Fox’s Mexico At Midterm

Lawson, Chappell H., 1967-

Journal of Democracy, Volume 15, Number 1, January 2004, pp. 139-153 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/jod.2004.0012

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FOX’S MEXICO AT MIDTERM Chappell Lawson

On 6 July 2003, Mexico held its first congressional elections since Vicente Fox ended the 70-year monopoly of power of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) by winning the presidency in 2000. In the 500-seat lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, the PRI retained the largest share of seats, increasing its total from 208 to 224. Leftist oppo- nents of the president, including the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) also increased their vote share, from 70 seats to more than 100. Meanwhile, President Fox’s National Action Party (PAN) fell to just over 150 seats, a loss of more than 25 percent of its congressional strength.

The implications of these elections for Mexican democracy were mixed. On the one hand, the balloting confirmed that Mexico now boasts a highly competitive political system characterized by free, fair, regular, and inclusive elections. On the other, the results highlighted structural deficiencies of Mexican democracy associated with multiparty presidential rule. These structural deficiencies do not pose an immediate threat to democratic stability, but they do render policy making more cumbersome. For the foreseeable future, managing the affairs of the Mexican state will require especially skillful political leadership.

So far, unfortunately, such leadership has been lacking. The reformist administration of Vicente Fox has made progress on a range of issues, but it has also missed important opportunities. Meanwhile, unreconstructed elements of the PRI, the PRD, and sometimes even Fox’s own PAN have resisted the president’s reform efforts. Unless Mexico’s three main partisan blocs can work effectively with each other and with the executive branch,

Chappell Lawson is associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he holds the Class of 1954 Career Development Chair. He is the author of Building the Fourth Estate: Democratization and the Rise of a Free Press in Mexico (2002) and coeditor of Mexico’s Pivotal Democratic Election: Candidates, Voters, and the Presidential Campaign of 2000 (forthcoming).

Journal of Democracy Volume 15, Number 1 January 2004

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progress on vital policy areas—including those bearing on democratic deepening—will remain stalled.

Among academics, bankers, businessmen, civic activists, journalists, legislators, and even government officials, the word one most frequently hears when discussing the first three years of Fox’s presidency is decepción (disappointment). The tone of commentary about the president from political cognoscenti, including many who supported Fox’s candidacy, varies from philosophical to furious. Although these sentiments have not yet translated into desencanto (disenchantment) with Mexico’s new democracy in general, they may ultimately affect perceptions of the system’s efficacy.

At the mass level, the situation is less stark. The president’s approval ratings dropped fairly steadily during the first year or so of his administration, from approximately 70 percent shortly after he took office to 47 percent in March 2002. Presidential approval since then has hovered at around 60 percent, driven by enduring impressions of the president’s honesty.1 Because these ratings substantially exceed Fox’s share of the 2000 presidential vote (42.5 percent), it would be wrong to regard him as an unpopular failure. But the fact that his approval ratings are no better than those of PRI presidents such as Carlos Salinas (1988– 94) or Ernesto Zedillo (1994–2000) at comparable points in their terms does suggest substantial decepción.

Hopes were high for the first presidential candidate to defeat the PRI, and some disappointment with Fox may have been inevitable. In addition, public impressions of his performance have suffered from a sluggish Mexican economy: Approval of the president’s economic stewardship has never exceeded 50 percent. Because anemic growth has been largely a by-product of recession in the United States, Fox may be paying an unfair price. But recent polls have begun to show more direct disillusionment with his administration. Its failure, in particular, to move vigorously against corruption and other abuses committed under the old regime has become a source of frustration.

To his credit, Fox has made some headway in this area. His administration succeeded in passing a Transparency Law that should help foster civic scrutiny of the policy-making process. Some progress has also been made in restructuring and purging Mexico’s old, corruption-wracked police force, the Mexican Federal Judicial Police (or “Federales”). These reforms may be followed in 2004 by an extension of the vote to some ten million Mexicans living abroad—correcting the most serious remaining deficiency in Mexico’s electoral regime—and other institutional tweakings.2 Finally, whatever the administration’s shortcomings, Fox’s defeat of the PRI is still widely regarded as a turning point in Mexico’s political history. Very few analysts argue that any of Fox’s rivals for the presidency in 2000 would have done a better job than he has in deepening Mexican democracy.

