This anthology examines the origins, implementation, and initial consequences of Mexico's National Solidarity Program (PRONASOL), the Salinas administration's principal social policy initiative.

The product of a year-long, collaborative research project involving Mexican and U.S. scholars, this book explores historical continuities between PRONASOL and previous "poverty alleviation" programs of the Mexican government, consequences of Solidarity for political centralism, political parties and electoral behavior, and regime legitimacy.

Contributors also examine links between Solidarity and grassroots organizations in rural and urban areas, how PRONASOL resources were actually distributed within certain sectors, the program's effectiveness as a strategy of poverty alleviation, and more generally how it transformed state-society relations in Mexico. A comparative chapter places PRONASOL in the broader context of demand-based poverty alleviation programs elsewhere in Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe.