"Electoral Reform in Mexico's Hegemonic Party System:

Perpetuation of Privilege or Democratic Advance?"

Joseph L. Klesner

Kenyon College

Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., 28-31 August 1997.

The movement from a hegemonic party system⁽²⁾ to a political arena in which three parties take over 90 percent of the votes but none exceeds 40 percent has included a fissure within the PRI which produced the core of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática, or PRD), the major party of the center-left, and the slow but steady growth through victories in state and local races of the National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional, or PAN), the major party of the center-right. Protests against electoral fraud, both nonviolent and violent, and the emergence of two separate guerrilla movements in southern Mexico have pushed the PRI to yield some of the advantages it has long held in the electoral process. Economic crises in the 1980s and again in the mid 1990s have contributed to the PRI's loss of credibility as a governing party. Mounting evidence of corruption, even on the part of those who claim to be struggling against it, has created a general sense of public cynicism toward those who govern and their party.⁽³⁾

In the past two decades, in response to challenges both within the formal bounds of the Mexican political system and outside its formal channels, the government has promulgated six separate political reforms, in four rounds of reform-making, each of which has had the party system and the electoral arena as its objectives. Each of these reforms has involved trade-offs in which the government and the PRI have sought to bolster the electoral legitimacy of the regime without conceding too much of the control of electoral politics that has permitted the PRI to win and the PRI-based political elite to govern almost without challenge since the party was created as the National Revolutionary Party (Partido Nacional Revolucionario, or PNR) in 1929. As a much more modern Mexico has confronted fifteen years of economic crisis, maintaining both legitimacy and control through a hegemonic party system has proven impossible. Legitimation by elections has meant the PRI must surrender control of some governmental institutions. Alternatively, preserving control has been possible only through methods such as electoral fraud and truly excessive campaign spending that have delegitimized the regime and even threatened to undermine the legitimacy of anyone's electoral victory.⁽⁴⁾

Although representative institutions sometimes inhibit the capacity of governors to accomplish their ends, thereby threatening political stability, they also can serve to promote stability by channeling the population's political participation into non-violent arenas in which the government party may hope to dominate the electoral contest. A kind of democratic veneer may thereby be placed over an essentially authoritarian regime, producing legitimacy for the government. Elections, though, if there is anything democratic about them, involve uncertainty. Authoritarian rulers would not rule dictatorially if they were willing to submit to uncertainty. Thus, the paradox: the authoritarian government must tinker with the democratic electoral rules to reduce electoral uncertainty to an acceptable level yet still convince its opponents that the electoral arena should be their locus of activity. If the opposition cannot obtain a majority in the legislature, there is little for it to do except criticize the government. Elections are not necessary for that purpose so long as freedom of expression is guaranteed.⁽⁵⁾ The Mexican government has been able to resort to tinkering for twenty years because its opposition has been weak while its party has remained more effective and because it has been able and willing to cheat when counting the votes.

Tinkering with electoral rules and cheating when counting votes may produce secure margins of victory, but when they are relied on excessively, they backfire on the perpetrators. Rather than legitimizing the rule of the government, they delegitimize it. Voters become cynical about the process in which they are asked to take part or they may just not care about the process because they have no reason to do so. High levels of abstentionism at various times in the 1980s may have reflected the alienation and apathy produced by an electoral process the official results of which the voters doubt.⁽⁶⁾

Thus, the Mexican case underscores the centrality of electoral processes and electoral institutions in democratization. Regimes that maintain representative institutions and that use elections as the formal means by which power is transferred (even if real power transfers take place behind the scenes) offer different institutional venues through which democratization can take place than do military regimes that have suspended elections and outlawed political parties, venues that can provide opportunity to the opposition to pursue democratization without recourse to violence and without rupture of the regime. In the Mexican case, the regime's electorally-based legitimation formula permitted the opposition an arena in which to contest the PRI's dominance and forced Mexico's rulers to repeatedly modify electoral rules in order to be able to retain power via the electoral path, to maintain both legitimacy and control. As the 1997 electoral results suggest, those rules may no longer permit the PRI to hold onto power; the latest electoral reforms, completed in 1996, combined with unfavorable political conditions have created the circumstances in which the PRI can be voted out of power. For the PRI to fall at the voting booths could hardly be more appropriate given that it was the PRI's capacity to mobilize votes that gave it a political monopoly in the first place and has kept it in power for seven decades.

In this paper I will explore Mexico's transition from a hegemonic party system to a system in which three parties effectively compete for power at all levels of government by focusing on the long process of electoral and political reform which facilitated the growth of opposition parties capable of defeating the PRI in free and fair elections. To do so, first I will review the legal and social bases of the PRI's hegemony as it stood in the mid 1960s, just before the government's repression of the student movement of 1968 that shattered the legitimacy of PRI rule and began the process of social pressure and government reaction that has marked Mexico's slow movement toward democracy. Then I will analyze the structural forces that have created the social conditions for the rise of opposition parties. My third section will examine the major features of the Mexican political system that have been subject to change in the long process of reform. Finally, I will consider four rounds of reform (six separate reform laws) sequentially, giving special attention (1) to the ways in which each embodied responses to crises of legitimacy, (2) to how each conceded certain aspects of control of the political process, and (3) to the extent to which each gave the government and the PRI greater control of electoral outcomes. As I do so, I will examine the electoral and political consequences of electoral reform as they have unfolded over the past twenty years.