Nevertheless, critics of the administration’s “go slow” approach do

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have a point. So far, not a single individual has yet gone to jail in connection with Mexico’s bank-bailout package, in which bad loans— many of dubious legality—were socialized to Mexican taxpayers to the tune of one-quarter of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). And some of the most scandalous cases of fraud and corruption, such as that of fugitive banker Carlos Cabal Peniche and former Mexico City regent Oscar Espinosa Villareal, have yet to be successfully prosecuted. In some respects, exemplary punishments during the first half of Fox’s term even lag behind those meted out by PRI presidents, who were not always so scrupulous in observing due process when they turned on suspected or accused felons from previous administrations.

Beyond particularly egregious cases of corruption, there remains the broader issue of dealing with abuses committed under the old regime. Unlike Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Hungary, Poland, South Korea, South Africa, and many other new democracies, Mexico has not moved in a comprehensive or coordinated way to deal with its authoritarian history. Although Fox named a special prosecutor to investigate past abuses and ordered the release of important classified documents, Mexico has established no truth commissions, passed no lustration laws, and conducted no human rights trials. The special prosecutor’s office has recently complained, moreover, of inadequate support from the Administration. Meanwhile, PRI holdovers continue to occupy midlevel positions in various ministries. Although few such individuals can be linked to serious abuses, some are associated with the sort of sweetheart deals that characterized Mexican public administration under the PRI.

From a comparative perspective, Fox’s approach is difficult to understand. Unlike many other new democracies, Mexico faces no serious prospect of resistance from a powerful military establishment that could threaten the new regime. Moreover, after Fox’s victory, popular sentiment strongly favored punishment for past corruption. And even without the benefit of any support from Congress, the current Administration could do more to seek out and punish corruption at the middle and lower levels of the federal bureaucracy.

At this point, it is probably too late for the Fox administration to reverse course. In the wake of the 2003 elections, the president has lost the initiative, and he needs the PRI’s cooperation to pass legislation in Congress even more than before. Subsequent presidents may take up the challenge of addressing Mexico’s past, but the country’s first indisputably democratic administration clearly missed an opportunity to move forcefully against the old regime.

A “Do-Nothing Congress”?

Related to the lack of progress on political reform is disappointment with the Administration’s setbacks on more mundane matters of policy.

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Here, as with democratic deepening, the Fox administration can point to certain tangible accomplishments: health-care and pension-system reforms; the passage of a highly progressive antidiscrimination law; the preservation of successful antipoverty programs from the previous administration; congressional acceptance of the president’s budget; and the maintenance of macroeconomic discipline. These successes are likely to be followed by a further restructuring of the pension system (extending the new system to public employees and allowing greater mobility between pension accounts), modest tax increases, and perhaps certain energy-sector reforms sought by the business community.

Yet halfway through Fox’s term, policy failures outnumber successes. Notable reversals include the president’s failure to definitively resolve the Chiapas conflict (a problem that candidate Fox promised to solve in “15 minutes”); his inability to sell a much needed tax increase to a skeptical Congress and public; and his failure to institute any serious overhaul of Mexico’s educational system (despite substantial increases in spending). The private sector also remains frustrated by a lack of progress in privatizing the energy sector and reforming Mexico’s relatively rigid labor laws. Meanwhile, Fox’s much-touted “Puebla Panama” project, designed to extend economic growth to Mexico’s impoverished south, has largely fallen victim to competing presidential priorities, economic downturn, fiscal stringency, and a lack of hoped- for funding from abroad.

One oft-cited reason for these failures has been the Administration’s maladroit handling of opposition parties in Congress. After his election, Fox offered the PRD three cabinet posts in return for its cooperation. Such an arrangement (essentially an extension of the pan-opposition alliance in the1997–2000 legislature) would have made a thorough investigation of past corruption and the passage of needed policies much easier. This offer was rejected. PRD leaders can argue that a few cabinet posts in Fox’s “neoliberal” administration hardly constituted a basis for formal collaboration, but Fox supporters can also plausibly claim that their initial plans for a truly cooperative transitional government were frustrated by the PRD’s recalcitrance and partisan gamesmanship.

Somewhat less defensible was Fox’s handling of the PRI, whose leaders have little political incentive to see him succeed. Senior Administration officials stress the difficulty of attempting to prosecute key figures in the old regime while at the same time negotiating with their followers in the legislature. Other observers argue that a fractious PRI, reeling from its defeat in 2000, could never have been counted on to deliver a coherent legislative bloc. Regardless, any deals the Fox Administration cut with PRI bosses paid precious few dividends: Fox won neither a serious investigation of the past nor any systematic cooperation from the PRI in Congress.

