Daniel C. Levy, Katherine Bruhn, Emilio Zebadua
From the book: "Mexico. The struggle
for Democratic Development"
University of California Press
2001
ISBN 05-20228-316
The Rise of Political Competition
As the traditional pillars supporting governmental stability erode in Mexico, politics becomes more competitive and new actors join the political scene. Practically all frame their demands as contributions to the democratic transition. Even guerrilla movements claim democracy as a goal, blame Mexico's problems on a lack of democracy, and engage in debate over how to define and construct Mexican democracy. Appeals to democracy are not new. The Mexican Revolution began partly in the name of democracy. The emphasis of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institutional, PRI) on regular elections, even when it did not determine who would govern, incorporated "democracy" as a legitimating principle. On the right the conservative National Action Party (Partido Acción National, PAN) has stressed electoral legality since its foundation in I939. Many leftist groups today also declare their commitment to democracy, though some failed to mention it until the I980S. What distinguished the I99OS was, first, that the idea of democracy as a necessary condition for further economic development gained wider acceptance, and second, that optimism about the real possibility for transition grew. As recently as I987, alternation in power was at best a long-term fantasy; by 2000 it had occurred.
Even prior to 2000, however, clear signs of democratic transition wore evident, including the emergence of a more active and participatory civil society, as well as an increasingly competitive multiparty system, coalescing around three major parties. State and local governments became more aggressive in their demands for resources and autonomy. Electoral administration became less dependent on parties and the government, offering more credible guarantees of free and fair elections. Even the long submissive Congress started to show signs of life, contributing to the active debate about how to rein in an undemocratically powerful presidency. These changing relationships provided credible evidence of the impending political transition.
Yet the Mexican political system has remained strongly influenced by its roots. The transition has been characterized by its length: rather than a sudden replacement of one system by another, we witness its evolution. As competition has increased, some aspects of Mexican politics have changed more than others. Many organizations remain complex blends of past structures with new elements introduced to keep them viable. Some will survive and others will not, but it is not clear which, or how their fate affects democracy. This is particularly the case for the PRI and its associated unions. For seventy-one years they were the pillars that sustained Mexico's extraordinary political stability; today they face the unprecedented challenge of adapting to life as opposition forces.
This chapter examines the rise of competitive politics in Mexico. It focuses on the actors who first challenged the PRI, the efforts of the PRI (and its allies) to respond, and the reaction of state institutions to competitive pressures. It develops several related themes. First, the rise of competitive politics in one arena has often encouraged the rise of competition in other arenas and by other actors-a sort of "virtuous circle," where advances build on one another and it becomes harder to control the pace and direction of change. Second, democratization involves trade-offs and contradictions. Not only does the path from authoritarian stability to democratic stability lead through a swamp of increased instability, but the rise of competition itself can have negative effects. Competition is neither neutral nor universally beneficial; in fact, it implies the existence of losers as well as winners. Actors who feel they will lose in a democratic system may respond by opposing reforms in ways that block or destabilize democracy, such as turning to violence that was not necessary when their power was secure. Groups that opposed the PRI regime have not always behaved democratically themselves. And a competitive system that rewards organization for electoral purposes may leave unorganized Mexico even further behind.
Finally, whereas once it was common to refer to Mexican exceptionalism, competitiveness makes Mexican politics look more like politics in other countries. Again, this has contradictory implications. As politics "normalizes," many of the barriers to democratic development implicit in Mexico's unique party system have disappeared. Yet at the same time Mexico becomes subject to many of the ills that its political system protected against during the long period of stability and growth. Ultimately, the rise of competitive politics in Mexico therefore demonstrates that while some good things do go together, all good things do not. There are costs as well as rewards in the struggle for democratic development.
SOCIAL ACTORS AND ORGANIZED GROUPS
CIVIL SOCIETY
The rise of competition owes much to the posh from below, from groups organized outside political parties and the state. Modern democratic theory refers collectively to these groups as civil society, meaning "the realm of organized social life that is voluntary, self-generating, (largely) self-supporting, autonomous from the state, and bound by a legal order or set of shared rules." In Mexico the composition of civil society has been clouded by the traditional incorporation of many interest organizations, particularly those of labor and peasants, within the PRI. Through the party the state had direct or indirect control over these groups, making them less clearly civil, or nonstate, than in other countries. For this reason we discuss the PRI-dominated labor and peasant sectors and the semi-incorporated business sector separately from civil society.
These distinctions matter because it is relative autonomy from the state that gives civil society the potential to check state power and to provide a fresh perspective' ~ source of creativity, outside of state plans. This helps explain why many people have linked a strong and healthy civil society with a strong and healthy democracy. The more organizations that exist and the more people who participate in them, the less likely it is that governments will get away with abusing their citizens. Conversely, the lack of a deeply rooted civil society is associated with authoritarian politics. In Mexico, as in many developing countries, civil society has traditionally been weak, due in part to the lack of resources for participation as well as to common cultural attitudes that orient society more inward (toward families) than outward (to larger political communities). In addition, those who tried to form independent organizations in Mexico ran into low official tolerance for association outside state control, a topic Chapter 4 explores further. Through its monopoly over public goods and services, the state managed to co-opt and contain most challenges; more intractable foes often found themselves targets of repression.
Since around the mid-1980s, however, civil society has blossomed in Mexico, ranging from human rights activists accusing the police of brutality to neighborhood associations demanding police protection, from middle-class feminists to squatters' associations, from environmentalists to church groups. In part, the growth of civil society reflects social and demographic change. Rural Mexicans face higher costs of organization than urban Mexicans; even transportation and communication are more expensive across rural distances. As Mexico urbanized, barriers to organization diminished. Overall increases in education and income also increased the resources and capacity of Mexicans to participate.
Internationalization of the economy and cultural life has encouraged these trends. The Catholic Church has played a more progressive role internationally since the 1960S, promoting social organization and protecting organizers from repression. More generally, many groups receive advice and resources from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) based outside Mexico; some have become nearly dependent on international funding. Yet this type of dependence leaves them room to challenge the Mexican state. Some successful international fund-raisers, like the election-monitoring organization Civic Alliance, are among the most politically active groups. This is an example of where internationalized development promotes democratization.
Finally, civil society in Mexico has grown in part as a result of mistakes made by the government. A key example is the state's response to the devastating earthquake that hit Mexico City in 1985. The ineffective official emergency response system angered citizens; worse still, the slow and corrupt distribution of international and state aid left victims unprotected. In- contrast to government incompetence, Mexican civil society rapidly organized to carry out actions-until then the exclusive domain of public agencies-such as organizing search teams, shelters, and food for the homeless. Later, many of these groups became advocates for victims, demanding state services and loans to rebuild lost homes. Perhaps in part reflecting this positive experience, public confidence in civil society remains much higher (at 48 percent expressing confidence) than confidence in government (18 percent or political parties (39 percent).
In the process of seeking state help, some groups lost their autonomy from the state, but many did not. Ironically, economic crisis in the 1980 and 1990 helped preserve same groups' independence, by forcing budget cuts and leaving, the PRI without the resources it usually relied on to co-opt challengers. For example, the I994 peso crash spurred the formation of a debtor's organization called El Barzón.5 El Barzón initially included mostly middle-class debtors whose credit card debt, as well as house and car payments, skyrocketed by as much as 1OO percent when the government raised interest rates to meet international lenders' requirements for a bailout. El Barzón grew to include small farmers and merchants with similar debt problems. Constrained by international commitments to maintain fiscal austerity and high interest rates, the government could show little flexibility. Thus Mexico's unstable and weakened economy both increased levels of popular frustration with the government-the motivation for many to organize independently-and decreased the government's ability to buy off organized civic groups.
Mexican civil society has played a vital role in pushing for a more democratic political system and accountable government. Internally, some groups have adopted more democratic procedures than traditional unions, including regular assemblies to elect leaders. Smaller associations have often preferred direct participation, but as groups become larger and begin to form networks (such as the National Coordinator of Urban and Popular Movements, CONAMUP), participation mechanisms decay and leaders become entrenched. Nevertheless, even nondemocratic civil society can check the government. Moreover, civil society challenges parties to be more responsive. As parties seek the support of popular associations, they have to deliver benefits. They also generally have to prove they will not try to control potential supporters as the PRI controlled unions. Parties may offer space on candidate lists for civil society leaders, or promise to put all major decisions to a vote. There is a trade-off here: access for civil society opens as democracy forces politicians to seek support from a larger base, but parties may become more divided as they try to include more diverse and conflicting interests. This can weaken the ability of parties to compete in elections or to govern effectively.
Some civil society organizations monitor the government directly. For example, the aforementioned Civic Alliance formed during the I994 presidential campaign to conduct independent poll watching, including an exit poll to check the accuracy of official results. This enhanced the credibility of the election and participants' confidence in the results. After the election Civic Alliance began an ironically titled "adopt an official" program, which watched elected officials to make sure they fulfilled their campaign promises. Other civil groups have pushed the government and parties to submit to a code of ethics (known as Twenty Commitments for Democracy) and continually raised the democratic agenda in debate. Yet the relationship of civil society organizations with parties is tense. Such tensions are common in many countries and illustrate some of the tradeoffs that democracy implies. The advantages of alliance include the opportunity to place one's leaders in city councils or Congress, gaining access to state resources. But influenced by the negative example of PRI unions, many civil society groups fear that parties will try to control them. Others worry that fights among party factions will infect social movements with crippling divisions. Though electoral alliances have become more common since I988, many organizations remain deeply divided about the wisdom of participating in elections.
Civil society's attitude toward political parties contrasts in some ways with its relatively welcoming attitude toward the zapatistas. Although the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación National (EZLN) is either part of the state nor a political party, it is technically not a civil organization but rather a military one (albeit a "virtual military," with few teeth). The EZLN has used modern information technology, including a Web site, to seek support from civil society, both inside Mexico and abroad. Most of its funding comes from external donations. At least twice, impending military annihilation of the EZLN was averted by civil society protests. The EZLN has held several rallies in the remote jungles where it operates, attracting; urban intellectuals, feminists, U.S. progressives, indigenous activists, even the controversial filmmaker Oliver Stone. It sponsored the creation of the Frente Zapatista de Liberación National, which operates entirely in the civil arena. The organizations in this front converge mostly around "democracy," which they define in various ways; some of their ideas do not fit the usual Western definitions. However, the debate within zapatista forums over what "democracy" means has also influenced national institutional reform and parties.
The example of the EZLN also raises the critical point that not all of civil society supports stable democracy. Although the EZLN has contributed to a richer discussion of democracy, it has also taken up arms and disrupted several elections. Moreover, right-wing paramilitary groups have reacted to the zapatista threat by stepping up their tactics of assassination and threats. Democratization makes room for the growth not only of pro-democracy groups but also of antidemocracy ones. Every democratic society struggles with the problem of how much freedom to extend to organizations that would deny others' civil rights (such as the Ku Klux Klan), or to separatist groups that reject state authority (such as Basque groups in Spain). Mexico is not exempt from this problem.