Mexico's Hegemonic Party System

When considering non-electoral aspects of the Mexican regime, scholars have depicted Mexico after 1929 through the 1980s as a relatively authoritarian regime.⁽⁷⁾ Its pressure groups exerted little pressure because they were captured by the official party's corporatist structure, their activities regulated and their leaders coopted. Thereby the regime controlled and constrained political competition.⁽⁸⁾ The political competition that did exist was limited mostly to the circles of the political elite, those civilian politicians carefully recruited and promoted by the leadership of the "revolutionary family."⁽⁹⁾ In this competition the citizenry had little or no opportunity to express its preferences. The upper reaches of this political elite monopolized decision-making, with all major policy initiatives originating with the president. Not only was decision-making highly centralized, it was also highly secretive. Opponents of a policy found it difficult to criticize a policy proposal and even more difficult to contribute to shaping the final law.⁽¹⁰⁾ Basic civil liberties were usually respected, but some exceptions to the rule were glaring and well-remembered by Mexicans,⁽¹¹⁾ while others have only recently come to light as the result of investigative journalism.⁽¹²⁾

In a regime with non-electoral dimensions of such clearly authoritarian characteristics as post-revolutionary Mexico, elections assumed a critical role in maintaining the revolutionary legitimacy so strongly sought by the civilian elite which ruled it after the 1930s. After the formation of the PNR in 1929 and certainly following the election of 1940, Mexico was no longer a country whose leadership was determined by "revolutions," that is, coups d'etat and insurrections.⁽¹³⁾ But succession to leadership of the increasingly civilian elite, to the presidency, required electoral legitimacy since the Revolution had originally been made behind the slogan, "effective suffrage, no re-election."⁽¹⁴⁾ Elections were necessary, but completely non-competitive elections, ideal for maintaining control, would have mirrored too blatantly the Mexico of Porfirio Díaz, the regime against which the revolutionaries had risen. Mexico's rulers preferred moderate opposition to more extreme opposition, since in the post-World War II era the extreme left was suspected throughout the Western world and in Mexico the extreme right was considered a counter-revolutionary threat.⁽¹⁵⁾ Through legal tactics more extreme opposition parties were disqualified from electoral competition and less extreme, maverick challengers were overwhelmed through fraud and even more violent methods. This system illustrated "electoral protectionism" at work, designed to protect the PRI from internal splintering as well as from the organized left, with the ultimate purpose of promoting political stability ⁽¹⁶⁾ From the 1940s through the 1960s, to oppose meant to provide loyal but non-competitive opposition. For this, the PAN and two tiny parties, the Popular Socialist Party (Partido Popular Socialista, or PPS) and the Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution (Partido Auténtico de la Revolución Mexicana, or PARM) were well placed.⁽¹⁷⁾

Legal Means of Maintaining Electoral Control. To keep the more extreme parties and the less predictable opponents out of the electoral process, the PRI's monopoly deputation in congress passed an electoral law in 1946 that made it difficult for opposition parties to operate legally:  any party had to have at least 30,000 members, 1,000 or more distributed in at least two-thirds of the federal entities (states and territories) at any time.⁽¹⁸⁾  This law threatened parties of the far right and the far left because it required that individuals in their ranks be listed on party roles so that the party could maintain the minimum membership. It forced the Communist party (Partido Comunista Mexicano, or PCM) underground because it could not meet these requirements nor provisions of the law which prohibited parties from entering into accords with international organizations or affiliations with foreign political parties. As Juan Molinar has argued, this law also forced an opposition party to be a national opposition or an illegal opposition; regional parties could not meet legal requirements.⁽¹⁹⁾

The 1946 electoral law also gave the government and the PRI complete control over the electoral process by giving government and PRI personnel controlling positions in the Federal Electoral Commission (Comisión Federal Electoral, or CFE) and by giving formal confirmation of both presidential and congressional election results to the two houses of congress assembled as an electoral congress.  The Secretary of Interior (Gobernación) was charged with investigating the activities of parties and allowed to cancel their registration if in violation of the law. Control of the CFE insured that even if undesirable parties managed to meet the membership requirements for registration, their registration could be held up or denied if the government decided that such parties did not direct their public actions in line with "the precepts of the political Constitution of the United Mexican States and in respect to the national institutions it establishes."⁽²⁰⁾ The government's control of the Electoral Congress enhanced its capacity to reward more moderate opposition parties by granting them occasional victories in deputy races. At the same time, wholesale opposition victories could be staved off in the Electoral Congress because the PRI held well over 90 percent of the seats in it. Overall, the 1946 electoral law therefore contributed to the PRI's hegemony in electoral politics by stifling the less moderate opposition's legal opportunities to compete in elections.

Social Bases of PRI Hegemony. Beyond the electoral rules that greatly favored the PRI, how did it accomplish its astounding electoral record? Certainly electoral shenanigans and electoral violence played their parts, but Mexico's revolutionary heritage and the political economy of its modernization also contributed to PRI electoral hegemony.

