58,
1970-1974
Father Benjamín Núñez, First Costa Rican Minister of Labor
(1948-1949), Founding President of the
National University of Costa Rica
Víctor Paz Estenssoro, President of Bolivia 1952-1956, 1960-64, 1985-89.
***
Wilkie’s published policy studies include the following:
- “Mexico as the Linchpin for Free Trade in the Americas”
- “Policy Recommendations for Managing the Greater El Paso- Ciudad Juárez Area”
- “The Health, Education, and Communication Index of Social Change for the Twenty Countries of Latin America by Decade,” 1940-1990 (mss.)
- Integrating
Cities & Regions in North America: NAFTA Faces
Globalization (Editor, 1999)
- Grupo MASECA
de México y la Revolucion Mundial En Alimentos:
50 Años
de Lucha para Mejorar la Comida Popular
Policy studies for the World Bank and the Mexican Government include:
- “The U.S.-Mexican Tax-Exempt Organization Framework for
De-Statification in Eastern Europe”
- “The Mexican Budget: Real Policies (1976-89) and Future Needs”
- “The Mexican Social Security and Uninsured Social Care Systems”
Results of Wilkie’s research have been published in, e.g.:
Los Angeles Times, Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas,
Revista Mexicana de Sociología,Latin American Research Review,
Mexico Policy News Chinese Journal of Social Science.
***
Wilkie graduated from Mexico City College (B.A., 1958) and UC Berkeley (Ph.D., 1965). He taught at Ohio State University (1965-1968) before moving to UCLA (1968-present). From 1981 to 1983 he served as founding director of UCMEXUS, the nine-campus University of California Consortium on Mexico and the United States. In 1982 he founded PROFMEX, over which he continues to preside. As Director of the Latin American Oral History Project, he has resided in Bolivia, Costa Rica, and Venezuela as well as Mexico.
Professor Wilkie’s current
work is focused, e.g., on:
- Resolving Problems of U.S.-Mexico
Social Security & Personal
Taxation
In the NAFTA Era
- The field of international tax policy that
(a) focuses on facilitating the flow of U.S. foundation funds
to Mexico and now to NPPOsGLOBAL
(Not-For-Private-Profit Organizations Worldwide)
In originating this field, Wilkie drew up the provisions for mutual recognition of U.S.-Mexican charitable sectors. These
provisions were included in the U.S.-Mexican Treaty to Prevent Double Taxation (effective 1-1-94), thus giving Mexico access to the U.S. tax-exempt capital market--the world’s largest capital market of foundation funds.
(b) focuses on ending U.S.-Mexican inequities in taxation
of
personal income and double taxation of social security contributions.
- The field of electronic information and communication
Wilkie founded in 1996 Mexico and the World (www.profmex.com)
the first Web and peer-reviewed journal dealing with Mexico.
- The field
of comparative policy analysis
For PROFMEX (with representative in such cities as Beijing, Bucharest, Budapest, Cairo, Havana, Kyoto, Moscow, New York City, Santiago de Chile, and Toronto), Wilkie leads policy analysis to articulate to the world the Mexican example for achieving:
- establishment of free trade agreements which provide
the basis for economic integration that moves from regional
trading blocs to worldwide trading groups.
- privatization of failed industries owned by the state;
- division of inefficient communal farms into private holdings;
As PROFMEX president, Wilkie organized in Beijing two major
international conferences in October 1996 to bring Chinese and Japanese scholars and policymakers together with their Mexican counterparts, especially Mexico’s CONACYT and the Chinese Academy of Social Science.
China and Japan are competing for shares in the U.S. import market. These international conferences resulted in the creation of the Asia-Pacific Regional Policy Analysis Group, which will meet in Malaysia in 2001.
Since 1983, Wilkie has organized the PROFMEX international conferences jointly sponsored by ANUIES (the Mexican National Association of Universities and Institutions of Higher Education). the most recent of which was the IX Conference (Morelia, Dec. 1997), including participants from 30 countries.