Finally, civil society cannot yet supply alternatives to the traditional state-linked organizations of business, labor, and peasants. Civil society remains thin and uneven compared with advanced industrial democracies; it is especially weak in rural Mexico. Despite its weakness, however, civil society has helped push traditional organizations out of their political stupor, forcing them to work harder to maintain the loyalty of their members. Business representatives, labor bosses, and peasant organizers have adopted the rhetorical style of civil society. To understand these societal actors, it is no longer sufficient to study only the groups associated with the PRI. But in the transition to democracy, the weight of traditional groups remains substantial.
LABOR
As Chapter z notes, the incorporation of labor in the I930S helped stabilize the Mexican state and consolidate the ruling party. Variations in how labor is organized can influence patterns of conflict or stability, levels of polarization, types of party system, and even prospects for democracy. Where unions develop institutional ties with parties, as in Mexico, the governing coalition tends to stay in the political center and manage potential threats to the system. Where unions do not have such ties, they tend to challenge the state from outside, using strikes and demonstrations that may threaten the economic elite. In Mexico elites were less tempted to call in the military because civilian institutions already incorporated labor in ways that helped prevent conflict from escalating and gave business some leverage against unions. In this system, known as state corporatism, interest organizations do not compete openly with other organizations for support (a situation known as pluralism). Instead, they receive state subsidies and legal protection against rivals but face significant external limits on their autonomy.
State corporatism in Mexico contributed to distinctly undemocratic outcomes for the political system. In many industrialized economies labor unions play a critical role as one of the most easily mobilized mass groups. In pluralistic systems those who control labor-have a powerful tool for putting pressure on government. In democracies labor's electoral support is very helpful to parties. But in Mexico corporatism gave the PRI public legitimacy and a solid electoral base while limiting the risks that independent labor mobilization might endanger stability. The PRI's "capture" of labor unions (and peasants) helps explain why opposition parties in Mexico were so small and weak: they had no mass base. Finally, corporatism gave the state leverage to limit labor demands and strikes-a useful aid in promoting economic growth. And growth in turn bolstered stability.
At the heart of organized labor in Mexico is the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), created in I936 and incorporated shortly thereafter into the PRI. Mexico's rulers never gave any union total monopoly over labor. Instead, they used competition among unions to limit any single union's power. Some key unions, including the teachers' union and the union of state employees, were put into a separate sector within the PRI-the popular sector-again, to divide and conquer." The largest umbrella organization (the Labor Congress) was too loosely organized to challenge the system and was composed, in any case, of PRI unions. Still, the CTM has dwarfed most rivals in the PRI's labor sector since its foundation. It has been at the core of the state-labor deal in postrevolutionary Mexico.
Like other unions the CTM's bargain rested on a carrot-and-stick combination. State controls over unions (the sticks) included restrictions on union formation and provisions giving the state the privilege of declaring strikes legal or/illegal. In order to negotiate a collective contract, a union had to officially register with the state. By denying registration, the state could punish rebellious unions-a discretionary procedure that skirts the role of law. The state reserved the right to monitor and certify union elections; thus the state could challenge union elections for "irregularities" and deny recognition of any union leader who refused to cooperate. Yet the PRI regime also recognized that containing labor mobilization would require offering some incentives (the carrots). This bolstered labor support for the regime and enhanced its legitimacy. Among other things, the postrevolutionary regime gave unions formal representation on the board that sets minimum wages (to which most collective contracts in Mexico are pegged); representation on the Board of Conciliation and Arbitration (which hears disputes between labor and capital); the right to organize and strike; the right to a closed shop; state subsidies of unions; and a share of congressional seats through PRI candidacies. Independent union organizers in other nations have found these benefits very desirable-and very difficult to win.
However, benefits have been unequally distributed within Mexico's labor sector, with most going to unions that could have caused the state trouble. The least threatening groups-the unorganized-benefited least. Most Mexican workers do not belong to a union, because they work either in the informal sector or in very small businesses. According to one estimate, only Z6 percent of wage earners in urban areas in I970 were organized; a more recent estimate finds fewer than half of all salaried workers in unions. Nonunionized workers get lower wages, no formal representation, and little access to state social programs (like housing and health insurance).
In addition, the combination of benefits with state controls reinforced authoritarian and monopolistic practices that encouraged widespread corruption and undermined union incentives to defend workers. By using the closed shop privilege, for example, a union leader could fire dissident workers by expelling them from the union; if dissidents tried to challenge him or her in a union election, the state would back the official leader.'3 As a result, union leaders tended to stay in power for long periods: the no re-election rule in party politics did not affect unions. Over time long-term leaders often became more responsive to the president than to their members because the state, not workers, determined who could lead unions. The classic case is that of Fidel Velázquez. A founding leader of the CTM, Velázquez held unquestioned power from the I950S until his death in I997. He endorsed all state policies without hesitation, from the pro-labor policies of President Lázaro Cárdenas to the pro-business policies of President Carlos Salinas. As we shall see, this meant huge sacrifices for labor.
As long as the Mexican economy grew at an extraordinary rate, labor probably gained more than it lost in material terms. Real minimum wages rose from 1.5 pesos in 1938 to a peak of 3.4 in 1976. Nevertheless, even at the height of PRI control, independent unionism never died. For example, in the 1940S and 1950S railroad workers carried out memorable strikes. In the 1960S medical workers staged an important strike. In the 1970S electrical workers started a dissident, pro-democratic faction that enjoyed limited success and contributed to efforts in other professionally oriented industrial sectors, such as nuclear energy. In these decades teachers and students were often a thorn in the side of the authoritarian state. Teachers held a nearly unique position of respect within local communities (together with priests, who could not legally participate in politics). Although this allowed teachers to-play-a vital role in the legitimation of the PRI and the state-and most teachers accepted the control of the official union-teachers also have perhaps the longest and most consistent record of mobilization against the state's Dissident teachers shared with other dissident union movements a focus on the corrupt and undemocratic behavior of union leaders.
Thus the economic crisis that began in 198I did not initiate challenges to the PRI-labor relationship. But it did undermine one of the key terms in PRI-labor cooperation: the exchange of electoral support and legitimacy for benefits from the state. As state budgets were slashed, social benefits such as housing and health care remained stagnant or shrank. Many subsidies of basic products like tortillas, bread, and cooking oil-a state concession to make working-class wages go further- were cut. The state asked labor leaders to sell these cutbacks to their members. The state also asked them to help stabilize inflation by accepting wage freezes. As a result, inflation significantly outpaced wage increases: real minimum wages fell 30 percent in the first three years of the crisis and continued to drop throughout the 19805. While union leaders tried to convince their members that wage cuts and benefit cuts were a good thing, civil society provided contrast, protesting government failures. Perhaps inevitably, the sales job fell short. Increasingly, workers resisted when labor leaders called on them to vote for the PRI. In 1988 prominent labor leaders nominated for "safe" seats in Mexico City lost to candidates from a leftist coalition that demanded more consideration for popular suffering. And when unions could not deliver support, their electoral value fell further, making it easier to disregard labor in the next round of budget cuts.
The economic crisis coincided with a leadership crisis brought on by the aging and death of the founding union leaders. The death of Velázquez in 1997 was a sigh of this passing of the torch. Velázquez had fought in the revolution, witnessed early post-revolutionary instability, and participated in the creation of the PRI. He valued compromise and stability above the aggressive defense of labor rights. Younger labor leaders who do not share this experience may have more immediate priorities.
Rising competition, lea1ership transition, and economic restructuring produced diverse responses. Not all favored democracy. On the pro-democracy side more independent unions began to emerge. Democratic movements within official unions gained strength. Several unions were emboldened by the death of Velázquez to exit the PRI's Labor Congress and form an independent federation (the National Workers' Union, UNT).
Other union leaders sought support from non-PRI politicians and civil society as well as international allies. Since the signing of NAFTA in 1993, the AFL-CIO (the major U.S. union federation) has offered moral and material support to Mexican labor unions, especially those that oppose NAFTA; thus non-PRI unions (less constrained to support NAFTA) benefit most. Like civil society these unions have entered a new stage of dynamic politics. Whereas dissident union factions in the past often mobilized alone, by the 199OS they could receive-and give-sup
port to many other organizations. Political competition throughout the 1980S and 199OS put additional stress on the state-labor alliance. As elections became more competitive, the PRI paid an ever higher electoral price for decisions that hurt labor. At the same time opposition parties made strong if mostly unsuccessful efforts to persuade unions to switch sides. And competition for labor support increased. But most Mexican unions chose to remain within the PRI and cling ever more tightly to the state, hoping that loyalty would give them an edge in the sharpened competition for state resources and assistance. These unions illustrate the parallel point that democratization involves choice. Some rational responses to competition do not reinforce democracy but rather attempt to preserve islands of authoritarianism against the democratic wave.
The state also kept almost all of its historical methods of coercing labor, including maintaining legal control over union registry, union elections, and permission to strike, even as the rewards it used to offer shrank or disappeared. In some cases PRI officials used these mechanisms to get rid of union bosses whose unpopularity damaged the PRI or who blocked economic reforms. The Salinas administration was particularly adept in adapting traditional methods to a modernizing discourse. While Salinas framed the firing of corrupt union leaders as a defense of efficiency and morality, he was every bit as ruthless as his predecessors in limiting union democracy: corrupt leaders were replaced, from above, with leaders who helped him enforce policies that were resisted by their union members.'8 President Ernesto Zedillo was less active in managing internal union (and party) affairs but did not eliminate state levers of control. Thus competition can motivate renewed use of state controls- especially when they can be passed off as reformist-as well as democratic reforms.
But the victory in 2000 of non-PRI candidate Vicente Fox for the presidency places state-labor relations in a new light. As a member of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), Mexico's new president lacks the traditional ties to unions, though he formally controls-at least pending a possible revision of the Labor Law-many of the- tools PRI presidents used to manipulate unions. Conversely, the PRI retains its traditional ties to unions but lacks its historical capacity to use state resources and authority to preserve them. This situation presents unions with a dilemma: Stick with the PRI, try to increase their influence within it, and use the party to pressure the state from outside? Or desert ship and try their luck with other parties, perhaps even the PAN, which has more to often? For union leaders the dilemma is even sharper. Without the backing of the state, where do their loyalties lie? As in the past reactions are likely to be diverse.
Attempts to form an alliance with any government also confront the constraints of internationalizing development. Where the PRI regime could once promise to protect jobs and wages, Mexican governments under the neoliberal model face pressures to keep wages low and labor quiet to attract foreign investment. The incentives of labor leaders and the electoral incentives of the PRI have long conflicted with the policy goals of neoliberal presidents, contributing to the PRI's defeat. This applies to the neoliberal PAN as well. The fracturing of the state-labor relationship implies increased conflict between labor and the president, between labor and the PRI, and within labor unions themselves.