Most fundamentally, rural Mexico served as the PRI's bastion for six decades. In rural districts the PRI's candidates infrequently faced challengers and when they did they usually won with greater than 90 percent of the vote. A familiar story explains this electoral success. Mexico's revolution was fought, among other reasons, to win justice for peasants. Mexico's most revered post-revolutionary president, Lázaro Cárdenas, delivered on the revolutionary promise of land reform in the 1930s, reorganizing the countryside to reincorporate the ejido, the traditional community-based collective farm. Land reform beneficiaries gratefully rewarded the revolutionary party for its efforts on their behalf, especially at election time. But even if they began to doubt the beneficence of the ruling party, other structures ensured the electoral support of the peasantry for the PRI. The PRI vigorously created peasant organizations at the national level, coopted those which emerged at the local and regional levels, placed PRI militants in the controlling positions in those organizations, and urged the membership to vote PRI at election times. The ejido also had some undemocratic characteristics. Ejidos usually were dominated by caciques (bosses) who delivered the ejidatarios' votes to the PRI; ejidatarios' need for credit often put them in the debt of caciques; and caciques, with their connections to the PRI, often were the real enforcers of order in the countryside. Adding the higher levels of illiteracy or very rudimentary education of rural areas to the aforementioned characteristics, the PRI's advantages in the countryside became clear.⁽²¹⁾ So, the PRI for decades supported a pattern of rural development that led to caciquismo which itself benefited the PRI at election time, furthering its capacity to control the institutions of the Mexican state.

The PRI never dominated urban areas the way it did rural areas. Yet it should not be forgotten that the PRI won a majority of the votes in urban areas until just recently. Within urban areas, the PRI's strength usually has been attributed to the urban "pillars" of the party, the unionized labor force and the so-called "popular sectors." Statistically, lacking survey evidence from the 1960s and early 1970s, it is hard to show that this view reflects electoral reality. Anecdotal evidence is abundant to suggest that union bosses exerted significant pressure over their members to vote for the PRI. The support of the PRI by neighborhood associations whose leaders were coopted by the PRI has been well documented,⁽²²⁾ and the votes for the ruling party by state-sector employees, many of whom owed their jobs to political contacts, while not well documented, has been assumed because the state-sector employees' union, the Federación de Sindicatos de Trabajadores al Servicio del Estado (FSTSE), has been one the largest constituent members of the "popular sector" of the PRI, along with the teachers' union, another PRI stalwart. The greatest support for the opposition in the 1960s and 1970s has been attributed to the middle class. Until the 1980s, this opposition had its only real outlet in the PAN, a center-right party with its basis in Catholic social reformist traditions similar to Christian Democratic parties elsewhere.⁽²³⁾

Up through the 1960s, the relatively cohesive Mexican civilian political elite had ensured itself a monopoly over the organs of the Mexican state by forming a single official party in 1929, by defeating mavericks first militarily during the 1920s and later by using the electoral mobilizational skills of the official party against mavericks, and by eliminating more radical or disloyal oppositions through restrictive electoral legislation. At the same time, this elite enjoyed the legitimacy conferred on it by its massive electoral victories over opposition parties that were national in name only. To ensure that the legitimacy of electoral success was not tarnished by a sense that the victories were against meaningless opposition, the regime allowed a loyal opposition to grow. Yet, the period after 1929, especially after the 1946 electoral law was passed, must be interpreted as a time of narrowing of the electoral arena. This is made clear by Table 1 and Table 2 which show the massive margins victories of the PRI candidates in legislative races and particularly the lack of victories by the opposition in the winner-take-all legislative races.⁽²⁴⁾ Consequently, the Mexican congress became a rubber stamp for presidential initiatives, the basis of presidential authoritarianism.

Structural Bases of the Rise of Opposition

What could have changed the pattern of electoral alignment in which the PRI's complete dominance of the countryside, its probable majority of support from unionized labor and state-sector employees, and its continued support from a significant share of the middle class ensured that the PRI gained more than 70 percent of the votes in most national elections? The success of the development model pursued by the Mexican government in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s contributed to the detachment of voters from the PRI. The failure of the development model in the 1970s and especially in the 1980s helped to accelerate dealignment. The PRI's insistence on lopsided victories and the incapacity of the opposition parties to counter that propensity discouraged dissidents from pursuing the electoral path of opposition.

By the early 1970s, Mexico's hegemonic party had begun to encounter challenges similar to those that Samuel Huntington suggests all such one-party systems, totalitarian or authoritarian, eventually must face:

Four developments which the party must come to terms with are: (1) the emergence of a new, innovative, technical-managerial class; (2) the development of a complex group structure, typical of a more industrial society, whose interests have to be related to the political sphere; (3) the reemergence of a critical intelligentsia apart from and, indeed, increasingly alienated from the institutionalized structures of power; and (4) the demands by local and popular groups for participation in and influence over the political system.⁽²⁵⁾

The PRI had long been able to manage such difficulties. Its corporatist structure was supposed to deal with the demands of interest groups, satisfying some, constraining others. Those seeking an opportunity to participate were to be recruited into the party through its clientelistic system, socialized to the PRI's ways or bought off by many opportunities to enrich themselves through appropriation of public funds. In addition, the party was expected to co-opt intellectuals if it was carefully monitoring societal developments. To advance their careers, public administrators would join the party too.

Yet, by the early 1970s, the PRI had begun to fail at all of these tasks. While able to constrain working-class and campesino demands, often with the help of state-sanctioned or state-administered violence, the PRI proved less capable of mediating and limiting the demands of the growing middle class. The successes of the 1968 student movement proved that the PRI could be by-passed by those intent upon non-electoral forms of participation; the events of the early 1970s--instances of guerrilla insurrection, urban terrorism, continued student unrest, and open conflict between the administration and the private sector--confirmed that the PRI was not channeling all participants.⁽²⁶⁾ Intellectuals increasingly rejected the PRI in the early 1970s, preferring to form their own, as yet illegal, political groups and becoming increasingly strident in their criticism of Mexico's rulers. Finally, a divorce between políticos and técnicos became increasingly apparent. Políticos, operating mostly within the PRI, grew concerned that they were being ignored by the técnicos who occupied more and more key positions in the state apparatus.