Whatever blame they believe opposition parties deserve, political

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observers tend to attribute the lack of progress in Mexico at least in part to the Fox administration’s na¦veté. According to this now-familiar lament, the former Coca-Cola executive and state governor is an effective campaigner but an ineffective president. With his businessman’s approach to public administration, the president failed to understand that running a country would require real political bargaining. One classic example was his decision to name a respected environmentalist as minister of environment, rather than give the post to his 2000 alliance partner, the Greens (PVEM).3 The Greens’ support for presidential initiatives in Congress lagged, and they ultimately formed an electoral alliance with the PRI in 2003. Other widely cited shortcomings of the Fox administration include a lack of policy coordination within the executive branch and a hands-off, sometimes capricious management style. For instance, the Administration initially promoted a massive airport project for Mexico City, only to scrub the idea with little explanation shortly thereafter. One prominent academic, previously sympathetic to the president, went so far as to characterize Fox as a small-time businessman inadequate to the task of governing a country.

Such criticisms are too harsh, but they contain an element of truth. Despite announced shifts in Administration strategy since the 2003 election, it is not clear how much has really changed. For instance, many analysts were expecting to see a major cabinet shuffle in the wake of the PAN’s loss, rather than simply the replacement of the energy and environment ministers announced in September. Meanwhile, a number of other senior officials who have clearly been around too long remain dutifully at their posts. And the president himself provoked widespread puzzlement immediately following the elections when he suggested that the PAN’s loss of seats in the legislature was of little concern to him.

The 2003 Elections: Plus Ça Change . . .

Administration officials were clearly hoping that the 2003 midterm elections would give them a majority in the lower house of Congress and so strengthen their hand in parliamentary negotiations. In fact, the opposite happened, with the PAN losing more than fifty seats. Cooperation between the legislative and executive branches may not get much worse, but is unlikely to get better.

With respect to longer-term voting trends, the elections altered little. The Table on the following page compares the results of the 2003 balloting to those of the other two elections held under Mexico’s reformed electoral system: the 1997 midterms, which cost the PRI control over the lower house of Congress, and the 2000 general elections, which cost it the presidency. For each election, the Table reports both votes and seats.

Ascertaining each party’s vote share in all three contests is complicated because different parties formed alliances in 2000 and 2003. For instance,

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the opportunistic PVEM ran its own ticket in 1997, joined forces with the PAN in 2000, and then made an alliance with the PRI in 2003. Meanwhile, several smaller leftist parties that had joined with the PRD in 2000 ran separate slates in 2003. Representation in the lower house for each partner in these alliances was divided according to formulas devised by the parties themselves, in ways that did not necessarily reflect their popular appeal. Consequently, it is not immediately obvious how much of an alliance’s vote should be attributed to each partner.

With these difficulties in mind, the Table divides valid votes cast for registered parties in party-list ballots into five blocs: 1) PRI, 2) PAN, 3) Left, 4) PVEM, and 5) Other. The “Left” bloc includes all votes cast for the PRD and four smaller leftist parties, regardless of whether those parties were in formal alliance with the PRD in any given year; it does not include votes for the three additional, minor parties that ran candidates in 2000, which collectively received close to 4 percent of the vote. The PRI-PVEM alliance vote in 2003 was divided between the PRI and the PVEM based on each party’s share of the vote in non- alliance contests. The PVEM vote in 2000 represents the average of its vote shares in 1997 and 2003; this figure was subtracted from the PAN- PVEM vote to yield a PAN vote share for 2000.

The results shown in the Table above suggest that the midterm elections represented a noticeable but relatively modest setback for PAN support among the general public. Although Fox’s party lost an opportunity to convert its 2000 gains into a far-reaching and permanent realignment, it still did better than it had in 1997 (and much better than

TABLE—MEXICAN LEGISLATIVE-ELECTION RESULTS (1997–2003)

Note: Figures show the results of party-list votes, as a percentage of all valid votes cast for registered candidates. “Left” includes votes for the PRD, PT, Convergencia, PSN, and PAS, regardless of whether those parties were in formal alliance with the PRD; it does not include votes for the three minor parties in 2000 (which received almost 4 percent of the vote). The PRI/PVEM alliance vote in 2003 was divided between the PRI and the PVEM, based on each party’s share of the vote in nonalliance contests. The PVEM vote in 2000 represents the average of its vote shares in 1997 and 2003; this figure was subtracted from the Alliance for Change vote to yield a PAN vote share for 2000. Turnout represents all party-list votes, including spoiled ballots and votes for non- registered candidates, divided by the lista nominal. Two single-member–district seats in the Chamber of Deputies remain unallocated for 2003. Sources: Federal Electoral Institute; George W. Grayson, Beyond the Mid-term Elections: Mexico’s Political Outlook, 2003–2006 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2003), 4.

