Liberalism as Utopia

Liberalism as Utopia challenges widespread perceptions about the weakness of Mexico''s nineteenth-century state. Schaefer argues that after the War of Independence non-elite Mexicans - peasants, day laborers, artisans, local merchants - pioneered an egalitarian form of legal rule by serving in the town governments and civic militias that became the local faces of the state''s coercive authority. T...