Electorally, these social trends were reflected in the gradual decline in the size of the PRI's margin of victory and in the growth of the PAN's share of the vote (Table 1). Especially in urban areas, the PAN polled well. These trends were primarily a function of changes in the Mexican social structure, principally the decline in the portion of the economically active population engaged in agriculture and the increase in the share of the electorate living in urban areas. At the aggregate level before 1988 there was little evidence of partisan dealignment. Indeed, the partisan alignments seemed relatively stable. However, social structural change was leading to an erosion of the PRI base.⁽²⁷⁾ The share of the population in the countryside was declining as was the share of the working class in the organized labor movement. A continuation of these trends would have led to further declines in the PRI's share of the total vote, but without the introduction of other factors, the decline would have been gradual. Likewise, urbanization was leading to declining turnout rates as those in urban areas found themselves able to disregard their obligation to vote when no longer controlled the PRI's caciques.

Declining voter turnout, declining PRI vote percentages, and especially the growth of illegal opposition groups and the emergence of non-electoral modes of political participation proved worrisome to the government by the mid 1970s. These trends, although not yet producing widespread political instability, suggested that the citizenry had become less controllable and would likely become even more out of the PRI's reach. Student unrest and guerrilla violence further implied that the electoral arena did not confer legitimacy to PRI rule for some segments of the population.

The Stacked Deck: What to Reform?

Excessive narrowing of the electoral arena and huge margins of victory create their own challenges to authoritarian rulers. On the one hand, easy victories can create overconfidence and discourage the mobilizational efforts of the government party. Competition keeps the official party from becoming flaccid and thereby encourages local operatives to make those contacts with the electorate that ensure that the voters are not out of reach, uncontrollable. On the other hand, huge victories are suspect and are apt to lead many to label the "democracy" of the system as chimerical. For elections to serve their legitimation function, the contest must seem real and the results must be believable. For party systems to channel the political involvement of the population, thereby enhancing the degree of control exercised by the government, the opponents of the regime must feel there is a purpose to their electoral activity, that they can occasionally win. By the mid 1970s, elections had begun to fail to serve these functions.

Since then, the PRI's opponents both inside and outside the formal party system have targeted three aspects of the electoral system for reform. The regime has responded, sometimes by pre-emptive reform efforts. First, the regime and its opponents have cooperated to advance the degree to which public support for political perspectives other than those of the PRI can be translated into positions in congress, that is, to increase the degree of the representation of the political system. Two aspects of representation in Mexican politics mattered most by the mid 1970s. On the one hand, as mentioned above, the electoral authorities had for three decades disqualified those parties they found too extreme. Many progressives, in particular, felt unrepresented by the party system and the elected officials it produced. The growth of non-electoral participation--the independent union movement, guerrilla insurrection, and student movements--reflected that sense of exclusion. On the other hand, the electoral system used to select members of congress, a single-member-district, winner-take-all system, effectively excluded all parties except the PRI from anything more than token congressional representation (see Table 2). Even the PAN began to wonder by the early 1970s whether it should participate or abstain from electoral politics.⁽²⁸⁾

Second, the opposition has fought to insist that the votes cast for the opposition parties become votes officially received by the opposition, that is, insure the integrity of the electoral process. Again, two elements of the electoral system have proven problematic. The PRI's inclination to resort to electoral fraud has raised demands for greater transparency in the electoral process, so that fraud can be identified and proven, so that such elections can be nullified. However, government control of the official electoral organs has made prosecuting cases of fraud nearly impossible. Thus, opposition parties have demanded non-partisan, professional electoral authorities and mechanisms to reduce the incidence of fraud.

Finally, the opposition has long expressed concern about the extent to which an opposition party can mount a campaign so that it can win, that is, about the levelness of the electoral playing field. Because the PRI has ruled for so long from all positions of power, there arises an inevitable problem of incumbency advantages. This has been exacerbated by the absence of campaign finance rules that would allow the opposition to prove that the PRI has used public resources illegally. Further, because those making public policy have been PRI leaders, they have been able to demand campaign contributions from the private sector, contributions the opposition has never been able to match. Beyond these campaign finance inequalities, the opposition has been ignored by the mass media, thus failing to gain the free attention that the mass media can offer. Campaign finance rules and more equitable access to the mass media, especially the broadcast media which most Mexicans rely on for their political news, have been further issues on which the opposition has sought to promote political reform.

As the following section will detail, the PRI and the government have conceded to opposition demands very gradually, yielding first on representation, but seeking to maintain control of congress when earlier reforms have threatened the PRI majority in the lower house and thereby presidential autocracy. Then the integrity of the electoral process, or clean elections, became the key issue between the regime and its opponents, especially from the mid 1980s until the mid 1990s. Most recently, the government has begun to concede to opposition demands on fair elections by moving on campaign finance reform and access to broadcast media. Throughout the process, the opposition parties have struggled for greater representation, cleaner elections, and a fairer electoral process. Which of these aspects of electoral politics the opposition parties emphasized at any time depended somewhat on recent experience. However, the PAN consistently insisted on creating the mechanisms for clean elections beyond all other reform measures.