% OF VOTES SEATS IN LOWER HOUSE 2003 2000 1997 2003 2000 1997Party Bloc 35.6

31.9

24.0

6.7

1.9

27.0

4 1 . 7

37.8

34.0

19.1

5.2

3.9

37.4

63.7

39.1

26.6

28.3

3.8

2.1

30.1

57.7

2 2 4

1 5 1

1 0 6

17

—

4 9 8

NA

2 0 8

2 0 5

70

17

—

5 0 0

NA

2 3 9

31.9

24.0

6.7

1.9

27.0

NA

PRI PAN Left PVEM Others Total votes (millions)/seats Turnout

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it had before then). The electoral results of 2003 thus reinforce the conventional wisdom about the first half of the Fox administration: a period of missed opportunities, but hardly disastrous.

The news for the PRI in 2003 was mixed. On the positive side, the balloting demonstrates that Mexico’s old ruling party has successfully made the transition to a fully competitive electoral environment. In the wake of its defeat in 2000, some observers had argued that the PRI was destined to splinter or even disintegrate. Instead of collapsing, it has held together and even remained the country’s largest party.

Beyond confirming the party’s survival, however, voting patterns in 2003 did not particularly benefit the PRI. The Table suggests that voter dealignment from the old ruling party continues, albeit at a modest pace: The party’s vote share slid from approximately 39 percent in 1997 to 38 percent in 2000 to 36 percent in 2003. Although the PRI won the governorship of Nuevo León, a PAN stronghold, in 2003, the striking weakness of the PAN’s gubernatorial candidate makes it difficult to draw any national-level conclusions from that race.4 Rather, the main lesson seems to be that bipartisan competition between the PRI and the PAN will continue to characterize most northern states, with candidate selection being an important determinant of victory.

The main beneficiary of the 2003 elections was clearly the Left, which rebounded from a vote share of only 19 percent in 2000. The PRD swept Mexico City, thanks largely to the striking popularity of Governor Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Assuming that the PRD can form electoral alliances with ideologically compatible smaller parties in 2006, it will have a large enough mass base for a serious presidential bid. Again, the lesson here is that none of Mexico’s three main parties is likely to disappear.

What the relatively modest aggregate-level shifts in the Table do not reveal is the fluidity of the Mexican electorate at the individual level. Only about two-thirds of Mexicans actually report having a partisan affiliation, and only about a quarter consider themselves “strong” supporters of any party.5 These figures reflect broad-based dealignment from the PRI over the last two decades, followed by some measure of “reattachment” to the PAN and the PRD. Because detachment from the PRI has outpaced reattachment to the other parties, large segments of the Mexican electorate remain available for recruitment over the course of an electoral campaign. Such potential fluidity only increases the Left’s chances in 2006, assuming that currently uncommitted voters can be motivated to vote at all.

This brings us to the only truly depressing statistic shown in the Table: turnout. Mexicans cast ten million fewer ballots in 2003 than they did three years before, despite an appreciable increase in the potential voting population. All told, more than half of all eligible voters declined to make use of an electoral system that had cost them billions of dollars to create. In many ways, this drop is a much more

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damning indictment of the Fox administration’s record than is the partisan composition of the vote. Unlike his candidacy in 2000, Fox’s performance in office since then has failed to galvanize the population; many eligible voters who support the president simply did not see it as worth their while to participate.

On one level, this drop in turnout can be interpreted as an indictment of Mexican political culture. Generalized disengagement from politics in the absence of a national crisis is a venerable Mexican tradition, and low turnout may be a symptom of Mexicans’ lapsing back into a less participatory mode.6 On the other hand, the same turnout data could also be interpreted as heralding Mexico’s entry into the ranks of consolidated democratic regimes. Participation rates in 2003 were not particularly low for a midterm election in a well-established, media- oriented electoral system. Indeed, some scholars had anticipated a modest drop in turnout with the decay of the PRI’s clientelistic machine and the advent of the transitional elections of 1997 and 2000.7 Once more, the numbers suggest a missed opportunity, but no impending catastrophe.