The PROFMEX-Guanajuato International Forum on Innovative Ideas for Mexico’s Development” was held in City of Guanajuato (April 14-17, 1999). The Forum provided the first occasion at which policy analysts from around the world, Mexicans who live outside Mexico (and who will not be returning to Mexico because they have made their career in another country), and Mexicanists inside and outside Mexico could exchange their ideas and make them known in Mexico.
At the 1999 PROFMEX-Guanajuato Forum, Wilkie presented the initial results of his research on the new idea implemented by Roberto González Barrera to enrich tortilla flour with vitamins and fortify it with protein, thus finally providing a valuable food product to the popular sector at low cost. To recognize the implementation of this idea, which represents a Green Revolution in Food Processing because it dramatically reduces waste of corn, water, and energy (indeed it turns Mexico away from burning up its forests to cook tortillas), and which has been implemented only with great difficulty after years of struggle, Wilkie and Governor Vicente Fox were pleased to award Mr. González Barrera the “1st PROFMEX International Prize for Global Policy.”
The 2000 PROFMEX-UCLA-Michoacán Conference was held September 19-23 in Morelia. This Conference on “Mexico and Public Policy” has advanced into Mexico the policy research of the
UCLA School of Public Policy and furthered the PROFMEX Initiative to develop a U.S.-Mexico Social Security “Totalization” Agreement and treaty provisions to end double taxation on personal income of
Executives, professionals, technicians, and workers.
At the UCLA-hosted 2001 Mexican National Forum on Migration, the first ever to be held outside of Mexico, Wilkie presented Mexico’s Commissioner of Immigration to a distinguished international group invited to give input to the Mexican Government as it seeks to develop a new Law on Migration. Currently provisions for immigration law are not only incomplete but scattered throughout the country’s Law on Population. At the July 13th Forum two Argentine professors resident in Mexico and Visiting at UCLA stressed the importance of giving equality to naturalized Mexican citizens, who currently hold “second-class” citizenship.
The 2001 Conference on “Governance of Global Cities” held August 23-25 in Mexico City by the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District, the UCLA Program on Mexico co-sponsored the event at which Wilkie gave the keynote address. Wilkie’s proposal to create a think-tank for the greater metropolitan region (only half of which is in the D.F., was supported Manuel Aguilera Gómez (former D.F. Jefe de Gobierno as well as by Ignacio Marván (Dean of democratic reform legislation in Mexico).
- The field of elitelore, which he originated, to examine the lore of leaders (in contrast to folklore that treats the lore of followers)
In Elitelore (1967), Wilkie showed that leaders not only create their
own lore (to justify their role of leadership) but invent “folklore” (to manipulate
followers, who, in turn, need to justify their place in life.) The dimensions of the field are expanded
in articles published in various issues of the Journal of Latin
American Lore (l975--). Fifteen of these articles by leading scholars
are brought together in Wilkie’s future volume entitled Latin
American Elitelore
in World Context
***
HONORS:
1958 B.A. magna cum laude, Mexico City College
1960 University of California Honorary Traveling Fellow.
1968 Bolton Prize for The Mexican Revolution (1967).
1968 Ohio Academy of History Award: Mexican Revolution (1967).
1981 Honors upon induction into the Instituto Mexicano de Cultura as a corresponding member.
1982 Medal of the Academia de San Carlos, Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México (UNAM), "for having developed the concept of elitelore."
1984 Medal of the University, UNAM, "for studies in oral history and public expenditure."
1985 Medal of 75 years of Autonomy of the Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, “for twenty years of innovative research."
1990 Distinguished Lectureship, UAM-A, Mexico City, June 17-18.
2000 Distinguished Achievement Award, Nominee for Short Documentary:
Producer of “Chan Ki’n Viejo: The Last of the Mayans.”
****
ADDRESS: UCLA Program on Mexico
10353 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095. Tel (310) 206-8500
SEND MAIL & FEDERAL
EXPRESS TO:
1242 Lachman Lane,
Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
E-MAIL: wilkie@ucla.edu Web Site: www.profmex.com
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