Four Rounds of Electoral Reform, 1977-96

Amplifying Representation: 1977's Reforma Política. Coming to office after a presidential campaign in which he faced no legal opposition candidate, in the wake of a major devaluation of the peso and a serious conflict with the private sector, José López Portillo opted for a political reform in 1977 that facilitated the legalization of several political parties, mostly on the left, with the expectation that additional participation would be channeled into futile efforts to win election races, efforts bound to be frustrated, but for which a reward of representation in the Chamber of Deputies would be given.⁽²⁹⁾ In the late 1970s, López Portillo hoped that the benefits of petroleum-produced prosperity would undercut the appeal of more radical elements on the left, and he and his Secretary of Gobernación, Jesús Reyes Heroles, thought it better for purposes of political control (which has been Gobernación's major charge) to have such radical elements within the sphere of open contestation than to force them to operate outside of it. They expected that despite the growing complexity of Mexican society, the growth of new groups less disposed to support the PRI had not advanced so far that these new groups outweighed its traditional bases. Indeed, they counted on some of the previous protest vote, which had generally been directed to the PAN, being redirected to the new parties, in a classic divide-and-conquer strategy. Finally, Reyes Heroles apparently thought that by giving PRI políticos more competition in the form of new, more ideologically challenging parties, and by denying them some aspects of their reliance on fraud and coercion to create the appearances of vigor, the PRI rank and file would be forced to renovate itself, producing new and better local leaders to replace decrepid caciques.⁽³⁰⁾

For their part, opposition parties had reasons to participate in the reform process in 1977, known as the reforma política, but their pressure had little to do with the reform initiative; the 1977 reform meets the definition of pre-emptive reform more completely than do subsequent electoral reforms.⁽³¹⁾ The unregistered parties of the left certainly sought to be legalized, and their goals were met. The PAN was barely consulted; it preferred to remain the principal party of opposition, as its opposition to the introduction of proportional representation in 1977 indicated.⁽³²⁾

Two specific reforms were at the heart of the reforma política (see Table 3 for a summary of the key features of each reform since 1977). To rechannel the efforts of independent leftists, the new electoral law (the Ley Federal de Organizaciones Políticas y Procesos Electorales, the LFOPPE) lowered barriers to the formation and registration of political parties. It established two methods of achieving legal status as a political party.  By the first or "definitive" method, a party had to provide the CFE with a copy of the statutes and principles of the party plus evidence of at least 65,000 party members distributed in one of two ways:  3,000 or more in one-half plus one of the federal entities or 300 or more in one-half plus one of the federal electoral districts.  For more extreme parties, this method had all of the drawbacks of earlier electoral legislation. So, by the second method, a party could apply for "conditional" registration and thereby participate in national elections.  Upon attaining of 1.5 percent of the national vote the party became "permanently" registered, but failure to reach this threshold in three elections after achieving permanent registration would lead to loss of registration.⁽³³⁾

The second major reform initiative in 1977 amended the constitution to enlarge the Chamber of Deputies from about 200 deputies (the exact number depending upon how many minority party deputies elected) to 400, 100 of which were reserved for minority parties (those which won fewer than 60 seats in the 300 winner-take-all single-member district races).  In practice, this meant that all of the opposition parties shared these 100 seats in a proportional representation scheme.⁽³⁴⁾

By these measures, the 1977 law greatly enhanced the abilities of smaller opposition groups to participate in elections and to take seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Congressional representation thereby expanded. Indeed, the conditional registration procedure made it sufficiently easy to form new parties that it inhibited the creation of a unified party of the left which may have been an intention of the López Portillo government.

In addition, the 1977 electoral law granted a small amount of free radio and television time each month to all legally registered parties.  On the CFE, membership changes permitted the PRI to retain its majority, ensuring that it could for the time being control the electoral process.⁽³⁵⁾ Likewise, the elected members of the congress continued to certify their own elections.

In May 1978, five months after the LFOPPE became law, three new parties became registered conditionally. On the right, an outgrowth the UDN, the Mexican Democratic Party (Partido Demócrata Mexicano, or PDM), was granted registration even though opposed by the PRI and the PPS.⁽³⁶⁾ The PCM and the Socialist Workers' Party (Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores, or PST) also became registered. One opposition group, the Mexican Workers' Party (Partido Mexicano de los Trabajadores,or PMT), led by former student movement leader Heberto Castillo, initially chose to seek definitive registration so as to avoid the contingent nature of conditional registration. Not until 1984 did the PMT receive conditional registration. Before the 1982 presidential election, the Revolutionary Workers' Party (Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores, or PRT), a Trotskyist group, and the Social Democratic Party (Partido Socialdemócrata, or PSD), a moderate organization, broadened the ideological spectrum further when they were admitted to conditional registration.⁽³⁷⁾ Overall, by 1985, eight years after the reform process began, five new parties had been registered and met the 1.5 percent condition to remain registered so that the most important of the unregistered marginal groups which sought to participate electorally had been incorporated into the legal, open political process, and a voter did not lack ideological choice. For the government, seeing these parties express themselves in a cacophony of criticisms of the government and of each other that few heard was far preferable to facing a strong party of the left able to channel opposition in a competitive way or non-electoral dissidence. Furthermore, only four congressional districts went to the opposition in 1979 and only one in 1982 (see Table 2). One might conclude that the introduction of the 100 seats chosen by proportional representation and reserved for opposition parties was simply a measure allowing the government to avoid having to recognize PRI losses in the winner-take-all district races.

