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Toward Mexico's Democratization by Jorge I. Dominguez,Alejandro Poire Pdf
Recent elections in Mexico have seen dramatic changes in public opinion toward political parties. Focusing on the elections of 1994 and 1997, the book evaluates campaign strategies, voting habits, party loyalty and the decline of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). It begins by situating the transformation of Mexico's parties in historical context, then goes on to consider the role of gender and the resurgence of the Mexican left. The contributors, drawn from the U.S. and Mexico, focus on both the strategies of political parties to woo voters, and how voters actually respond. They also develop several methodological innovations for studying public opinion that can be applied beyond the case of Mexico.
Mexican Social Movements and the Transition to Democracy by John Stolle-McAllister Pdf
Between 1995 and 1996 in Tepoztlan, Morelos, a movement was made against the construction of a large tourist development project. The case gained international attention as community members rejected their elected officials, designed their own local government and eventually won bitter victory against both the state and the internationally financed corporation developing a golf course and country club. This work focuses on how, in a time of generalized political change in Mexico, activists blended local, national and transnational courses of identity and social change to produce political practices that allowed them to win redress of their grievances, to alter local social relations and to contribute to changes within the national political system. Here, the anti-golf movement is chronicled. Important symbolic and organizational networks within Tepoztlan that took part in the conflict are explored. The role of global influences on the community's everyday life is examined, as well as the ways in which the movement contributed to the evolution of a more democratic culture. Parallels in the more recent movement in Atenco against the construction of Mexico City's new international airport are analyzed.
The Story of Mexico's political rebirth, by two pulitzer prize-winning reporters Opening Mexico is a narrative history of the citizens' movement which dismantled the kleptocratic one-party state that dominated Mexico in the twentieth century, and replaced it with a lively democracy. Told through the stories of Mexicans who helped make the transformation, the book gives new and gripping behind-the-scenes accounts of major episodes in Mexico's recent politics. Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, led by presidents who ruled like Mesoamerican monarchs, came to be called "the perfect dictatorship." But a 1968 massacre of student protesters by government snipers ignited the desire for democratic change in a generation of Mexicans. Opening Mexico recounts the democratic revolution that unfolded over the following three decades. It portrays clean-vote crusaders, labor organizers, human rights monitors, investigative journalists, Indian guerrillas, and dissident political leaders, such as President Ernesto Zedillo-Mexico's Gorbachev. It traces the rise of Vicente Fox, who toppled the authoritarian system in a peaceful election in July 2000. Opening Mexico dramatizes how Mexican politics works in smoke-filled rooms, and profiles many leaders of the country's elite. It is the best book to date about the modern history of the United States' southern neighbor-and is a tale rich in implications for the spread of democracy worldwide.
Prospects for Democracy in Mexico by George W. Grayson Pdf
Second only to the Soviet Union, Mexico is the country most important to the security and well-being of the United States. Its stability is therefore a major concern. As Prospects for Democracy in Mexico documents, there are problems. This ancient Aztec nation now suffers the worst economic conditions since its revolution exploded in 1910. The economy has been as flat as a tortilla since the oil boom fizzled in the early 1980s, and the purchasing power of workers has declined 50 percent in recent years. Open and disguised unemployment afflicts nearly half of the 26-million-member workforce. External debt keeps upward pressure on interest rates, while the government and private sector must meet $12 billion annually in foreign-debt payments. Widespread pollution continues to contaminate the already fetid air of metropolitan areas such as Mexico City. Similar conditions in the United States or Western Europe would ignite demonstrations, catalyze strikes, and launch the careers of demagogic politicians. Mexico remains remarkably quiet-with discontent channeled though legitimate institutions such as the Congress, mass media, and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). This volume dissects the current situation and forecasts future developments. Diplomats, scholars, public officials, and businessmen contribute sixteen chapters and answer a number of the most critical questions. It is unlikely that this collection will be surpassed for comprehensive coverage and intellectual balance for years to come. It is supported by in-depth statistical tables covering every phase of Mexican life: from unemployment, religious affiliation, inflation rates, presidential electoral results, military expenditures, and the size of the armed forces. In addition, the volume concludes with a selected biography that Latin Americanists, political scientists, and policy-makers will find essential. George W. Grayson is the Class of 1938 Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. His books include The Mexican Labor Machine: Power, Politics, and Patronage (1989); Oil and Mexican Foreign Policy (1988); The United States and Mexico; Patterns of Influence (1984); and The Politics of Mexican Oil (1980)
Subnational Politics and Democratization in Mexico by Todd A. Eisenstadt Pdf
This volume highlights the growing disjuncture between Mexico's recently accelerated transition to democracy at the national level and what is occurring at the state and local levels in many parts of the country. Subnational political regimes controlled by hard-line antidemocratic elements linked to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) remain important in late-twentieth-century Mexico, even in an era of much-intensified interparty competition. The survival and even strengthening of state and local authoritarian enclaves in states like Puebla, Tabasco, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, and the Yucatan raises serious questions: To what extent will failure to democratize in states and localities where little or no political change has occurred constrain or disrupt the national-level democratization process? How can Mexican leaders engineer a deconcentration of political power and a fiscal decentralization that do not simply strengthen authoritarian elites in the periphery?Drawing on recent field research in ten Mexican states, the contributors show how the increasingly uneven character of democratization in Mexico can be a significant obstacle to the completion of the process in an expeditious and lowconflict manner.