Democracy à la Mexicana

With three highly competitive elections since the watershed political reforms of 1996, Mexico has clearly crossed the threshold of what political scientists call “electoral democracy.”8 Indeed, the country has a system of electoral administration worthy of emulation by many established democracies. Fraud has been essentially eliminated; campaigns are largely publicly funded; ballots and vote-counting procedures for national elections are standardized across the country; and votes translate into offices in an equitable and eminently reasonable way. The one failing of this system, the lack of voting rights it grants to expatriates, may be rectified before 2006.

In general, Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) and Federal Electoral Tribunal (TRIFE) effectively function together as a fourth branch of government designed to ensure the integrity of the electoral process. For instance, the PRI was recently fined approximately $90 million for campaign violations in 2000. Subsequently, in November 2003, the PRI and the PAN voted in a new set of IFE councilors, excluding those candidates proposed by the PRD. That decision invariably raises questions about the long-term neutrality and legitimacy of Mexico’s electoral authorities. The most likely outcome, however, is an IFE that remains independent but is more reticent about investigating campaign-finance violations. In short, the principal mechanism for ensuring political representation and accountability in a democratic system—elections— still seems well established in Mexico. The country thus deserves its Freedom House rating of 2, on par with Botswana, Croatia, Mongolia, Romania, Samoa, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vanuatu.

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A different question is whether it deserves any more than that. According to critics, Mexico’s democratic transition remains manifestly incomplete, with multiple authoritarian enclaves and manifest deficiencies in the rule of law remaining. Corruption remains a serious problem in the judiciary and the law-enforcement establishment; impunity persists; political culture at both the mass and elite levels reflects 70 years of autocratic rule; civil society is still relatively weak; and broadcast media exhibit the sort of crony-capitalist relationships that have long characterized Mexican political economy. From this perspective, it seems farcical to speak of democratic consolidation in Mexico.

On the other hand, Mexico does appear to meet the classic threefold standard of democratic consolidation laid out by Larry Diamond:9 At the elite level, democratic rules of the game are clearly understood and accepted by all major political actors; no generals stand ready to pounce if elected leaders step out of line; and no politicians surreptitiously knock on the back door of the barracks. Indeed, elite compliance with democratic norms far exceeds these minimal criteria. In a region where presidents often run roughshod over legislatures, Mexico’s Congress routinely rejects presidential initiatives. Meanwhile, an independent S u p r e m e C o u r t r e g u l a r l y r e n d e r s d e f i n i t i v e j u d g m e n t s o n t h e constitutionality of laws and settles legal disputes between different branches of government. Whether from fear of adverse international reactions or from genuine commitment to democratic processes, Mexico’s political leaders have clearly accepted democracy.

At the level of political organizations, the same pattern emerges. Throughout the country, organized civic groups proselytize and protest without fear of official repression. Meanwhile, despite localized insurgent groups in the south and resistance to further political reform among some factions of the PRI, no significant party, interest group, movement, or institution seeks to overthrow the system. To the contrary, support for democracy figures prominently in the discourse of all three major parties (even, albeit to a lesser extent, the PRI). Although none of the three can be considered fully democratic internally, their external behavior generally conforms to democratic expectations.

Finally, democracy also appears to have taken root at the mass level. Although most Mexicans feel that more needs to be done to establish a fully democratic system, more than half believe that their country is basically democratic.10 A decisive majority of Mexicans also favors democracy over any other form of government.11 This endorsement may fall short of Larry Diamond’s indicator of democratic consolidation— that “70 percent of the mass public consistently believes that democracy is preferable to any other form of government and that the democracy in place in the country is the most suitable form of government for the country”12—but mass sentiments certainly suggest substantial support for democratic governance.

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The character of contemporary policy debates also supports a charitable view of Mexican democracy. One obvious example concerns energy, destined to be an important item on the policy agenda over the next three years. Although nationalists oppose privatizing electricity, oil, or gas, Mexico will require massive private-sector investment in these sectors, and some of this investment will have to come from foreigners. At present, however, opening up sectors such as petroleum to foreign investment is likely to prove unpopular, and leaders who advocate wholesale reform of Mexico’s energy sector can expect to pay a political price. Regardless of the wisdom of such popular sentiments, the fact that they are finding strong expression in public policy is a sign of democratic responsiveness.

The same logic applies to another crucial issue in Mexico’s political economy: social-welfare spending. At present, tax-collection rates (tax revenues as a percentage of GDP) remain extremely low. By boosting those rates to something approaching the OECD average, Mexico could fund a range of programs that would relieve tremendous human misery. Public opinion polls, however, suggest that there is precious little appetite for increasing taxes; most Mexicans are simply too skeptical of their government to entrust it with more of their hard-earned cash.13

Again, the problem here is not one of too little democracy.