Coming to power during a severe, debt-induced economic crisis and in the aftermath of his predecessor's nationalization of the banks, President Miguel de la Madrid (1982-1988) chose initially to recognize opposition victories in municipal elections, even in large and important cities. In several important northern cities, the government recognized PAN victories.⁽³⁸⁾ The reactions of the políticos of the PRI to these concessions by the technocratic de la Madrid government were highly critical, and the government responded by refusing to recognize opposition victories at the local level for the remainder of its term.⁽³⁹⁾ The willingness of even the more liberal technocratic elite to maintain the electoral opening created especially by the 1977 reforma política was thrown into question by the sudden vigor of the opposition challenge, a challenge not foreseen in 1977 when expectations of petroleum-induced prosperity promised to rebind the electorate to the PRI. For it to hope for the electoral victories that could bring it a share of power, the Mexican opposition had to get the government, which relied on electoral legitimacy, to play fair. In the 1985 federal congressional elections, and especially in state elections in Chihuahua in 1986, opposition accusations of fraud were loud and well-founded.

The size, the violence, and the widespread nature of demonstrations against corruption and fraud in the aftermath of the 1985 elections and the 1986 gubernatorial election in Chihuahua suggested that many Mexicans were far more discontented with their regime and far more willing to do something about it than anyone had been since the student movement in 1968. Far from legitimizing the government's rule as they had in the past, elections were beginning to be delegitimizing: they only indicated the willingness of the government to circumvent democratic principles to stay in power.⁽⁴⁰⁾ For the remainder of the de la Madrid term, the principal effort of the opposition was not to defeat the government but to restore the integrity of the electoral process. As Molinar argued, as a consequence of the PRI's violation of the electoral rules, much of the opposition began to return to an anti-system position,⁽⁴¹⁾ undermining the gains made with the reforma política.

Advancing Representation, Deterring the Loss of Control: 1986. Although opposition parties had made many demands for further electoral reform as a result of their mistreatment by the PRI in the mid 1980s, the new electoral reorganization that came in 1986 reflected few of their specific demands. In the aftermath of the Chihuahua standoff between the government and a unified opposition,⁽⁴²⁾ de la Madrid put forward a new reform initiative in late 1986. This reform, essentially imposed by the president,⁽⁴³⁾ gave the opposition further opportunities for representation in congress but otherwise strengthened the executive's control of the electoral process.

Specifically, the federal executive now was given the power to name the presidents of every electoral authority from the CFE down to the polling place. Further, to ensure that the PRI did not lose control of the CFE, the formula for representation on it was changed so that it would mirror the parties' vote proportions in the previous federal election. Beyond that, the district level electoral authorities acquired the power to recount the votes of polling stations. Each of these gave greater power to the government and the PRI to arrange an electoral process that would be most favorable to those already in power.⁽⁴⁴⁾ The threat to the regime of opposition victories had hit home.

At the same time, the reform measures again amended the constitution to enlarge the Chamber of Deputies, from 400 to 500 members. Two hundred of the seats would now be chosen by proportional representation. However, the proportional representation seats would not be reserved for opposition parties only. Following a complex formula, if the largest party (surely the PRI) received greater than 51 percent of the votes but less than 70 percent, it could be awarded proportional representation seats if necessary to get its seat total up to what its vote percentage would dictate. Hence, the PRI could not take more than 350 seats, so the opposition parties would surely see their representation in the lower house increased in number, if not in proportions. Also, if the largest party received less than a majority of votes and less than a majority of district seats, it could be awarded proportional representation seats in order to get it up to 251 seats, a majority.⁽⁴⁵⁾ The latter governability clause protected the PRI in the event that its 1988 performance faltered. Again, this reform gave the suggestion that the regime was enhancing the representativeness of the congress.

Another advance in representation came with the introduction of an assembly for the Federal District. Although the de la Madrid government and social movements had wanted an urban reform that would have made the Federal District more like a state, opponents within the PRI managed to forestall the effort. The assembly remained largely consultative, but it did allow Mexico City residents to elect those assembly members who would be consulted.⁽⁴⁶⁾

Hence, while the de la Madrid government gave concessions on representation, the PRI and the government clearly focused on measures to control the electoral process and to insure that the congress and the Mexico City government did not fall out of PRI hands. The opposition, which had emphasized the cleanliness of the electoral process in its demands for reform, found little with which it could be happy in this reform process. Only the PRI and its satellite parties--the PPS, the PST, and the PARM--supported the legislation and constitutional reforms.⁽⁴⁷⁾

In the 1988 presidential elections, facing a PRI maverick for the first time in thirty-six years, the PRI's Carlos Salinas barely took a majority of votes (see Table 1). The fissure within the PRI that produced Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas's challenge to Salinas, backed by a coalition of small parties of the left, including the PRI's traditional satellites, demonstrated that what had been long ago defeated, PRI mavericks, could return to threaten the ruling party. Indeed, some of the rules regulating the electoral process and some of the institutions that had developed in the electoral arena could be used to facilitate such a challenge.⁽⁴⁸⁾ The electoral process itself suffered from grievous irregularities in 1988, including the failure of the computer on which the vote count was being recorded on election evening. The government handled the whole episode in such a sloppy manner that the legitimacy of the electoral process and of Salinas's incoming government became nearly non-existent. To retain control via the electoral arena, the de la Madrid government had had to engage in delegitimizing actions.