Labor thus demonstrates many of the themes in this discussion of civil society. On the one hand, the number and volume of voices increase. Old patterns of control are challenged, increasing competition for labor support. Dissident labor finds help in organizations outside the PRI and even outside the country; in turn, independent unions support the struggles of civil society-the virtuous circle. Like civil society labor became increasingly alienated from the PRI as economic crisis affected popular living standards and reduced government tools for co-opting labor. On the other hand, the mixed responses of labor also demonstrate resistance to reform. Nor does rising political competition automatically create access or influence for the historically marginalized unorganized workers. And finally, while economic crisis and internationalization may have alienated workers from the PRI, they also weakened labor in important ways. Entering the global market means dealing with powerful transnational companies, who can credibly threaten to move operations elsewhere if labor demands too much. Indeed, even greater pluralism and competition may backfire: organized labor will find it hard to replicate its former privileged position as more voices demand attention and no group can make a unique claim that its support is essential to stability or electoral success.
PEASANTS
The incorporation of peasant organizations in the PRI also contributed decisively to the stability of the postrevolutionary regime. Along with the distribution of land and other benefits, incorporation eliminated a serious threat to the emerging Mexican state. Later, peasants provided a reliable source of electoral support, compensating for declining PRI strength in urban areas. Yet like labor, peasants have become increasingly independent of the PRI-and not just by peasant initiative. The PRI has disengaged from peasants even more than it has from labor, due in part to the politically disruptive effect of agricultural reforms in the 1990s that seriously threaten the viability of many peasant communities. Peasant reactions likewise span a wider range, from loyal support to armed rebellion. Nevertheless, the problems of peasant organization remain formidable. As a result, political competition in the countryside has grown more unevenly and unpredictably than in urban Mexico.
As Chapter z notes, the incorporation of peasants into the ruling party took place under Cárdenas. In the same way that the CTM became the backbone of the PRI's labor sector, the National Peasant Confederation (CNC) became the backbone of the peasant sectorP9 As in the case of labor, peasants lost autonomy but gained benefits from close association with the state: positions in Congress, protection and subsidies for the CNC, and government help for agriculture. To apply for land through the redistribution program, peasants had to organize a "community" to petition for land rights. These communities were given land rights (in a form of collective property called the ejido) and incorporated into the CNC. The state could distribute subsidized inputs (such as fertilizer or credit) in the same way and portray price supports for agricultural products as favors from the PRI-to be paid back with loyal support.
Cardenas's successors took this structure and turned it into an increasingly exploitative method of controlling rural communities. In fact, the terms deteriorated even more for peasants than for labor. The share of state credit and investment to agriculture declined steadily after the I940S, shifting to the emerging industrial sector.~° While minimum price supports to producers were maintained, price controls intended to keep food inexpensive for the growing urban population limited incentives to increase food production for the open market. Politically, the peasant sector lost resources and positions to other groups within the PRI. Nevertheless, peasants continued to supply the PRI with an electoral "green reserve." Maintaining the PRI's traditional 80-go percent of the vote in rural areas required increasing coercion as incentives shrank, but as long as political competition remained low-and peasants had few alternatives-the cost in terms of declining legitimacy for PRI peasant organizations seemed tolerable.
In response to official neglect, some efforts were made to organize independent peasant movements. In the 1960S former president Cárdenas sponsored the Independent Peasant Central (CCI) to stop the deterioration of state support for peasants. The CCI suffered a fate like that of many independent organizations at the time: the government fomented a division within its leadership, bought off one faction, recognized it as the official leadership, and jailed the independent leaders. Within a few years the new leaders led the CCI into the PRI. This example demonstrates the blend of co-optation and soft repression with which the PRI managed social conflict at its peak.
But in the 1980S economic crisis undermined the PRI's ability to co-opt peasant opposition, just as in the labor sector. The availability of credit and subsidies-never sufficient to help the majority of farmers- slipped even further. Peasants did have some advantages over labor in the economic crisis, though. Most notably, the prevalence of subsistence farming (for family consumption) insulated peasants to some extent from inflation and falling real wages. Nevertheless, their ability to produce depended on access to land and credit, and both were in short supply. Moreover, even subsistence farmers need money to buy things they cannot make. Poverty has long been deeper and more pervasive in the countryside than in urban areas, and the crisis made this worse.
Partly as a result, the 1980s brought increasing success to those who sought to organize peasant communities. One such effort by urban Maoist organizers ¡would eventually lead to the zapatista rebellion. Their appeal improved after reforms in the 199OS further alienated peasants. In addition to making deep cuts in state subsidies, Salinas introduced market incentives to discourage inefficient agricultural practices and reward productive ones. Trade liberalization (and NAFTA) lowered or eliminated price supports. Only in certain sectors did NAFTA permit more gradual reduction of import protection, delaying liberalization of corn-produced by mpr' than 50 percent of Mexican farmers-for fifteen years, to give farmers time to switch to more productive crops or leave agriculture.
Salinas's most dramatic step changed Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution. One of the most important features of the postrevolutionary settlement, Article 27 committed the state to land reform. By reforming Article 27, Salinas declared an end to land redistribution. No new petitions could be filed, and limits on the amount of land any owner could hold were lifted. Article 27 also prohibited the sale or rental of ejido land. Salinas changed this too, giving ejido members the right to convert the ejido into individual plots. With private titles small farmers could qualify for bank loans using their land as collateral; it would no longer be illegal for banks to seize land for default. Rental contracts became fully enforceable, encouraging contracts with large buyers (such as Del Monte) to provide credit in exchange for the crop at a fixed price. Commercial farmers and even some peasants welcomed these reforms, seeing them as a way to stimulate investment as well as liberating them from paternalistic state interference.
However, the reforms to Article Z7 essentially ended any hope for the poorest peasants to gain land rights. They also made it likely that landownership would become increasingly concentrated in a few hands-as ejidos disband, banks confiscate land on defaulted loans, and wealthy landowners buy up the surplus. This was, in fact, the general goal: enabling the most productive agricultural producers to farm on a larger scale, at higher levels of efficiency (or, in economic terms, to take advantage of economies of scale). Expanding the exercise of democratic choice by some peasants may limit the choices available to others and increase inequality.
As with labor, peasant responses to these challenges have been mixed. Probably the most common response is nonresponse. It is harder to organize peasants than urban groups, because of the cost of communication and transport, the lack of skills and resources, and the urgent demands of survival. For example, one common response is migration by some family members to U.S. or Mexican cities in order to supplement shrinking farm income. Migration can disrupt peasant organization, since it is often the most enterprising who migrate-the same type who could be a peasant leader. Some peasants managed to organize, often with the help of urban advisers and outside donations. In a number of cases peasants created cooperatives to replace lost government services, such as marketing. However, radical peasant organizations, including the zapatistas, often evolved from moderate organizations that failed to win government assistance. Thus the formation of peasant organizations does not point unambiguously toward stable democracy, although it may have a healthy effect on checking state power as well as giving voice to the demands of the underrepresented.
For some peasant communities already suffering from decades of official neglect, these reforms were the last straw. In an increasingly competitive context, peasants had less to lose and more to gain by abandoning the PRI. This parallels the situation faced by labor and civil society: that as motives to rebel increase, the costs of rebellion fall, weakening traditional state alliances. While this contributed to more independent voting and competition for peasant support, it also increased the risk of radical alternatives whose effects on democracy are far less positive. The emergence of the zapatistas in I994 reflects both of these possibilities. As an armed rebellion, it suggests the potential for revolutionary rather than democratic outcomes. And the zapatistas are not alone: barely two years later, a second guerrilla group (the Popular Revolutionary Army) began operations. Even when they fall short of revolution, such rebellions make elections dangerous. Elections in rural zones are often accompanied by a kind of violence that is rare in urban areas. Far from the watchful eyes of television cameras and human rights groups, same elites of the traditional economy who are threatened by competition have reacted by hiring private security forces to intimidate the opposition. In same cases the growth of drug cartels has fed this volatile mix by flooding rural areas with sophisticated weapons. Democracy cannot take root in a culture of violence and illegality.
At the same time the zapatistas contributed to blossoming electoral competition. As late as 1988 the PRI won go percent of the vote in Chiapas. By I997, however, it had fallen to So.6 percent. The leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática, PRD) benefited most. And despite the widespread appeal of zapatista demands for economic justice and democracy, their method of armed insurrection did not win broad praise. Most peasant organizations reject violence. In fact, the zapatistas themselves increasingly avoided violence after I994 and concentrated on peaceful alliances.
This discussion of peasants has noted important parallels to the patterns and trends also evident in labor and civil society. Again, economic crisis and structural reforms play a role in growing alienation from the PRI, although PRI neglect of the peasants dates back much further. Again, rising political competition encourages independent organization. The victory of the PAN in the 2000 presidential election puts the PRI peasant relationship into greater question than ever before, as in the case of labor. Yet peasants ~face more obstacles to effective participation than the sectors examined so far. Most peasants will benefit less from NAFTA over the long run than labor, which anticipates an increase in jobs. Their main crop-corn-is unlikely to be competitive under free trade.
Peasants also face formidable barriers to organization. They are more isolated than urban residents, get less education, and have lower incomes and less access to information. In most countries such people are less likely to organize, vote, or participate in politics. In addition, many peasant demands (e.g., land and cheap credit) are less compatible with the neoliberal package than labor or popular demands for economic growth and jobs. Where they do organize, peasant responses have more frequently involved violence, in part because of these obstacles. But apathy
is more common than organization of any kind. Competition has developed very slowly and unevenly in the countryside. Even in losing the 2000 election, the PRI continued to control a plurality of the peasant vote. The PAN and other national parties have less to gain by wooing rural voters than by consolidating their hold on urban Mexico, whose residents are more numerous and more likely to vote than peasants. The difficulty of organizing peasants may stabilize the political system as a whole but leaves peasants with few alternatives, democratic or otherwise, for defending their interests.
BUSINESS
Compared with peasant and labor organizations, business organizations have traditionally enjoyed more freedom. They were never brought inside the PRI. Yet business has nonetheless exercised tremendous influence over policy. Relying mostly on informal channels, business leaders have blocked reforms that would adversely affect their interests. They have supported government initiatives believed to benefit business. As in other sectors an increasingly diverse set of organizations has emerged, including some that oppose pro-business policies like NAFTA, and business has engaged in more openly political behavior. Political competition, in other words, has shown up in business-state relations as well.
Formal business organization dates to roughly the same time as peasant and labor organization. The oldest group, founded in 19I7, is the Confederation of Chambers of Commerce (CONCANACO). A year later industrialists created the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (CONCAMIN); a rival group created the National Chamber of Manufacturing Industries (CANACINTRA) in I94I. Later, the state recognized other chambers in strategically important sectors, leaving CANACINTRA mostly to small and medium-sized industries. All of these organizations benefited from corporatist laws that required businesses to register with a state-approved chamber and pay dues. But unlike labor and peasant groups, these business organizations never joined the PRI. Nor did business families run the state directly. Indeed, business and political families in Mexico have been remarkably separate in certain respects: educating their children in different schools, marrying into their own class, and pursuing the same kinds of careers as their parents. The familiar U.S. pattern of drifting from business into politics and back again is uncommon in Mexico. Although politicians have often gone into business after retiring from politics, businessmen usually ~lid not enter politics, at least until the 1980s. Under the PRI system of advancement through apprenticeship under experienced politicians, outsiders of any type-including business leaders-rarely succeeded in forcing their way into power.
