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Thinking outside the (Ballot) Box: Informal Electoral Institutions and Mexico's Political Opening

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Todd A. Eisenstadt
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Abstract

This article studies the development of informal bargaining tables to mitigate postelectoral conflicts in some 15 percent of Mexico's local elections between 1989 and 2000, even as formally autonomous electoral commissions and courts were being constituted. By documenting the dual institutions that resulted, the study qualifies theories of institutional design that take actor consent for granted. It argues that in the Mexican case and perhaps others, elections, particularly subnational elections, are focal points for informal bargaining over rules that are the true motors of protracted transitions. It finds electoral institutions to be critical to democratization, but for reasons beyond those given by most institutionalists.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , Spring 2003 , pp. 25 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 2003

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