Promoting Transparency, Conceding Governability: 1990-94. The PRI debacle in 1988 included a dramatic drop in its representation in the Chamber of Deputies (see Table 2). As a result, Salinas lacked the PRI two-thirds majority necessary in the lower house to amend the constitution. Salinas sought to amend the constitution for several reasons, among them to advance further electoral reforms.⁽⁴⁹⁾ Given the results of the 1988 elections, the opposition understandably reiterated its commitment to a free, fair, and transparent electoral process. To obtain the support of the PAN in his first round of electoral reforms, Salinas promised to refrain from electoral fraud⁽⁵⁰⁾ and put forward a new electoral law in 1990, the Federal Code of Electoral Institutions and Procedures (Código Federal de Instituciones y Procedimientos Electorales, or COFIPE), that "enhanced non-PRI representation on the newly created body charged with organizing the elections (the Instituto Federal Electoral, or IFE), strengthened the oversight function of opposition parties, went further in ensuring the neutrality of the workers handling the election, created an electoral tribunal to handle complaints of fraud, and called for a new voter registration list."⁽⁵¹⁾ In return, the PAN agreed to support a modification of the governability clause of the constitution, whereby a party with no more than 35 percent of the votes could take the majority of seats in the Chamber of Deputies, while strict proportionality would only be applied in the event that no party won 35 percent of the vote.⁽⁵²⁾ The PAN's support of these measures, which disappointed a significant group of party leaders of long militancy in the PAN, was partial and ended up producing a fissure within the organization.⁽⁵³⁾ The Salinas government did not require PAN support to pass the electoral law itself (unlike the constitutional amendments, which required two-thirds of the congress), but it sought to produce a "credible" (or legitimizing) reform. Many PAN demands were thus met.⁽⁵⁴⁾

The governability clause threatened to destroy the representativeness of the congress. By this clause, the party with the most votes (if above 35 percent) automatically would be awarded a majority of lower house seats, "plus two additional seats for each percentage it received above 35 percent until it reached 60 percent of the vote, where it became proportional up to 70 percent of the vote. A ceiling was set at 70 percent of the seats."⁽⁵⁵⁾ Nothing short of a PRI debacle in 1994 could threaten its continued rule.

While the governability clause marked a step backward in the country's slow movement toward democracy by reinforcing presidential domination of the policymaking process, the features of the COFIPE which redesigned the electoral process must be considered a step forward. The IFE, for instance, still included a membership weighted toward the PRI. Its president remained the Secretary of Gobernación, and it included two members from each chamber of congress (one from the majority, one from the minority), representatives from the parties in proportion to their share of the vote (between one and four each), and six magistrates nominated by the president. The president, however, had to put forward twice as many nominees as positions, with the Chamber of Deputies electing the magistrates by a two-thirds margin. Thus, negotiation on the selection of the magistrates became necessary.⁽⁵⁶⁾ The IFE also was to be professionalized and the voter registry completely renovated. By none of these measures did Salinas sacrifice the regime's traditional control of electoral politics, but the PAN (if not Cárdenas's new PRD) considered that it had made gains, especially in regard to defense of the vote.⁽⁵⁷⁾ The PAN leadership also felt that Salinas had kept his promise to refrain from electoral fraud when he allowed the PAN's Ernesto Ruffo to win the 1989 Baja California governor's race. The PRD (which emerged from the coalition that had supported Cárdenas in 1988), in contrast, had endured much electoral violence at the PRI's hands in state elections in Michoacán in the same year and was largely excluded from the electoral reform negotiations.⁽⁵⁸⁾

In the 1991 federal elections, the new governability clause did not come into play as the PRI took 61 percent of the national vote. Another measure in the 1990 legislation which barred parties from postulating a candidate already registered by another party made difficult the PRD's task of consolidating the left.⁽⁵⁹⁾ Seeming to keep his promise to the PAN to eliminate electoral fraud, Salinas intervened in post-electoral conflicts in Guanajuato and San Luis Potosí in 1991, forcing the PRI governors-elect to resign after the PAN and other parties alleged they were elected fraudulently. Both the PAN and the PRD realized the necessity of getting the government back to the bargaining table on electoral reform because their electoral strategies had been surpassed by the PRI in 1991. At the same time, the propensity to resort to post-electoral demonstrations and "second-round" negotiations as a result of those demonstrations threatened to undermine the legitimacy of a PRI victory in the 1994 presidential election if the opposition decided to follow that strategy again.⁽⁶⁰⁾ Finally, concerned to see the North American Free Trade Agreement pass the U.S. Senate, the Salinas government eagerly sought to mollify those U.S. legislators doubtful about the democratic character of Mexico.⁽⁶¹⁾ Hence, in 1993 another round of electoral reform commenced.