What’s Really Wrong

The real question, then, is not whether Mexico has consolidated a democratic regime. The real question is what sort of democratic regime Mexico has consolidated, and how effectively that regime designs and implements sound public policies. Unfortunately, Mexico’s constitutional architecture seriously impedes effective governance.

One problem is the structure of Mexican federalism. Federal systems in general tend to be less administratively efficient than unitary ones, but other institutional features can either substantially mitigate or exacerbate this tendency.14 In Mexico, the calendars for national and subnational elections are not synchronized; elections for governor sometimes occur within one month of presidential elections but on a different date. Not only does this lack of coordination tend to depress turnout, it also maximizes the chances that subnational authorities will represent different parties than federal authorities and that electoral campaigns will address different policy issues—further impeding coherent administration.

Mexican federalism is also characterized by the absence of clear, credible “hard-budget” constraints on state and local governments. Although the country’s budget constraints are substantially tighter than Argentina’s or Brazil’s, there remains an implicit promise that irresponsible states will be bailed out by the federal government in the

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event of fiscal insolvency. This situation can encourage irresponsibility at the state level and undermine fiscal discipline at the federal level. Limited taxing authority at the subnational level further encourages such irresponsibility, as Mexican states and municipalities learn only how to spend block grants from the central government, not how to balance spending against increased taxation.

Even more problematic than the structure of Mexican federalism is the combination of a three-plus party system with presidential rule. Such a combination virtually guarantees that presidents will perpetually lack a majority in at least one house of the legislature. The problem of divided government is compounded by the fact that each Mexican president may serve only a single six-year term. A poor midterm result can thus create a three-year lame-duck period during which the president cannot get laws passed in Congress and yet cannot realistically be removed. The parallels between Mexico’s current system and the one that contributed to the 1973 breakdown of Chilean democracy should not be overstated, but they are hard completely to ignore.

One institutional remedy would be to adopt a parliamentary form of government, a solution advocated by former PRD leader Porfirio Mu~noz Ledo. For better or for worse, however, Mexico is wedded to presiden- tialism; switching to parliamentarism is scarcely more visible on the political radar screen in Mexico than in the United States. At the same time, none of Mexico’s three major partisan blocs is in any danger of disintegrating. Multiparty presidential rule and the divided government that it brings are here to stay.

Given permanent divided government, the quality of governance in Mexico will depend more than in most countries on the coalition- building skills of political leaders. If opposition-party elites prove obstructionist or recalcitrant, or if presidents prove unable to deal effectively with Congress, gridlock will prevail. Over time the legitimacy of the system may deteriorate.

Certain institutional reforms—such as changing the length of legislative and executive terms of office and permitting consecutive reelection—could theoretically encourage executive-legislative cooperation. For instance, legislators and executives who know that they may be stuck with each other indefinitely may have stronger incentives to cooperate in passing laws. Consecutive reelection of legislators, which is currently not permitted, could also facilitate the development of legislative policy expertise, allowing Congress to take greater initiative on key issues.

Nevertheless, these corollary reforms can only scratch the surface of the fundamental problem; they cannot solve it. In fact, certain reforms could have perverse consequences. Consider the most popular nostrum currently being peddled by constitutional engineers in Mexico: allowing the consecutive reelection of federal deputies. Under Mexico’s

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hybrid system, 300 deputies are elected from single-member districts, and 200 more are elected under something resembling a proportional representation system. Without the prospect of reelection and with their campaign monies coming primarily from the parties, both types of deputies behave in much the same way: They depend on party leaders for upward mobility, and they exhibit high levels of discipline in the legislature. Public funding for campaigns may be cut over the next few years, however, leaving legislators responsible for raising more of their own campaign funds. If deputies elected in single-member districts can also be reelected, they may decide that cultivating a local constituent base pays greater dividends than falling in line with party leaders. Party leaders will thus lose two crucial disciplining mechanisms: funding and control over nominations. Rather than buying legislative support “wholesale” (by appealing only to the leadership of each party), presidents would be compelled to buy it “retail” (by appealing to election-seeking deputies on an individual basis).

Buying support retail poses little in the way of a challenge for a president with very high approval ratings. At the beginning of his term, for instance, Fox might have been able to pass his program over the heads of party bosses in the PRI and PRD. But for a president with only moderate popular support, buying legislative acquiescence one legislator at a time could prove extremely difficult and costly. If we assume that few chief executives will enjoy a honeymoon rivaling that of Mexico’s first successful opposition candidate, we must face the possibility that permitting legislative reelection could actually intensify gridlock. In other words, an already unwieldy system could conceivably become even more so, forcing Mexican democracy to depend even more heavily on the caliber of its leaders.