Nevertheless, this formal separation did not mean a lack of cooperation with the state. Cooperation deepened during the peak period of regime control. Domestic manufacturers benefited from state subsidies of key inputs (such as oil), tax breaks, state loans, and protective tariffs that limited foreign competition. The state also invested heavily in the infrastructure needed to industrialize, such as roads and electric power. Thus domestic industrialists emerged as Mexico's dominant economic class without having to participate formally in politics and without losing as much organizational autonomy as labor and peasants. To influence governmental policy, business leaders relied less on organizational connections than on personal influence and economic clout.
Despite the general influence of business, this method of pressure from outside the formal system did not always work. In the early 1970S, for example, business leaders objected to the inflated budgets of populist President Luis Echeverría. Many sent their money abroad, but they could not reverse the decision of the powerful president. This bitter experience led in 1975 to the creation of a new umbrella organization, the Coordinating Business Council (CCE), to fend off future challenges to free enterprise.27 Only CANACINTRA, with the closest ties to the government, did not participate. The CCE gave business a more independent voice and trained new business leaders. Nevertheless, business continued to accept a tacit partnership with the state, preferring political neutrality to activism and usually supporting the PRI.
In the 1980S business became more independent, anti-PRI, and vocal, like peasant and labor groups had and for similar reasons-especially dismay at government mishandling of the economic crisis. But the turning point for business came earlier than for labor or peasants: when President José López Portillo nationalized Mexico's private banks in I98Z. This came as a profound shock, perhaps because López Portillo was initially seen as a pro-business president. If he could take such a radical step, no president could be trusted. Many businessmen sought stronger checks on presidential power, including not only independent business organization but party competition.
In spite of these tensions, most businesses (particularly big businesses) continued to support the PRI. However, some had come to the end of their rope. For these leaders the most sympathetic opposition party was the conservative and pro-business PAN. The number of business leaders who participated in (and funded) PAN campaigns grew substantially. The 1988 PAN presidential candidate was a former CCE president who had entered politics-and the PAN-after a business career, like many current PAN leaders. The traditional separation between business and political leaders has been most thoroughly shattered within the ranks of the PAN. Indeed, former business leaders like Vicente Fox often point to their previous business experience as proof that they have the skills to govern successfully.
Rising political competition lowers the costs of business defection on several levels. First, each successive defection lowers the risk for others, just as the spread of independent unions makes it harder for the state to clamp down on any individual union. In addition, the state's value to business has declined. When the state could securely control political mobilization, it was a valuable ally in holding popular classes (especially labor) in check. As the state-labor alliance deteriorated, the state's ability to guarantee labor peace declined. The move toward free trade also made the state less central to business success. Even when the state-business relationship was coziest, business was often torn between the benefits of a protective state and discomfort with its economic meddling. Under free trade business profits depend less on state decisions. Entrepreneurs rely on the state mainly for macroeconomic stability and infrastructure, while markets have more influence on who profits and who loses money.
As business became more politically active, it participated in the process of democratization in negative and positive ways. In stable democracies big business accepts democracy as normal and legitimate. In many Latin American countries the willingness of business elites to back military coups has been a significant obstacle. In Mexico, though military coups have not been a threat, business support for the PRI stabilized authoritarian rule. As business dependence on the state shrinks, business leaders lose their fear of challenging the state, and the potential for such challenges tends to limit state power. Furthermore, since business controls significant resources, it can play a powerful role in supporting democratic organizations, including but not limited to parties and electoral campaigns.
Yet business does not unconditionally support democratization. Even for sympathetic business leaders, it is a tricky matter to calculate whether the gains to stability derived from legitimate democracy are bigger than the tax cost of encouraging governments to cater to popular demands for services. A less controlled labor sector can pressure for higher wages and benefits. The biggest business leaders may also wish to preserve the special access they have when popular organizations are excluded. In addition, markets and political liberalization encourage greater differentiation within the business sector. Business has never spoken with one voice. Conflicts result from differences in size, markets, interests, level of competitiveness, and economic sector. But as politics becomes more competitive, the voices rising from the business community increase in number and volume. Business leaders offer their views on major legislation, the state of the economy, and political events. And one can find business organizations supporting diverse points of view, with some opposing neoliberal policies.
The largest companies and their associations enjoy the advantages of personal contact with the president. In private meetings they lobby for preservation of their monopolies in telecommunications, banking, television, transportation, and manufacturing. At one 1994 dinner Salinas asked a handful of wealthy businessmen to contribute $25 million each to finance the PRI campaign-and they readily agreed. This U.S.-style personal contact was also used by Fox throughout his candidacy. Party affiliation is nearly irrelevant to this brand of influence.
Small businesses; do not have such access. Still, like labor and peasants, they adopted diverse responses to the challenge of political opening. Some, organized mostly with the traditionalist CANACINTRA, opted for clinging to remaining state privileges and protection. Others broke away to support the PAN. Still others (like the National Association of Transformation Industries, ANIT) backed the leftist PRD. By contributing money and leadership, business has contributed to political competition. In sum, though busi4ess has enjoyed more autonomy and influence than labor or peasants; it demonstrates the same trends toward diversity and independence, contributing to and benefiting from rising competition, but also sometimes attempting to block competition and hold on to privileged access to power. The difference, as Chapter 4 discusses, is that top business groups wield far more powerful weapons.
ELECTORAL POLITICS
THE EMERGING ELECTORAL SYSTEM
Though the rising participation of business, labor, peasants, and civil society organizations alone makes for increasingly competitive politics, participation must also find expression within an electoral system in order to meet the definition of political democracy. By the 2000 presidential election the PRI faced significant electoral competition in all regions of Mexico, due in part to a reformed electoral system that does a better job of establishing more equal conditions for all parties and providing greater protection against fraud. Without this system alternation in power might well have been postponed a few more years.
In the past Mexico's electoral system protected the PRI and guaranteed a monotonous succession of electoral victories. With few exceptions (at the municipal level) PRI candidates won every election well into the 1980S. Not until 1989-sixty years after the foundation of the PRI-did an opposition candidate win an election for governor. Not until 1997 did the PRI win less than a majority of federal congressional seats. And not until 2000 did the PRI lose the presidency. During this period Mexico could boast an enviable record of unbroken elections with participation by at least two parties, outlasting not only every other Latin American nation but also France, Germany, Italy, and Japan. Elections could take place so regularly in part because they were so safe and predictable. By permitting opponents a limited voice, the regime lured them into staying inside legal channels. Yet by guaranteeing PRI victories, it discouraged the polarizing competition that characterized Mexico during most of its first century of independence.
Regular elections were functional in other ways.' In the context of prohibitions against reelection, elections forced constant turnover despite the PRI's monopoly on power. An ambitious politician who lost one round could hope for better luck soon. Elections gave the PRI a way to renew its legitimacy as the heir of the revolution. In fact, the PRI often cheated to increase its vote even when it won, in order to make its position look less vulnerable and ratify its status as the party of all Mexicans. Yet at the same time the PRI was so concerned with maintaining at least a token opposition that it subsidized the smallest parties and sponsored electoral reforms when discouraged opposition leaders threatened to quit. Such reforms were not intended to let opposition parties threaten the PRI, just keep them in the game by offering incentives for participation and sanctions for nonparticipation.
Thus the Mexican electoral system at the peak of PRI power rested on several key principles. First, it imposed restrictions on the number and kind of parties that got legal recognition.32 The PRI controlled the institutions that decided who would get registry. Second, electoral laws guaranteed overrepresentation of the largest party. This feature gave the PRI a bigger share of seats in the Congress than its share of the national vote.
Third, electoral laws perpetuated the PRI's financial and media advantages. When government subsidies for all parties went into effect in the 1970S, for example, the total subsidy was divided according to the share of each party in the previous election. If the PRI got 70-80 percent of the vote, it also got 70-80 percent of government financing. The PRI thus kept its lopsided advantage and got taxpayer money to pay for it.
Finally, electoral laws guaranteed PRI control of the institutions that administered elections. This gave the PRI the ability, when necessary, to cheat and get away with it. The Federal Election Commission was a division of the Ministry of Government (Gobernación), run by a presidential appointee with a governing board controlled by a majority of PRI-nominated representatives. Electoral results were evaluated not by an independent court, but by "self-qualification": candidates who got "victory" certificates from the commission voted to decide whether their own election was legal! Naturally, they usually decided it was.
This system adapted constantly to opposition pressures for more opportunities. In the early 1960S PAN threats to withdraw from elections led to the creation of minority seats in Congress. In 1977 the government took more significant steps, giving legal registration to the Communist Party and improving competitive conditions for the opposition, such as limited access to mass media. Mass media remained almost completely controlled by the PRI until the late I980S, as the next chapter discusses, though the issue remained on the agenda.
In addition, the 1977 reform created one hundred new seats in the Congress, saved for minority parties and allocated in proportion to each party's share of the vote. The 1977 law kept in place the existing system of three hundred winner-take-all districts, in order to give the PRI a secure base of at least 5 percent of seats, but proportional representation seats opened up access for the opposition. Later reforms expanded the areas subject to proportional representation. In 1986 the number of proportional representation seats in the Chamber of Deputies increased to two hundred. Reforms in the I99OS doubled the size of the Senate, with additional seats allocated according to a complicated but more proportional formula.
Perhaps the most critical change involved a gradual loosening of ties between the PRI and the institutions that administer elections. The 1988 presidential election appears in retrospect as a turning point. In that year Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and several other prominent PRI leaders demanded compassion for victims of the economic crisis, changes in neoliberal policy, and more competitive selection of the next PRI presidential candidate. When their demands were rejected, they left the PRI to support the presidential candidacy of Cárdenas. He was unexpectedly successful. Sunk in economic crisis for seven long years, many Mexican voters turned out to vote for the son of Mexico's most popular president. As early returns came in, it became clear that the PRI would lose badly to Cárdenas in the capital. Believing that the solid PRI rural vote would make up for Mexico City, top PRI officials ordered a crash of the computerized counting system to delay announcement of the results. But taking nothing for granted, they also worked feverishly to ensure that their candidate would win by inflating voting counts and burning thousands of ballots. Such evidence gave credence to Cárdenas's claim that he won the election. Certainly, Salinas won less of the vote than he claimed.
Thus Salinas took office amid vast skepticism about his right to govern. As a result, one of his first priorities was to make elections more credible. He created a new electoral registry, an electoral institute, and a system of electoral courts. Like other PRI reformers, Salinas did not intend to hurt the PRI. Taken one by one, his reforms seemed a small price to pay for credibility. Yet over time they added up. Ironically, the PRI's need to cheat increased (due to volatile economic performance and a more independent civil society) precisely as reforms made cheating more difficult. The PRI's grudging acceptance of reform reflected constant pressure from civil-society and parties. Moreover, as markets opened, international actors began to pay more attention to Mexican elections. The PRI began to lose its ability to control the pace and content of political opening. The electoral registry was gradually upgraded to include a voter identification card with a picture, signature, and thumbprint and was subjected to outside audits. Electoral courts were given more power. And the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) was finally made independent of the Ministry of Government and political parties. Citizen councilors who cannot belong to any party constitute its governing board. These institutions deepened public trust that the vote is fairly counted and discouraged sore losers from trying to cheat. This was a major achievement in the struggle for democracy.
