Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Courting Democracy in Mexico
- 1 Electoral Courts and Actor Compliance: Opposition-Authoritarian Relations and Protracted Transitions
- 2 Ties That Bind and Even Constrict: Why Authoritarians Tolerate Electoral Reforms
- 3 Mexico's National Electoral Justice Success: From Oxymoron to Legal Norm in Just over a Decade
- 4 Mexico's Local Electoral Justice Failures: Gubernatorial (S)Election Beyond the Shadows of the Law
- 5 The Gap Between Law and Practice: Institutional Failure and Opposition Success in Postelectoral Conflicts, 1989–2000
- 6 The National Action Party: Dilemmas of Rightist Oppositions Defined by Authoritarian Collusion
- 7 The Party of the Democratic Revolution: From Postelectoral Movements to Electoral Competitors
- 8 Dedazo from the Center to Finger Pointing from the Periphery: PRI Hard-Liners Challenge Mexico's Electoral Institutions
- 9 A Quarter Century of “Mexicanization”: Lessons from a Protracted Transition
- Appendix A Coding the Postelectoral Conflict Dependent Variable
- Appendix B Coding of Independent Variables
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - The Party of the Democratic Revolution: From Postelectoral Movements to Electoral Competitors
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Courting Democracy in Mexico
- 1 Electoral Courts and Actor Compliance: Opposition-Authoritarian Relations and Protracted Transitions
- 2 Ties That Bind and Even Constrict: Why Authoritarians Tolerate Electoral Reforms
- 3 Mexico's National Electoral Justice Success: From Oxymoron to Legal Norm in Just over a Decade
- 4 Mexico's Local Electoral Justice Failures: Gubernatorial (S)Election Beyond the Shadows of the Law
- 5 The Gap Between Law and Practice: Institutional Failure and Opposition Success in Postelectoral Conflicts, 1989–2000
- 6 The National Action Party: Dilemmas of Rightist Oppositions Defined by Authoritarian Collusion
- 7 The Party of the Democratic Revolution: From Postelectoral Movements to Electoral Competitors
- 8 Dedazo from the Center to Finger Pointing from the Periphery: PRI Hard-Liners Challenge Mexico's Electoral Institutions
- 9 A Quarter Century of “Mexicanization”: Lessons from a Protracted Transition
- Appendix A Coding the Postelectoral Conflict Dependent Variable
- Appendix B Coding of Independent Variables
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
For my enemies, the law; for my friends, whatever they want.
Getulio Vargas (Brazilian president, 1930–45)The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) also spent its formative years debating whether it was even going to perform the functions of a conventional political party. From the beginning, disagreement existed over whether the “party” prioritized the electoral route to power, or whether ideological purity and moral righteousness demanded that the “party” labor primarily as a social movement above the electoral fray, refusing to legitimize PRI-state elections with their participation. The moderates' lack of defined objectives forced the party to bow to the antiregime “movement side” agenda that routinely called for segunda vuelta postelectoral mobilizations as lighting rods for antiregime sentiment. These groups were often at odds, as the “party side” struggled to compete electorally, but without sufficient resources or internal support from the “movement side,” which was always more visible and expedient. The consolidation of the party into a (more or less) unified body committed to facilitating Mexico's democratic transition from within the existing electoral system is traceable only to 1995. The miserable failure of the party's previous strategy of electoral fatalism, that is, the a priori recognition that the party would receive its electoral merits only through the segunda vuelta (and not even through the elections themselves), led to an inevitable reassessment after a string of poor electoral performances in the early 1990s.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Courting Democracy in MexicoParty Strategies and Electoral Institutions, pp. 198 - 233Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003