The study examines how current global processes of market liberalization, privatization, and environmentalism are affecting state law and how these practices are translated by the state to affect local activities. The study looks at the particular case of the shrimp industry in the Gulf of California and argues that, through the creation of bad laws, the state is manipulating these global themes to renew its forms of social control at the local level. More specifically, by issuing bad laws, the state is fomenting the growth of the informal economy, thereby rendering an increasingly large proportion of the population illegal actors, vulnerable to the selective enforcement of regulations and dependent on the benevolence of local bureaucrats. The study further argues that the state is able to justify its adoption of bad laws through the apparently objective knowledge of scientific discourse, thus creating an image of impartiality and disassociating itself from the current problems. The study concludes that what the state is actually doing is orchestrating a situation of increased inequality in which a small but influential group of private entrepreneurs have acquired the legal right to secure the leftover benefits of a rapidly diminishing resource. Figure, notes, references