Democratization and Authoritarian Party Survival by Joy Kathryn Langston Pdf
"By focusing on political institutions to understand the new power-sharing agreement between the national party headquarters and the party's governors, this work explores why Mexico's hegemonic PRI was able to survive out of power after it was ousted from the executive in 2000" (ed.).
Decentralization, Democratization, and Informal Power in Mexico by Andrew Selee Pdf
In the last two decades of the twentieth century, many countries in Latin America freed themselves from the burden of their authoritarian pasts and developed democratic political systems. At the same time, they began a process of shifting many governmental responsibilities from the national to the state and local levels. Much has been written about how decentralization has fostered democratization, but informal power relationships inherited from the past have complicated the ways in which citizens voice their concerns and have undermined the accountability of elected officials. In this book, Andrew Selee seeks to illuminate the complex linkages between informal and formal power by comparing how they worked in three Mexican cities. The process of decentralization is shown to have been intermediated by existing spheres of political influence, which in turn helped determine how much the institution of multiparty democracy in the country could succeed in bringing democracy “closer to home.”
Author : Roger Bartra Publisher : University of Wales Press Page : 203 pages File Size : 46,5 Mb Release : 2013-01-31 Category : Political Science ISBN : 9780708326855
This book is a collection of essays on the Mexican transition to democracy that offers reflections on different aspects of civic culture, the political process, electoral struggles, and critical junctures. They were written at different points in time and even though they have been corrected and adapted, they have kept the tension and fervour with which they were originally created. They provide the reader with a vision of what goes on behind those horrifying images that depict Mexico as a country plagued by narcotrafficking groups and subjected to unbridled homicidal violence. These images hide the complex political reality of the country and the accidents and shocks democracy has suffered.
Much has been written about how civil society challenges authoritarian governments and helps lead the way to democratization. These studies show that neoliberal economic policies have harmed many sectors of society, weakening the state and undermining clientelistic relationships that previously provided material benefits to middle- and low-income citizens, who are then motivated to organize coalitions to work for greater social justice and equality. Recognizing this important role played by civil society organizations, Jon Shefner goes further and analyzes the variegated nature of the interests represented in these coalitions, arguing that the differences among civil society actors are at least as important as their similarities in explaining how they function and what success, or lack thereof, they have experienced. Through an ethnographic examination extending over a decade, Shefner tells the story of how a poor community on the urban fringe of Guadalajara mobilized through an organization called the Unión de Colonos Independientes (UCI) to work for economic improvement with the support of Jesuits inspired by liberation theology. Yet Mexico’s successful formal democratic transition, won with the elections in 2000, was followed by the dissolution of the coalition. Neither political access for the urban poor, nor their material well-being, has increased with democratization. The unity and even the concept of civil society has thus turned out to be an illusion.
Placing this book in the context of NAFTA and Mexican movements for social change, journalist and historian Dan La Botz unveils the forces behind Marcos and the Zapatista Rebellion of January 1994 and re-examines the circumstances surrounding the assasination of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio. Contains a detailed analysis of how Ernesto Zedillo and the PRI won the August 21, 1994 elections and includes an examination of widespread electoral fraud. La Botz provides a first-hand account of the founding of National Democratic Converntion (CND), the new force for democracy and social justice in Mexico led by Rosario Ibarra. Ibarra is Mexico's leading human rights activist and first woman presidential candidate.
Author : Daniel C. Levy,Kathleen Bruhn Publisher : Univ of California Press Page : 376 pages File Size : 53,6 Mb Release : 2006-01-26 Category : History ISBN : 9780520932616
This engaging book provides a broad and accessible analysis of Mexico's contemporary struggle for democratic development. Now completely revised, it brings up to date issues ranging from electoral reform and accountability to drug trafficking, migration, and NAFTA. It also considers the rapidly changing role of Mexico's mass and elite groups, and its national institutions, including the media, the military, and the Church.
