PART II - THE POLITICS OF CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW IN MEXICO
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
Summary
In many respects, July 2, 2000, the day on which Vicente Fox's presidential campaign ended seventy-one years of Partido Revolucionario Institutional (PRI) rule, marks a watershed in Mexican political history. After July 2, it was impossible to claim that no meaningful opportunity existed for national representation outside the broad yet ultimately exclusive structure of the PRI. The election suggested that power could be transferred peacefully between parties via fair democratic procedures. Patterns of political participation also changed in 2000. Historically, the educated and politically aware participated at levels far below what standard turnout models predict. The PRI strategy of mobilizing poor and rural voters through clientelistic networks and corporatist state structures induced a participatory pattern reflective of broad cynicism in the electorate. In 2000, however, participation patterns reflected those of advanced democracies, indicating that Mexicans came to believe en masse that their votes would count (Klesner and Lawson 2001).
Certainly, July 2 was a big day. Yet, although the Fox victory serves as a useful symbol of the transition, treating the date as a true critical juncture misses two important elements of the democratization process. Most scholars of Mexico perceive the transition to have been protracted, playing out in a variety of ways (e.g., development of significant opposition parties, increased political competition at the state level, PRI congressional losses in 1997, and so on) roughly during the fifteen years preceding the Fox election (Cornelius, Gentleman, and Smith 1989; Shirk 2005; Wuhs 2008).
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- Judicial Power and Strategic Communication in Mexico , pp. 47 - 52Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010