Nevertheless, much remains to be done to improve election administration, especially for state and local elections. Even alternation at the presidential level did not resolve these problems. Despite the historic July 2 election, local races for governor (in Tabasco and Jalisco) subsequently unraveled amid charges of fraud and unfair practices. While the new electoral courts remained a bright spot, it is clear that little consensus exists about how to harmonize the often diverse local rules and systems of administration with national standards.
THE MAJOR POLITICAL PARTIES
As confidence in electoral institutions grew, political parties had to adjust to the reality of electoral competition. Once it did not matter who parties chose as candidates, or how candidates campaigned. The outcome-PRI victory-was a foregone conclusion. Voters were bound by habit, and when needed, as Fidel Velázquez fondly promised, the PRI machine could deliver "110 percent" support to candidates. But no longer. Instead, an increasingly independent electorate votes for whichever party or candidate seems best in a given election. Decisions about candidates and campaign strategies can mean the difference between winning and losing. Elections have become increasingly centered on candidates rather than parties, and slick media campaigns-sometimes produced by hired U.S. campaign consultants such as James Carville or Dick Morris-overshadow the traditional town-by-town rallies. Candidates adjust their platform to attract new voters. Candidates named Vicente, Francisco, and Cuauhtémoc increasingly behave like candidates with names such as Al or George. In short, the behavior of Mexican parties has begun to demonstrate many features of normalization-both good and bad.
Partido Revolucionario Institutional (PRI). The PRI initially responded to rising competition by trying to control the pace and direction of change. While agreeing to some reforms, the PRI built in safeguards to protect its position. Yet as traditional tools to prevent challenges began to work less affectively' the PRI increasingly reacted to events more than channeling and controlling them.40 Erosion of PRI control over elections makes cheating more costly: cheaters are likely to get caught, and if caught, are likely to face an organized protest; protests, in turn, may provide potential stock market volatility. Although resources for co-optation remained as long as the PRI controlled the executive branch, the need to maintain a balanced budget limits the size of the pot. A rising number of demands from civil society stretch the state's slimmer resources. And a freer media means less success in keeping internal government problems from becoming public knowledge. Thus the balance of power shifted. Typical for democratic politics, such patterns are decidedly novel for modern Mexico.
Part of the PRI's problem in adapting to competition is its original design: not to compete for power by seeking electoral support but to limit and distribute it among a circle of elites. Thus efforts to adapt the party, to reorient it outward, have sharpened internal conflict among elites. For example, who should run campaigns? Most parties experience conflict over campaign control between candidates and party leaders. In the PRI this is more complicated. Unions and peasant organizations were traditionally responsible for mobilizing voter attendance at the polls and campaign rallies. Rallies were not intended to win over voters (most of whom had been coerced or bribed to attend) but to symbolically celebrate PRI unity; they did not typically attract uncommitted voters. How could the PRI mobilize and reach new voters when its traditional base began to erode? When Salinas tried to supplement PRI unions with a mobilizational structure organized around electoral districts, he ran into strong opposition from unions.
Still trickier is the question of how to select appealing candidates. One approach was to require that presidential candidates have electoral experience; this I996 rule resulted mostly in a rush by technocrats to run for a safe seat (from which they could aspire to the presidency) and thus increased conflict in the short term between technocrats and traditional politicians who sought those nominations. Another-approach involved adopting democratic methods like conventions or primaries to select candidates with popular support. Such reforms broke the PRI tradition of selection, which had been designed to limit conflict and the risk of rupture among the elite.
The Mexican president historically acted as de facto head of the party, with the ability to appoint and fire national committee members, nominate candidates (especially his own successor), and shape the party's overall platform during his term. Whether democratic methods select "better" candidates than the traditional method, they surely increase conflict within the PRI. Controlling party nominations gave Mexican presidents leverage to ensure the personal loyalty and public obedience of congressional deputies, not to mention governors and-the appointed regent of Mexico City. In contrast, primary campaigns involve public confrontations between party members and their supporters, bringing any conflicts out into the open and sometimes-as negative campaigning spreads-making them worse. Some disappointed candidates left the PRI to try their luck in another party. Particularly for the PRD, this was the main source of victorious gubernatorial candidates. Debates over the effect of primaries thus question the political risks. Do primaries improve the PRI's appeal or divide the party and weaken it? Do primaries enhance popular control or make it easier for traditional politicians to take power from the technocrats?
Despite these concerns, pressures for democratic opening within the PRI grew as other parties moved toward such methods and denounced the PRI for failing to do so. During his own campaign Zedillo promised that he would not interfere in the selection of his successor-a promise he largely kept. The PRI's presidential candidate in 2000 was elected in a broad national primary. Although the other internal candidates accused the president of favoring the winning candidate, the fact that the candidate had to endure an open competition marked a historic departure from the secretive selections of the past and enhanced the legitimacy of his candidacy. On the negative side sly jibes at his credentials by fellow party members brought some of the PRI's dirty linen into the open, which was noted enthusiastically by other parties. The result of the national election demonstrated conclusively that primaries are far from guaranteeing the selection of successful candidates.
In addition to running better campaigns and selecting better candidates, the PRI has worked to improve its image. Here too there have been adjustment problems. For example, the PRI historically used material incentives-a bridge, an electrification project-to bolster support. The irony is that just as declining party loyalties increased the PRI's need to use such material incentives, the resources available to buy support decreased. So the style had to change. After 1988, Salinas created the National Solidarity Program to win back voters. Solidarity took over most social spending (outside health and education), focusing on visible public works, such as roads. The distribution of benefits was concentrated around election time. One difference between Solidarity and previous social spending programs was the intensity of the effort to publicize and take political advantage of public spending through a television advertising campaign. Even people who were not-or did not know they were-beneficiaries of Solidarity were treated to this effort to link Salinas, the PRI, and social spending.
In the process, however, the PRI took heat from critics who charged that no party should use public tax money to fund electoral appeals. This exemplifies a broader problem: the PRI's traditional reliance on the state had mixed effects under competitive conditions. On the one hand, association with the state gave the PRI clear advantages, including the ability to offer state assistance as a reward for support. On the other hand, association with the state made the PRI publicly responsible for decisions over which it had little control. Public officials, not party leaders, decided what policies to adopt. Even worse, successive presidents expected the PRI to support unpopular legislation in Congress, including tax raises. This hurt the PRI's popularity and created increasing tensions between the party and government. Postelectoral analyses by PRI leaders blamed Zedillo's use of the party to approve unpopular policies (as well as his perceived lack of enthusiasm for using public spending to help the campaign) for the party's defeat and pledged to obey his directions "not one minute more."
Finally, the PRI's efforts today to appeal to voters encounter a paradox. If they campaign on the neoliberal reforms of recent presidents, they may offend the traditional bases of a party whose name still includes the word "revolutionary." True, the PRI always demonstrated pragmatism and flexibility. Yet neoliberal reforms are a stretch even for a broad definition of "institutionalized revolution." Popular revolutionary themes- like land reform, support for the working class, and nationalism-have been difficult to use electorally while PRI governments remained committed to ending land reform, holding down wages, and integrating economically with the United States. Ideological retooling has provoked internal discontent and even ruptures-most notably, the I988 split that ended in the formation of the PRD. The catastrophic defeat in 2000 is sure to provoke further splits. As a large party, the PRI always had internal ideological divisions. But divisions once discreetly covered over now make the headlines of national newspapers. Aspiring politicians denied candidacies seek opportunities in other parties where once they would have fumed in silence, waiting their turn.
As in the case of unions, not all priistas have responded to rising uncertainly in ways compatible with democracy. Some factions turn to intimidation of opponents-violating the most basic expectations of democratic competition. Hundreds of local PRD activists were murdered between I989 and 2000. Occasional episodes of electoral fraud persist today, particularly in remote areas. This is another example of a trade-off created by the rise of competition. While the PRI gained in national prestige by obeying the rules, local candidates paid the price. So local priistas often defied national party commands to accept losses.
Its loss of the presidency compounds these difficulties. Yet the PRI remains a potentially formidable competitor. Even after defeat on July 2, 2000, the PRI continued to control nearly two-thirds of the state governments. It won more seats in the 2000-03 legislature than any other single party (though fewer than the PAN-led electoral coalition). Most local governments remained in PRI hands. Status as an "opposition" party, at least in terms of presidential policy, may even set the PRI free as a party to defend long neglected popular demands and recover some of its old historical banners, particularly if the PRD fails to capitalize on this opportunity. If the PRI can overcome its internal problems, it might even survive alternation in power. The PRI still enjoys advantages in terms of financial resources (though less than before), position in state institutions (though radically diminished), and alliances with social organizations (though eroding). Voters know more about the PRI than any other party, and though much of it is not appealing, some of it is, like the PRI's record of stability with growth. Thus the PRI's situation illustrates the weight of the past noted at the outset of this chapter.
Partido Acción National (PAN). The growth of political competition has also affected Mexico's oldest opposition party, the conservative National Action Party. However, where the PRI struggles to cope with a shrinking base, the PAN has confronted a different problem: how to cope with success. It must accommodate a rapidly expanding membership as well as suddenly increased demands on its administrative capacity. Adjusting to competition - even when one is successful - is no easy matter.
Until the late I970S, the PAN functioned within the Mexican political system as a small group of vocal critics. It was founded in I939 by middle-class lawyers and businessmen with links to Catholic action groups. They represented the reaction against populist strands in the postrevolutionary regime, particularly the mass-oriented reforms of Cárdenas and the concentration of power in the state that these policies implied. At its creation the PAN assumed a more educational than electoral role. It did not expect to win elections but participated in them as a forum to call for limitations on presidential and PRI power, curbs on corruption, formal political democracy, and the rule of law. Socially, the PAN attacked the secular reforms of postrevolutionary presidents that tended to reduce the power of the Catholic Church, including limitations on parochial schools and the political rights of priests. The PAN also supported conservative family values, such as prohibitions against abortion. In the economic realm the PAN opposed key elements of the policies followed by most postrevolutionary presidents. It defended private property and a smaller role for the state in economic activity. It therefore criticized land redistribution and state preferences for ejidos (collective property). PAN leaders were among the earliest to endorse free trade. The PAN would later argue with justification that PRI neoliberal reforms stole the PAN's historical platform. These legal, social, and economic positions explain why many in the United States have seen the PAN as a close counterpart of the Republican Party.
Yet despite its importance as the most independent and critical opposition party, the PAN did not initially pose an electoral threat. Attractive mostly to a small sector of the middle class and business, it developed strength only in the big cities of a few states and in the wealthier northern tier. It got more votes than other opposition parties because other parties were so weak, not because it had a solid mass base. Until 1979 the PAN had won only a handful of congressional seats and scattered municipal victories. In the 1980S, however, the PAN began to reverse both its historical marginality and its confrontational relationship with the PRI. These trends were connected to broader changes in Mexico, such as the leap into politics by disgruntled business leaders. As Mexicans became disconnected from the PRI, they were available to opposition parties. As the PRI moved decisively toward the free-market principles historically defended by the PAN, ideological convergence made it easier for the PRI to accept PAN victories in local elections-and easier for the PAN to construct tactical alliances with the neoliberal PRI. This tendency was encouraged by the Left's electoral rise after 1988, which the PAN viewed with alarm. Moreover, the PRI lacked a two-thirds majority in Congress that is required to modify the Constitution after 1988; between 1997 and 2000 the PRI lacked even a legislative majority. Since the Left generally opposed PRI policy, the PRI developed a closer partnership with the PAN to pass basic legislation, such as the budget.