Democracy Within Reason by Miguel Angel Centeno Pdf
During the 1980s the Mexican regime faced a series of economic, social, and political disasters that led many to question its survival. Yet by 1992 the economy was again growing, with inflation under control and the confidence of international investors restored. Mexico was now touted as an example for regimes in Eastern Europe to emulate. How did Carlos Salinas and his team of technocrats manage to gain political power sufficient to impose their economic model? How did they sustain their revolution from above despite the hardships these changes brought for many Mexicans? How did they stage their remarkable political comeback and create their “democracy within reason”? Why did Salinas succeed in keeping control of his revolution while Mikhail Gorbachev failed to do so in his similar effort at radical reform? Miguel Centeno addresses these questions by analyzing three critical developments in the Mexican state: the centralization of power within the bureaucracy; the rise of a new generation of technocrats and their use of a complex system of political networks; and the dominance of a neoliberal ideology and technocratic vision that guided policy decisions and limited democratic participation. In his conclusion the author proposes some alternative scenarios for Mexico’s future, including the role of NAFTA, and suggests lessons for the study of regimes undertaking similar transitions. Of obvious interest to students of contemporary Mexico and Latin America, the book will also be very useful for those analyzing the transition to the market in other countries, the role of knowledge in public policy, and the nature of the modern state in general.
Elites, Masses, and the Struggle for Democracy in Mexico by Sara Schatz Pdf
In this book, a new general model of delayed transitions to democracy is proposed and used to analyze Mexico's transition to democracy. This model attempts to explain the slow, gradual dynamics of change characteristic of delayed transitions to democracy and is developed in a way that makes it generalizable to other regional contexts. Utilizing both qualitative and quantitative data based on an original data set of forty thousand individual interviews, Schatz analyzes how the historical authoritarian corporate shaping of interests and forms of political consciousness has fractured the social base of the democratic opposition and inhibited democratizing social action. Using comparative cases of delayed transitions to democracy, the author's conclusions challenge and improve upon current theories of democratization. In elaborating a model for the delayed transition to democracy, the author argues that the emphasis on transformative industrialism in both political modernization and class-analytic theories of social bases of democratization is modeled too closely on the western European process of democratization to allow a full explanation of the case of Mexico's transition to democracy. In addition, she argues that a delayed transitions model provides a more adequate explanation of gradual transitions to democracy because such a model builds on a the insights of structural theories regarding the social bases of anti-authoritarian mobilization. To support the delayed transitions model, Schatz compares Mexico with Taiwan and Tanzania, countries also characterized by delayed transitions to democracy in the late twentieth century. This important book fills a considerable gap in the literature on democratization at the end of the century.
Building the Fourth Estate by Chappell Lawson,Joseph Chappell Hutcheson Lawson Pdf
Building the Fourth Estate reveals the crucial part played by the Mexican media in the country's remarkable recent political transformation. Based on an in-depth examination of Mexico's print and broadcast media over the last twenty-five years, Chappell Lawson traces the role of the media in that country's move toward democracy, demonstrating the reciprocal relationship between changes in the press and changes in the political system. In addition to illuminating the nature of political change in Mexico, Lawson's findings have broad implications for understanding the role of the mass media in democratization around the world. -- from back cover.
In 2000, Mexico's long invincible Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) lost the presidential election to Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN). The ensuing changeover--after 71 years of PRI dominance--was hailed as the beginning of a new era of hope for Mexico. Yet the promises of the PAN victory were not consolidated. In this vivid account of Mexico's recent history, a journalist with extensive reporting experience investigates the nation's young democracy, its shortcomings and achievements, and why the PRI is favored to retake the presidency in 2012.Jo Tuckman reports on the murky, terrifying world of Mexico's drug wars, the counterproductive government strategy, and the impact of U.S. policies. She describes the reluctance and inability of politicians to seriously tackle rampant corruption, environmental degradation, pervasive poverty, and acute inequality. To make matters worse, the influence of non-elected interest groups has grown and public trust in almost all institutions--including the Catholic church--is fading. The pressure valve once presented by emigration is also closing. Even so, there are positive signs: the critical media cannot be easily controlled, and small but determined citizen groups notch up significant, if partial, victories for accountability. While Mexico faces complex challenges that can often seem insurmountable, Tuckman concludes, the unflagging vitality and imagination of many in Mexico inspire hope for a better future.
