Comparative Latin American Politics by Ronald M. Schneider

Author:Ronald M. Schneider [Schneider, Ronald M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780429970047
Google: 2x-yDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 40140740
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Democracy Established, Progress Stalemated, 2000–2010

The significance of developments in Mexico during the first years of the new century cannot be underestimated, for they constitute the greatest step in the country’s political development since the halcyon days of the Cárdenas administration in the late 1930s and are clearly more significant than contemporary developments in Brazil as well as much more positive than those in Argentina. With the opposition victory in the July 2000 presidential elections, federalism and the separation of powers, long vitiated by the hegemonic position of the PRI, finally had an opportunity to emerge as vital aspects of a broadly participant, highly competitive political system. The greater responsiveness to “outsider” elements of society provided by this transformation greatly reduced the prospect of widespread, protracted political unrest. Camp eloquently captures the watershed nature of this development:

The victory of a party other than PRI essentially stood the Mexican political model on its head, destroying permanently the incestuous, monopolistic relationship between state and party. Such a relationship no longer exists. The future of the Mexican electoral process from 2000 forward relies heavily on the behavior and organizational strength of the three leading political parties, the PAN, PRI, and PRD, and on citizen perceptions of their candidates. It also relies on citizen views of the performance of the parties’ candidates in office, particularly in executive posts.40

The once stodgy and Catholic Church—linked PAN had been reinvigorated during the 1980s as ranchers and industrialists alienated from the governing PRI by the 1982 bank nationalizations entered its right-of-center opposition. PAN’s respectable showing in 1994 coupled with the country’s financial competitiveness crisis of that year and the next led to its continued growth, further stimulated by indications of PRI vulnerability as well as increasing signs of government intentions to conduct free elections in 2000.41 Hence the tall, quasi-charismatic Fox’s dynamic campaign resulted in a plurality of 42.5 percent of the national vote, to 36.1 percent for the PRI’s unexciting Francisco Labastida Ochoa and only 16.6 percent for the PRD’s Cárdenas. The PAN along with its small ally, the Green Party (PVEM), came away with 38.2 percent of the chamber vote and 208 seats, whereas the PRI retained 209 seats on 36.9 percent of the vote. The PRD ran a poor third, winning only 51 seats on 18.7 percent of the vote. The PRI lost control of the senate, with only 60 seats (including holdovers), but the PAN still trailed at 51 senators, three times the PRD’s 17 seats.42 As in Argentina in 1916, the opposition had finally captured the presidency, but without control of congress—where hard bargaining would be required.

In contrast to the alliances crucial to Lula’s 2002 election in Brazil, the outcome of Mexico’s presidential succession was the product of long-term trends of levels of economic and social development, regionalism, and urbanization. For some time the opposition had been strong in the relatively high-income Federal District and Baja California; now they fared even better. (This situation paralleled developments in Brazil with respect to São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro beginning in 1978.

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