Yet ideological convergence carries costs as well. First, the PAN's cozy relationship with the PRI sometimes hurt it. Second, the PAN had to distinguish itself electorally from a PRI that increasingly shared its traditional economic platform. This is one of the challenges produced by rising competition. If a strategy or theme sells, other parties imitate it. Campaigning on social issues like support for the church helps among conservatives, but the PAN has been burned by its association with moralistic policies to regulate the length of miniskirts or the "exposure" of women in advertising.46 Campaigning on the issue of political reform can be harder when one must dispute with another opposition party- the PRD-the title of "most pro-democratic." One of the PAN's strongest planks-effective and honest administration-has not always been borne out by the performance of its mayors; as democratization brings non-PRI rule, it also brings records voters can judge. Thus ideological adaptation has been a problem for the PAN. In 2000 the primary strategy of the successful Fox campaign was to downplay ideology (often by promising nearly contradictory things to different groups) and concentrate on portraying Fox as the candidate of change, the candidate capable of beating the PRI. In the end 66 percent of those who voted for "change" cast their ballots for Vicente Fox.
This strategy made some within the PAN uncomfortable. Was Fox really a true-blue panista, or was his ideological profile dangerously confused? As in the PRI, attempts to shift ideological position to appeal to voters can contribute to internal conflict. Some longtime members feel alienated by what they see as the betrayal of traditional PAN philosophy; other members simply disagree about how to appeal to voters. This causes conflict within the PAN, as does the PAN's explosive membership growth. There is also a circular relationship between electoral success, membership growth, and internal conflict. The entry of charismatic leaders in the early I980S contributed to electoral success-and electoral success inspired membership growth. But many new entrants lacked a clear understanding of PAN ideology, and some were motivated almost exclusively by the desire for power. As a nonelectoral party, the PAN could afford the luxury of screening members for loyalty and ideological "purity," but to win elections, better candidates must beat pure but boring ones in internal battles. Thus, as the internal diversity of the party increased, so have conflicts. This may be another sign of democratic normalization.47
Another challenge for the PAN in adapting to competition has been the development of a more effective party organization. A loose and unprofessional party structure worked well for a small party that did not expect to win elections put was inadequate to organize electoral campaigns in hundreds ,of competitive districts. The PAN has had to build a permanent and professional infrastructure outside its historical strongholds. And it has had to shift from the mostly symbolic and educational campaigns of the past to increasingly sophisticated and complex media strategies. Since the I980S, the PAN has grown from a small elite party with few electoral pretensions to a party that believes it can and should take power. One telling example of this change: where an aloof PAN leadership once refused government subsidies on the grounds that it might compromise the party's independence, PAN leaders of the I99OS not only accepted subsidies (to better compete with parties that take them) but saw themselves as responsible for maintaining a stable national government by supporting PRI initiatives in Congress. With the 2000 election the PAN assumed responsibility for the executive branch as well as leadership in the legislature. Thus the Mexican political system takes another step toward normalization, developing a genuine party system in which power is shared among actors.
The PAN's rise illustrates two other themes of this chapter. First, rising competition in one arena leads to rising competition in others. Much as the PAN might like to, it cannot take full credit for its success. The PAN's rise is fueled by some of the same factors responsible for the growth of political competition in a variety of arenas, as well as the growth of competition on the Left. The PAN has in turn contributed significantly to political opportunities for other actors. Its constant pressure and pragmatic adaptation to more competitive conditions have played a key role in the democratization process. Second, democratization imposes tradeoffs on the PAN. Panistas differ on what trade-offs should be accepted. Their willingness to accept some trade-offs-for example, to cooperate with the PRI in matters ranging from electoral reform to economic policy-stabilized the transition considerably. Its assumption of the presidency is a historic achievement but also confronts the party with unprecedented challenges. The PAN will take the blame as well as the credit for whatever President Fox might do, or leave undone. And tradeoffs will undoubtedly arise in the course of this challenge.
Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD). The third major political party is also the newest. The PRD grew out of an extraordinarily diverse coalition of forces that supported the presidential candidacy of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. It got registry as a political party only in 1989. The PRD's birth thus coincides roughly with the period of increased political competition; indeed, it contributed substantially to that trend. However, in part because of its late emergence, the PRD has struggled more than the PAN or the PRI with the challenges of competition. The PRD has a less developed ideological identity, a less stable social base, more internal divisions, and bore the brunt of PRI efforts to intimidate the opposition from 1988 through 1994. Only in the 1997 congressional election, nearly ten years after the party's emergence, did the PRD begin to approach the level of popular support that its initial appearance promised-and this level of support proved short-lived, as the party lost nearly 40 percent of its 1997 voters in 2000. The PRD is on many levels a paradox: it is Mexico's first strong leftist party, which arose precisely as leftist and communist parties were declining around the world; it is Mexico's most openly democratic party, which was primarily constructed around the personality of a single leader; and it is Mexico's newest party, which gained strength largely by evoking the symbols, ideologies, and leaders of the past.
In contrast to the PAN, which began as an ideologically focused group of elites with few electoral expectations, the PRD began as a large and ideologically incoherent mass movement loosely tied to the electoral hopes of Cárdenas. Prior to 1987, the Mexican Left consisted of several small parties, with less than 6 percent of the vote total. The main leftist party was the Mexican Socialist Party (PMS), the result of a series of mergers that included remnants of the Communist Party as well as other leftist groups. However, constant mergers and lack of a popular leader handicapped the Left in its search for electoral support. Cárdenas offered an immediate solution to this problem. The Cárdenas campaign ignited the imagination of the millions who were angry over the extended economic crisis and the PRI's authoritarian rule. For decades the PRI had largely neutralized leftist parties with a mix of nationalist-revolutionary claims and a crafty parceling out of material benefits from the expanding economy. Its turn to the right in economic policy made nationalist-revolutionary claims more difficult, while state budget cuts seemed symbolic of the PRI's apparent indifference to widespread economic hardship. Cárdenas symbolized Mexican nationalism and service to the masses, mostly because of identification with his father, Lázaro. In the end Cárdenas won at least 31 percent of the vote-the most recognized for an opposition presidential candidate at that point in history.
When Cárdenas failed to gain official recognition as the winner of the election, he called for a new political party to replace his loosely organized electoral coalition. The PMS gave up its independent registry to create the PRD with ex-priístas and other groups that supported Cárdenas. The result was an enormously diverse party, with former communists, socialists, Trotskyists, priistas, Maoists, and social movement activists- many of them former rivals who suddenly had to get along. The first job was to figure out what the PRD stood for-besides Cárdenas for president. At the PRD's emergence in I989, leftist parties around the world were suffering the trauma of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the spread of free-market policies. Established leftist parties have had trouble adjusting. The PRD, in addition, had no loyal voter base and no brand-name recognition. So it fell back on Cárdenas as a central symbol of unity; more than ten years later it had yet to overcome this dependence. The party's electoral support from 1988 through 2000 strongly reflected the fortunes of its principal, and perennial, candidate.
Nevertheless, within this context the PRD shows the same effects of competitive pressure as other parties: ideological modification, organizational restructuring, and efforts to select more popular candidates. Facing their main competition from conservative parties, PRD candidates toned down their leftist rhetoric, emphasizing instead defense of democratic rights and popular living standards. In order to select popular candidates, the PRD chose a mixed approach-a combination of primaries and seats apportioned through quotas (for example, to women or to leaders of popular movements). Traditional methods of campaigning were augmented by more sophisticated media campaigns, aided by a I996 electoral reform that gave the opposition more money and media access.50
As in the case of the PAN, we see the reinforcing effects of rising competition but also persisting trade-offs. On the one hand, the PRD benefited from the PAN's rise. Electoral reform in I996 depended on the PAN's strong position in the Congress. In addition, as PAN candidates posed a more serious threat, PRD candidates became more acceptable to the PRI as a way of minimizing PAN support. On the other hand, democratization imposes hard choices. As in the PAN and the PRI, internal elections in the PRD can exacerbate internal divisions. Excessive ideological flexibility can undermine common party identity as well as cooperation among party members in government. When leaders are selected by regional primaries, they may have relatively little iii common ideologically, just as Congress members in the United States from the same party do not always share common goals.
More than any other party, the PRD has been shaped by political competition. Whereas both the PAN and the PRI formed during noncompetitive periods and adjusted gradually to rising competition, the PRD's evolution was influenced by the threat of competitive elimination. Adjustment problems continue to plague the PRD. In 2000 it had yet to develop a strong ideological profile independent of the personality of Cárdenas.51 Nevertheless, the PRD survived Mexico's increasingly competitive political environment longer than pundits first expected. Despite its poor showing in 2000, the PRD continues to contribute to ídeological diversity, offering a modest alternative to the neoliberal program of the PAN and the PRI. The complex strategic environment of the zooo-o3 Congress will offer many challenges to all parties, giving even relatively small party groups the opportunity to participate in multiple and shifting coalitions. Such strategic incentives are more characteristic of party systems in democratic nations than of Mexico's one-party past and thus are another indication of normalization.
Normalization is reflected in the electorate in at least two specific ways. First, not only has alternation in power provided the ultimate test of competitiveness at the national level, but on a microlevel competitiveness affects nearly every electoral district. Even during its brief recovery in 199I, the PRI did not again reach the level of support it routinely won in its prime (1946-76). By 1997 the PRI held at least a 4O percent advantage in just 1 percent of districts, compared with 89 percent of districts in 1967 and 7O percent after the 1977 electoral reform. Small parties declined in importance, and the two major alternatives to the PRI gained strength (see Table I). The PRI, the PAN, and the PRD together controlled some 97 percent of congressional seats in the 1997-2000 Congress, and 94 percent of the 2000-03 Congress. The existence of a viable Right, Center, and Left brings the Mexican party system toward the common pattern of right-left divisions in many democracies.
A second point of convergence with advanced industrial democracies is the decline in party identification, leaving a more volatile voting population. Where voters once identified with the ruling party, fewer than half of all Mexicans, identified with any party at all by the 2000 election. The positive side of' volatility is that it gives all parties a chance to win the next election if they can appeal to the uncommitted. As the president of the PRD remarked days after the 1997 election, "The great lesson of the election [is that] the citizens do not give unconditional support; no one has title to the votes. If we do a good job of governing and as a party we represent the people with dignity we will continue to be successful; if not, we will fail." This, of course, is one of the expected benefits of competition: motivating parties to respond to voter concerns in order to gain a competitive advantage. The negative side of increased volatility is that it may lead to demagogic and personality-based politics, undermine party discipline and coherence, and limit voter ability to hold parties accountable across elections.