In the end, the flaws in Mexico’s constitutional system should not prove fatal to democracy. But they will prove problematic. And none of the constitutional reforms currently being considered is likely to change this.

2006 and Beyond

What does the future hold for Mexican democracy? In the wake of t h e m i d t e r m e l e c t i o n s , i n f o r m a l c a m p a i g n i n g f o r p r e s i d e n t i a l nominations has already begun. Although it is too soon to predict the outcome of the next presidential race, it is not too soon to speculate about the likely impact of that contest on Mexican politics more broadly.

The obvious choice for the leadership of the PRD if it seeks to win in 2006 is Mexico City’s wildly popular governor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. With approval ratings topping 80 percent and widespread name recognition from the national rebroadcasting of Mexico City news, López Obrador is now the frontrunner in most polls. Assuming that the

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PRD nominates him rather than three-time loser Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, López Obrador could well carry the party into the presidency in 2006. Otherwise, it is virtually impossible to envision a leftist victory.

Even if López Obrador were to capture the nomination and the presidency, it is inconceivable that in 2006 the PRD could achieve a congressional majority. A López Obrador administration would thus face the same obstacles that now confront Fox. Whether López Obrador would deal with them any more effectively is not clear. Critics condemn him as personalistic, vacuous, populist, and even demagogic—criticisms which, if true, would augur poorly for his effectiveness as a minority president. On the other hand, his record as an administrator is at least adequate, and his tenure in Mexico City has been marked as much by pragmatism as by populism. Perhaps most importantly, López Obrador’s democratic credentials are well established, and he is widely regarded as honest. As under the Fox administration, the survival of Mexico’s democratic system would not be in doubt under a López Obrador administration, although the effectiveness of the system might leave a great deal to be desired.

For the PAN, its presidential candidate is likely to be either newly appointed energy minister Felipe Calderón or current interior minister Santiago Creel. Because any PAN president would almost certainly lack a majority in the legislature, the competence and intentions of these men would be of paramount importance. Fortunately, both Calderón and Creel have played positive roles in Mexico’s democratic transition, both are considered honest, and both would likely make good presidents. Calderón’s greatest potential weaknesses are his closer ties to the old guard of the PAN and his less extensive executive-branch experience (he was previously head of the government development bank, Banobras). Accordingly, his effectiveness as energy minister will offer strong clues about the likely success and direction of a Calderón presidency. Creel’s principal asset is his high public visibility and his reputation as a conciliator during the opposition-led 57th Congress (1997–2000). His main liability is his performance as interior minister, which is almost uniformly regarded as ineffectual.

The PRI’s candidate will presumably be current party president Roberto Madrazo, who is already exploiting his post to secure his candidacy. Madrazo’s record as governor of the small, oil-rich southern s t a t e o f T a b a s c o h a r d l y i n s p i r e s c o n f i d e n c e i n h i s d e m o c r a t i c credentials; his own 1994 gubernatorial victory over López Obrador was marred by fraud and massive campaign-finance violations. Moreover, the PRI’s administration of Tabasco under both Madrazo and his handpicked successor has been characterized by even greater than usual levels of corruption. At the same time, Madrazo is a competent, seasoned politician who would probably find a way to work with opposition forces in the legislature.

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The notion of trading probity and democratic credentials for political savvy is hardly appealing. Nevertheless, effective administration of any kind would probably enhance mass support for Mexico’s new political system. Furthermore, the institutional structure of Mexican democracy is sturdy enough to withstand the effects of any one individual. A Madrazo presidency might well be a setback for Mexico’s democratic deepening, but it is unlikely to represent a threat to the survival of the political system.

In sum, Mexican politics after 2006 is likely to look similar to Mexican politics today. On the positive side, none of the main contenders for the presidency is likely to mismanage the country badly or to destroy Mexico’s democratic institutions. On the negative side, the likely persistence of divided government will impede effective policy making and could thus weaken democracy’s legitimacy. Given these structural barriers, much will depend on the capacity of elected leaders to cooperate in governing the country. Whether they are able to do so will depend on how much they have learned from the disappointments of Fox’s presidency.

