Does market liberalization promote democracy? The accepted answer from scholars, pundits, and politicians alike has been yes. However, the contributors to this innovative study of market reforms and political change in Mexico and the People’s Republic of China argue that this easy equation is not only empirically uncertain but methodologically flawed. Using comparative contextual analysis, the contributors carefully identify the elective affinities between these two very different polities to reveal key variables that determine how markets will affect democracy, particularly law as the ‘rudder of democracy’ and the role of political culture in civil society.