Yet at the analytical level differences with established democracies remain alongside increasing similarities. The diminishing incidence of electoral fraud has made it possible for analysts to examine voting behavior in Mexico using such techniques as statistical models and public opinion polls. Even in 1988 the use of such methods was considered inappropriate in Mexico because the results were invented rather than real. They have since become normal parts of Mexican electoral analysis, used by scholars, newspapers, and parties. However, in contrast to
TABLE I. ELECTORAL SUPPORT AND
LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATION, I979 - 2000
Percentage of Congressional Vote
Percentage of Congressional Seats
PRI PAN Left b Other PRI PAN Left P Other
1979 74.0 11.5 5.3' 9.1 74.0 10.8 4.5 10.8
1982 69.3 17.5 5,9d 7,3 74.5 12.8 4.3 8.3
985 68.1 16.3 6.3' 9.2 72.3 10.3 6.0 1 1.5
988 51.1 18.0 29.óf 1.3 52.0 20.2 27.8f -
1991 61.5 17.7 8.9g 12.0 64.0 17.8 8.2 10.0
1994 50.3 25.8 16.7h 7.2 60.0 23.8 14.2 2.0
1997 39.1 26.6 25.7 8.5 47.8 24.2 25.0 3.0
2000 38.0 39.4i 19.2i 3,3 41.8 44.ói 13.ói 0,0
SOURCES: IFE 1 991, 1991 b" 1994"1 997, and 2000; Gómez Tagle 1990; Cuellar and Martine 1994.
a For comparability, the congressional vote is used for all
years, including presidential election
years (1982,1988,1994, 2000). Figures reflect the percentage of
the valid vote and may not total to
100 percent because of rounding and the omission of non registered
candidates' votes
b "Left" refers to the independent Left, not the "parastatal"
parties allied to the PRI.
Vote of the Mexican Communist Party (PCM).
d Votes of the Unified Mexican Socialist Party (PSUM), the Trotskyist
Revolutionary Workers
Party (1..3 percent), and the Social Demacratic Party (0.6 percent).
e Votes of the PSUM (3.4 percent), the Revolutionary Workers Party
1.3 percent), and the
Mexican Workers Party (0.6 percent).
t Vote/"ats of the Cárdenas coalition plus the Revolutionary
Workers Party (o.6 percent). Only
the Mexican Socialist Party (4.5 percent) participated in the
PRD.
R Vote of the PRD (8.3 percent) plus the Revolutionary Workers
Party (0.6 percent).
h Vote of the PRD
I Vote/seats of the Alianza por el Cambio, including the PAN
and, the Green Ecological Party
(PVEM), 4~.6 percent of the "seats held by the PAN.
j Vote/=ats of the Alianza par México, including the PRD,
the Workers' Party (PT) the Social
Alliance Party (PAS), the Nationalistic ¿ Society, the
Convergence for Demacracy. ~o.4 percent of the
seats held by the PRD.
most consolidated democracies, a stable socioeconomic basis (using factors like education, income, or gender to explain party choice) has yet to emerge across elections. To the extent that patterns exist, PAN voters tend to be urban, young, educated, and well-to-do; PRI voters are mostly rural and less educated. The vote of the Left has varied more, sometimes picking up the rural tone of the PRI vote but also doing well in urban areas such as Mexico City. Evaluations of government performance seem to explain some voting behavior: protesting poor PRI management, voters have switched from the Right (PAN) to the Left (PRD) of the ideological spectrum and back again, with little apparent attention to the ideological differences between them. Moreover, the weight of the past is evident. Most parties continue to be strongest in those regions where historically they developed strength. With the exception of the Valley of Mexico where multiparty competition is intense, most Mexican regions have typically displayed two-party competition, pitting the PRI against the PAN in some areas and against the PRD in others. Where the PAN had support, the PRD usually made less headway and vice versa, with no cases matching the PAN against the PRD, at least through the 2000 election. This pattern tended to slow- though not prevent-the development of a national threat to the PRI. That the PAN and the PRD rarely negotiated unified candidacies reflects another factor that long favored PRI survival: by staking out the center, the PRI split the anti-PRI vote on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Both the PRD and the PAN are closer in critical ideological ways to the PRI than to each other. On economic policy it is easier for the PAN to support the PRI than the PRD. On social policy it is easier for the PRD to support the PRI than the PAN. This pattern has blocked most past efforts to come up with anti-PRI coalitions. The PAN and the PRD thus split the anti-PRI vote, often leaving the PRI with the most votes, even when less than a majority.
One difference in electoral behavior in the 2000 election was the appearance of more ticket-splitting: about a fourth of those who voted for the PRD for Congress chose another party's presidential candidate- in most cases, Fox. Three (or more) party systems often lead to the election of executives with less than a majority of the vote, as well as less than a majority of their respective legislature. But even this kind of Pyrrhic victory eluded the PRI in 2000. Political competition has affected the PRl's traditional rural base as well as the "modern" sectors in Mexico's internationalizing economy. Electoral campaigns will require more effort and more appealing candidates than in the past.
STATE INSTITUTI6~S AND ACTORS
These changing patterns of competition have immediate implications for governance in Mexico. We first consider the reactions of legislatures and then turn to the reactions of nonelected actors, such as the military. Here too we see that historically mute actors-and particularly the legislature-have developed newly vigorous voices.
DEVELOPING CHECKS AND BALANCES
One of the key changes in the governmental process is the development
of more effective checks and balances among the different branches
of government. The Mexican Constitution has long imitated the
U.S. model in its basic structure: federal, republican, with a
bicameral Congress and
a president. However, any resemblance remained mostly on the surface. As in much of Latin America, the legislative branch in Mexico had little power. The Mexican Constitution assigns to the president broad patronage powers with little congressional oversight. The president can propose laws and use a line-item veto (allowing him to return part of a law to the Congress).59 Some of these provisions go beyond what the U.S. Constitution-designed to prevent presidential authority from overwhelming the other branches-would allow.
Yet the Mexican legislature's conversion into a presidential puppet resulted less from constitutional prerogatives than from the informal characteristics of the party system. Balancing the Constitution's grants to presidents have been other provisions that limit his power.60 Rather, it was the president's status as de facto head of the PRI-with veto power over candidate selection-that most ensured the submissiveness of PRI legislators. Because the PRI in turn controlled the Congress, Congress rubber-stamped presidential initiatives with minimal debate. Its opinion mattered so little that interest groups in Mexico rarely bothered to lobby members of Congress, preferring to establish direct contact with federal agencies or, if possible, the president. In part, for these reasons the PRI avoided introducing primaries at the congressional level, even as its presidential candidate endured a primary.6l
The first step toward a more vigorous Congress thus began with a growing opposition presence in that body. The control exercised by PRI presidents over their own legislators became a less secure means of controlling the Congress as the PRI's hold on Congress diminished. Though the overwhelming majority of laws continued to come from the president's office, the rise of competitive politics brought Congress into policy making, both as an agenda setter and as a catalyst of reform. In 1988 the PRI fell below the two-thirds majority of the Congress required to modify Mexico's detailed Constitution. In 1997 the PRI lost even a simple congressional majority. Emboldened opposition parties demanded a share of congressional committee chairs (previously held exclusively by the PRI), money to expand congressional staffs, and a series of audits of executive commissions. The national legislature became an important arena for debate over central issues such as the budget. The president needed help from other parties in order to pass laws. Fortunately for Zedillo the PAN generally supported his economic initiatives-though at the cost of some concessions. Rarely before had legislative pressure forced modification of presidential initiatives.
With the 2000 election the situation became still more complex. The PAN president does not preside over a passive party bench, nor does he control a majority of the legislature. He cannot simply assume, like his PRI predecessors, that Congress will do whatever he wants. Indeed, he cannot even assume that PRI-PAN cooperation will continue under his administration. Freed of presidential interference in internal party matters, PRI legislators will have incentives to strike a more independent path, particularly when it comes to potentially unpopular issues like taxes or the budget. The president's authority increasingly depends on his skills as a negotiator and opinion leader.
At the same time Congress has yet to prove it possesses the ability or the will to act as a check on presidential power. Congress is handicapped by numerous problems. First, it is divided among three large and five small parties. Differences among (and within) parties inhibit cooperation to check presidential power. Second, Congress has pitifully few resources to do its own research on legislative initiatives. In contrast to the U.S. House of Representatives, which employs well over six thousand staff members, not counting the more than three thousand employees of the General Accounting Office, the Congressional Budget Office, or the Library of Congress, the five hundred Mexican members of Congress struggle along with only sixty paid researchers, most of whom leave at the end of each three-year term. And constitutional prohibitions against consecutive reelection make the accumulation of legislative experience difficult.
Greater checks on executive power also pose potential trade-offs, particularly if rising competition results in divided government, in which different parties control (by majority) the executive and legislative branches. This has already occurred! at the local level; the national level (at least from I997 through 2003) features presidents lacking majorities but not facing a legislative majority of another party. In the United States citizens tend to view divided government tolerantly, perhaps because they are confident of the stability of their institutions. In Mexico democratic institutions are not as solid. The few cases of divided government in Mexico have not produced serious conflict, however, though the fact that most divided governments have involved PRI-PAN combinations probably reduced tensions. At the national level PAN support enabled the PRI to pass unpopular parts of the president's economic program, including the budget, a tax increase (which the PAN argued against in electoral campaigns), and a controversial bank rescue plan. Cooperation on economic issues in particular made sense for the PAN and reduced the danger of executive-legislative deadlock. But party discipline and negotiation will become ever more prominent factors in future legislative battles as the PRI-executive link is severed. Still, the consolidation of Congress as an autonomous institution is an integral part of the transition to democracy. Competition within the electoral system has contributed to the emergence of a livelier, more important, and more democratic Congress.
The judicial branch has developed more slowly, in part because it is more insulated from the direct effects of electoral competition. Judges are not popularly elected in Mexico. The pace of judicial reform has also captured less attention than legislative reform. Nevertheless, judicial reform is a key part of democratic accountability. The judiciary upholds the rule of law and is therefore necessary for democratic consolidation. Democracies must replace with predictable systems of rules the unpredictable and discretionary systems used by authoritarian regimes to protect their friends and punish their enemies. When public officials know that judges will not punish them, they feel free to engage in corrupt and repressive behavior. And when citizens know that courts will not punish abuses, they lose faith in those institutions.
Despite its importance, judicial reform has proven difficult for many democratizing countries, including Mexico. The allocation of more resources to training and staff is one advance. Another is reforms to strengthen the legislative oversight of judges. Although the president still nominates judges, nominees to the Mexican Supremé Court face hearings in the Senate and must be approved by a two-thirds vote. Zedillo also created a Judicial Council to monitor the conduct of judges and set their budgets. Finally, the Mexican Supreme Court was given the right to rule on the unconstitutionality of laws. Following the U.S. precedent, judicial review gives Mexico's Supreme Court the potential to check presidential and legislative power.fi4 However, problems remain, especially at the local level, where fed up citizens have resorted to mob justice, including Lynching and beatings of suspects captured in the act, rather than trust courts and especially police to do the job.