NOTES

I am grateful to Delal Baer, Susan Burgerman, Denise Dresser, Todd Eisenstadt, Federico Estevez, Margarita González Gamio, James McCann, Kevin Middlebrook, Juan Molinar, María de los Angeles Moreno, Vidal Romero, Andrés Rozental, Harold Trinkunas, Keith Yanner, and several senior Mexican officials for suggestions on earlier versions of this article. I am also indebted to Mexico City’s Reforma newspaper, Consulta Mitovsky, and my collaborators on the Mexico 2000 Panel Study for polling data on which several conclusions about Mexican public opinion are based.

1. In general, the Fox administration has been free of corruption scandals. Smaller-scale exceptions include: a flurry of criticism over the purchase of expensive linens for Fox and his wife early in his term; campaign-finance violations by the Amigos de Fox organization in the 2000 race; the president’s initial toleration of legally dubious tactics by the TV Azteca network in its business dispute with another television station; and charges (as yet unproven) of influence peddling related to the government’s contested September 2001 expropriation of 27 indebted sugar refineries.

2. For a useful inventory of the kinds of reform being considered, see George W. Grayson, Beyond the Mid-term Elections: Mexico’s Political Outlook 2003– 2006 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2003), 4 7 – 4 8 .

3. Except for its name, Mexico’s probusiness PVEM shares little in common with left-environmentalist parties in other countries.

4. The PRI also won three other state house races (Campeche, Colima, and Sonora), though the Colima election was subsequently annulled. The party lost to the PAN in San Luis Potosí and Querétaro.

5. James A. McCann and Chappell Lawson, “An Electorate Adrift: Attitude Stability and the Quality of Democracy in Mexico,” Latin American Research Review (forthcoming); Joseph L. Klesner, “The Structure of the Mexican Electorate:

Chappell Lawson 1 5 3

Social, Attitudinal, and Partisan Bases of Vicente Fox’s Victory,” in Jorge I. Domínguez and Chappell Lawson, eds., Mexico’s Pivotal Democratic Election: Candidates, Voters, and the Presidential Race of 2000 (Stanford and La Jolla, Calif.: Stanford University Press and the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies of the University of California at San Diego, 2003).

6. See Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963); Joseph L. Klesner, “Political Attitudes, Social Capital, and Political Participation: The United States and Mexico Compared,” Mexican Studies 19 (Winter 2003): 29–64; Roderic Ai Camp, “Learning Democracy in Mexico and the United States,” Mexican Studies 19 (Winter 2003): 3–28; Wayne A. Cornelius, Mexican Politics in Transition: The Breakdown of a One-Party-Dominant Regime (La Jolla, Calif.: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies of the University of California at San D i e g o , 1 9 9 6 ) , 8 9 – 9 8 ; R o d e r i c A i C a m p , P o l i t i c s i n M e x i c o : T h e D e c l i n e o f Authoritarianism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 77–102; Matthew C. Gutmann, The Romance of Democracy: Compliant Defiance in Contemporary Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).

7 . C h a p p e l l L a w s o n a n d J o s e p h L . K l e s n e r , “ P o l i t i c a l R e f o r m , E l e c t o r a l Participation, and the Campaign of 2000,” in Jorge I. Domínguez and Chappell Lawson, eds., Mexico’s Pivotal Democratic Election: Candidates, Voters, and the Presidential Race of 2000.

8. On “electoral democracy” and its distinction from “liberal democracy,” see Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).

9. Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy, 64–116.

10. See Roderic Ai Camp, “Citizen Attitudes Toward Democracy and Vicente Fox’s Victory in 2000,” in Jorge I. Domínguez and Chappell Lawson, eds., Mexico’s Pivotal Democratic Election: Candidates, Voters, and the Presidential Race of 2 0 0 0 .

11. According to Latinobarometer polls, approximately 53 percent of Mexicans find democracy preferable to any other system of government. (“Latinobarómetro: M i d e n D e m o c r a c i a , ” R e f o r m a , 1 N o v e m b e r 2 0 0 3 , 1 , 2 4 A . ) O t h e r p o l l s s h o w somewhat higher percentages; see Roderic Ai Camp, “Learning Democracy in Mexico and the United States.”

12. Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy, 69.

13. Asked in February 2000 whether they preferred to cut spending on public services, increase taxes, or increase the public debt, 64 percent of Mexicans favored cutting spending and only 9 percent favored increasing taxes. (“Mexico 2000 Panel Study: First Wave.” Data from the study are publicly available at: http:// web.mit.edu/polisci/faculty/c.lawson.html.)

14. See Strom Thacker and John Gerring, “Political Institutions and Corruption: The Role of Unitarism and Parliamentarism,” in British Journal of Political Science ( f o r t h c o m i n g ) .