NEW FEDERALISM
In addition to checks and balances among the branches of government, many argue that Mexico needs more effective local checks against an overly powerful central government. As Chapter z notes, despite a formally federal system, the Mexican government is highly centralized. The national government controls the lion's share of revenue and has oversight authority over state and local government. And alternation in power alone does not fix these problems. However, the balance of power has begun to shift toward state and local governments. One reason is rising electoral competition.
During the peak period of PRI dominance, central control was enhanced by party ties connecting the president and PRI governors, who owed their positions to presidential approval. Just as a greater number of non-PRI members eroded presidential control over Congress, the growing number of opposition governors (and mayors) eroded presidential power over states. Leading up to the 2000 election, candidates from parties other than the PRI had won election at least once to the governorships of Aguascalientes, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Nayarit, Nuevo Leon, Tlaxcala, Querétaro, and Zacatecas-more than one-third of all Mexican states. More broadly, the trickle of municipal mayorships lost by the PRI increased to a steady stream by the mid-1990s. While the PRI retained 78 percent of mayorships in 1996, the 22 percent controlled by other parties included most of the largest cities. With the election of a PAN president, however, references to "opposition parties" shifted to include PRI (as well as PRD) mayors and governors. President Fox would take office with some two-thirds of Mexican states controlled by parties other than his own.
Decentralization has also resulted in part from the increased influence of the United States-a strong federal system, with powerful state and local governments-and the growing popularity of "decentralization" among international financial institutions such as the World Bank. This pressure tends to reinforce the harmonization between patterns in Mexico and other nations, what we have called normalization. The "smaller state, more market" model favored by these institutions, and by the last three Mexican administrations, tends to encourage less central planning and administration of funds. Finally, pressures for decentralization have come from budgetary constraints. One way to cut the national budget is to give local governments responsibility for services and let them figure out how to fund them. The decentralizing effects of such reforms were more inadvertent than intended but did enhance local responsibility. They also spurred local efforts to develop new sources of funding.
However, municipalities and states remain dependent on the national government for most of their funding and are ultimately constrained in what they can do by their financial limitations. Mexican municipios lag behind municipal governments in other Latin American countries in terms of resources and authority, and revenue falls far short of responsibilities. Limits on independent taxation continue. And even where decentralization results in devolution of power, questions remain about its effects on the prospects for stable democracy. Two principal arguments persist. The first perspective sees decentralization as a positive trend for democracy. Local government may be preferred on democratic grounds. If decisions are made locally, more people have the opportunity to participate, to know elected officials personally, and to communicate with them. In addition, some studies find that opposition local governments tend to challenge presidential power-and that this trend had spread to PRI governments even prior to alternation at the national level. Candidate Fox pledged to continue the decentralizing trend.
The opposing argument suggests that, on the contrary, "during the present phase of the country's political evolution, the subnational political arena will be the principal source of inertia and resistance to democratization, rather than the prime breeding ground for democratic advances." The primary reason is that in the absence of a strong central system enforcing discipline, decentralization may leave government in the hands of local elites who have no intention of governing democratically. The likelihood of this outcome is increased by the uneven quality of civil society in Mexico: While in some areas a vigorous civil society (and opposition parties) may force local elites to become more responsive, vast areas of Mexico lack strong parties or organizations outside the PRI- itself now less capable of constraining local elites. Intimidation by elite-controlled paramilitary forces, murders, torture, and disappearances continue to plague rural Mexico, as local elites accustomed to state protection attempt to protect themselves at the point of a gun. Even without violence local elites often remain in control, since they typically monopolize resources and experiences (such as a good education) helpful in winning the freest election. Finally, it is reasonable to question whether local democracy is meaningful in the absence of sufficient resources. Instead of giving people the power to solve their problems locally, national governments that keep a tight rein on funds may reinforce central control. And problems for which people might other vise demand a national solution can be foisted off on helpless local governments-and thus avoided altogether. This could be a recipe for frustration.
One example of both the possibilities and the limits of local governance is Mexico City. When the Left took over the mayorship of Mexico City in I997, it faced the dismaying problems of deterioration noted in Chapter I, including crime, police corruption, pollution, and serious service gaps (in water, sewage, transportation, and housing). Other problems include underemployment, rape and domestic violence, and a growing number of street children addicted to cheap intoxicants. Beyond the difficulties these problems pose to any government, mayors serve only six years and cannot be reelected. Add to this time constraint the obstacles often faced by local governments in Mexico, especially those controlled by parties excluded from the federal executive: lack of cooperation from federal agencies that control the money, hostile media coverage, and the raised expectations brought by the victory of a candidate promising change. Small wonder that despite some successes, the first democratically elected government in Mexico City disappointed many voters.
Yet Cárdenas's status as mayor of Mexico City was critical to his third presidential campaign. Running Mexico City provided a platform and a national profile. State governments-and Mexico City is the equivalent of a governorship-have become increasingly good springboards for national campaigns. Until 2000 PRI presidential candidates were drawn almost exclusively from the cabinet of the retiring president. But in 2000 all tl7ree major party candidates had served at least one term as governor, and three of the four candidates in the PRI's internal primary were governors or ex-governors. This is not a conscious imitation of U.S. politics but reflects similar imperatives. U.S. governors make good candidates for the presidency because such positions create a strong local base, an administrative record, and the chance to build a reputation apart from the flock of Congress members. Moreover, political opening has led local politicians of all parties to demand more from the national government in terms of funding, services, and autonomy to modify laws. While the balance of power still favors the center, the trend is moving toward state and local governments.
-
THE CHANGING MILITARY ROLE
Finally, we consider the role of the military in a competitive political system. Democracy is not simply about building up alternative sources of power to balance Mexico's strong president; indeed, building up military power could endanger democratic consolidation. As Mexican exceptionalism erodes in a pro-democratic sense, it may also erode in a more troubling way, with the rise of a politicized military bringing Mexico closer to the historical pattern of military involvement in other Latin American countries. Unlike many Latin American militaries the Mexican military did not get involved in politics but rather demonstrated extraordinary loyalty to civilian rule. The military focused primarily on limited external goals (like protecting the southern border during the Central American wars of the 1980s) or carrying out humanitarian missions (like disaster relief). Particularly after its involvement in the repression of students in 1968, the army tried to avoid any role in public policing.
In the past fifteen years, however, it has become increasingly difficult for the army to stay out of domestic policing. Two trends have undermined the army's quiet neutrality: the emergence of guerrilla forces and the rise of drug trafficking. The army has become involved in meeting both threats. In large part as a result of these activities, the size and budget of the armed forces-once famously low compared with other Latin American nations-doubled in the 1990s over its level a decade earlier. The assumption of those tasks puts political pressure on the armed forces. Its antidrug efforts expose the army to the corrupting influences long evident in branches of the Mexican police. Several top generals, including Mexico's former drug czar (General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo), have been arrested and charged with taking drug money. This is a potentially serious problem, which Chapter 7 discusses in more depth.
The army's role in countering guerrilla activities may also prove dangerous. Fighting guerrillas requires the army to gather intelligence on the political activities of citizens in guerrilla zones, a task which in the rest of Latin America has often preceded army decisions to eliminate "threats" through a campaign of terror, arbitrary arrests, and torture. It means that the army most often fires on Mexicans rather than on foreign enemies. Public demonstrations have demanded the army's withdrawal from guerrilla zones and expose it to popular censure. Finally, because finding a permanent solution to guerrilla threats means addressing the underlying political problems which lead to such activity, the army may be tempted to get involved in policy decisions, a problematic development for democracy.
Nevertheless, there are few indications that military subordination to civilian authorities has been seriously compromised as yet. Corrupt generals can be arrested and punished. Military leaders did not take a major role in the public debate over government response to the-~ZLN and the EPR (Ejército Popular Revolucionario). The armed forces readily accepted the victory of a non-PRI presidential candidate; indeed, voting results at military barracks have been nearly as diverse as in the rest of the population. Even sporadic demonstrations by small groups of officers-though a striking departure from traditional military behavior- were more directed at the internal regulation of military discipline than at national policy.
Rather than relying on the old logic of PRI control to maintain military subordination, the increasing uncertainty of Mexican politics has led to a renewed effort to institutionalize control over the armed forces. A formal government body, the national security cabinet, contains not only representatives of the military but also the ministries of Foreign Relations and Government as well as the attorney general. A Center for National Security was created for intelligence operations, separating this function from direct military control. President Zedillo continued to upgrade both the training and equipment of the armed forces, in part to professionalize their ranks and ward off the danger of increased political involvement. And the army has again taken an active role in more popular activities, like disaster relief, to enhance military morale, and to slow the emergence of antimilitary sentiment. Unless public order is threatened by political breakdown, it is unlikely that the army will be tempted to intervene. Political competition has produced threats that may erode traditional limits on the military's political involvement. However, the military, like other actors we have discussed in this chapter, appears to have endorsed the democratic project.
Conclusion.
However recent the rise of competitive politics in Mexico,
it has transformed the political landscape. No longer does one
party claim hegemony over political activity; instead, a vigorous
multiparty system competes for popular support from the local
to the national levels. Civil society flourishes, pluralism of
thought has spread, and multiple channels for making political
demands have strengthened. Political competition has encouraged
the' development of a more balanced state, less thoroughly centralized
in a single executive office. Social organizations impose checks
on the ability of any single actor to dominate the political scene,
including Mexico's still powerful president.
Key actors in the political system, from the smallest neighborhood
association to the Mexican military, have tried to respond to
this changing political situation. Some have responded more effectively
than others, and many organizations are still in flux. The rise
of competition itself is a factor encouraging the further spread
of competition. Dramatic economic reforms contributed to the process
by weakening traditional PRI alliances; similarly, repeated economic
crises limited state resources for co-optation and undermined
popular confidence in the PRI. These pressures contributed to
the demand for institutional reforms that in turn have made the
conditions of competition more equitable. If alternation in power
provides the ultimate test of this system, Mexico has passed.
Nevertheless, political competition is not yet as established,
potent, and secure as democracy requires. But democratization
neither begins nor ends with alternation in power. Not all the
actors gaining a greater share of power are themselves democratic.
Moreover, greater power for some actors-like legislatures-makes
them more attractive targets for powerful special interests. And
in Mexico, compared with many established democracies, there is
a greater concentration of fewer powerful interests, some of them
foreign to Mexico itself. Ties between parties and citizens remain
weak, undermining mechanisms of accountability. Power has shifted
somewhat from the center to local and state governments and from
the president to the legislature, but the president continues
to dominate.
Finally, trade-offs are inevitable. Competition also means conflict, and conflict could jeopardize Mexico's ability to secure economic growth and political stability. During the era of peak PRI strength, growth made Mexico a formidable contender and stabilized authoritarian rule. Democratic development also depends fundamentally on growth-but growth in turn depends on a perception of political stability, particularly by investors. So we come full circle: Can Mexico achieve democratic stability in the light of its substantial underlying sources' of social and economic conflict? Must democracy always come with qualifiers and limitations? Must it involve the protection of elite interests, limited freedom of choice for the poor and marginalized, and acceptance of inequality? What happens when those left out challenge the process? As these questions suggest, Mexico is not guaranteed a smooth consolidation of democratic progress. Chapter 4 continues this discussion by looking at Mexico's uneven democracy, paying special attention to the extent of freedom, accountability, and political equality.