As in earlier reforms, the PRI made concessions to the opposition on representation, allowing the Senate to be doubled in size to four senators from each state, the first three going to the party winning the most votes, the fourth to the party finishing second. Thus, at least one-quarter of the Senate would be composed of opposition Senators, not enough to affect the PRI's capacity to rule in those cases in which it needed a two-thirds majority. More significantly, the governability clause was eliminated, but the rules determining the lower house representation became less proportional. Under the new rules, allocation of the district seats and the PR seats was separated.⁽⁶²⁾ Theoretically, the PR seats would be distributed to all parties on a proportional basis, except that no party could take more than 300 seats (60 percent) unless it won more than 60 percent of the votes, in which case the limit would be 315 seats (63 percent). In effect, this measure remained a governability clause so long as the PRI did not collapse in the district races and it created perverse dynamics of competition among the opposition parties.⁽⁶³⁾ However, the limit of 315 appealed to the opposition parties because it denied the PRI the capacity to amend the constitution by itself. Further, the 1993 reforms repealed article 82 of the constitution which had prevented Mexican-born children of foreign-born parents from standing for the presidency. The PAN's Vicente Fox, one of its most popular leaders, thus became eligible for the 2000 presidential election.

Greater advances for the opposition came in regard to the electoral process.⁽⁶⁴⁾ The members of the electoral congresses would no longer certify their own elections to congress as the IFE assumed the role of certifying the electoral results. The opposition parties' concerns about the integrity of the national voter registry were partially alleviated by measures that increased the parties' access to the documents used to create the registry and the voter identification cards. While not yet permitting foreign observers, the COFIPE created the category of "national observers," trained individuals permitted to observe and make statements about the election day events. These actions helped to assure the opposition that the electoral process would be clean. The IFE was also charged with setting campaign spending limits so as to constrain the PRI's advantages in the campaign. The parties became required to submit public annual reports on their spending so that they could be audited. Some of the opposition parties demands regarding regulation of access to the broadcast media were also incorporated into the revised COFIPE.

In the 1993 reforms, then, the PRI, concerned about the delegitimizing consequences of post-electoral confrontations, made some concessions on representation but essentially retained control of the congress so long as it did not collapse in the 1994 voting. For the opposition, it was more important that they had wrung further concessions from the government about the integrity of the electoral process and the levelness of the electoral playing field. Yet, the PRI retained significant advantages in the electoral arena associated with its incumbency and its cordial relations with the broadcast media.

The 1993 reforms barely had been finished when the rebellion in Chiapas broke out in January 1994. The Zapatista rebellion illustrated for all parties that channels of political participation outside the electoral arena could be created, thus encouraging both the PRI and the opposition to do everything possible to maintain the legitimacy of the electoral process. Talks among the parties intended to persevere political stability began almost immediately and included negotiations intended to guarantee an impartial election in 1994.⁽⁶⁵⁾ The March 1994 assassination of the PRI's presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, in March 1994 only heightened the sense of urgency about political stability.

The 1994 electoral reform centered almost exclusively on issues related to the integrity of the electoral process, with the PRI making concessions in terms of its control of electoral authorities so as to sustain the legitimacy of the electoral process. Specifically, the IFE was made more autonomous by replacing the magistrate councilors, nominated by the president, with citizen councilors, chosen by consensus of all three major parties. Party representatives on the IFE lost their vote, though not their voice, in IFE decisions. Electoral fraud became a criminal offense and an Electoral Prosecutor's Office was created to prosecute such offenses. International observers were for the first time granted an accredited status. In addition, while the reforms were being completed, the IFE sponsored two audits of the national voter registry.⁽⁶⁶⁾

The reforms introduced during the Salinas administration demonstrated two separate preoccupations on the part of the parties. The Salinas government and the PRI, on one side, worried about losing control of the congress and thereby the bases of presidential authoritarianism. They tinkered effectively with the governability clause of the constitution to ensure that the PRI could be much overrepresented in the lower house, and even though they yielded some ground by opening the Senate to minority parties, the PRI retained its two-thirds margin in that body. Meanwhile, the opposition parties worked to ensure a clean electoral process and, although with less vigor, a more equitable electoral competition in terms of media access and campaign spending. Each side achieved what it sought; by the time of the 1994 election the integrity of the electoral process had advanced considerably from where it had been in 1988 when the government oversaw a much questioned election, yet the PRI in 1994 was able to take 60 percent of the federal deputy seats with 50 percent of the votes, a comfortable margin in the congress.

Toward a Level Playing Field and a Representative Congress: 1996. In the context of threatened political instability in August 1996, Mexican voters elected Ernesto Zedillo of the PRI to the presidency with a bare majority of the votes, a significant decline from the PRI's greater than 60 percent of the votes in 1991's midterm elections. Zedillo called for a definitive electoral reform upon taking office, a reform that became all the more important to Zedillo's public image after yet another assassination (of PRI secretary general José Francisco Ruiz Massieu), the financial crisis touched off by the devaluation of December 1994, and the mounting evidence of widespread corruption in the outgoing Salinas administration. Although the four parties in congress (PRI, PAN, PRD, and the Labor Party--Partido del Trabajo, or PT) agreed to work out the "definitive" reform in January 1995, the final legislation did not pass the congress until November 1996, and the president's initiatives were amended by his own party in important ways.

The 1996 electoral reform again took up the issue of representation and made further progress toward more representative governmental institutions.⁽⁶⁷⁾ First, the new law made it more difficult for small parties to clutter the party system; conditional registration was eliminated (again) and a two percent threshold established for retention of registration (it had previously been 1.5 percent). Second, the Senate's composition was altered. Henceforth, one quarter of the Senate would be chosen by proportional representation in a single nation consitituency. Third, the overrepresentation of the PRI (or whichever became the largest party) in the Chamber of Deputies was limited to 8 percent above its national vote and no party would be permitted more than 60 percent of the seats. Given the political context in which the reforms were completed, with the PAN having won several state and important local races in late 1994, 1995, and 1996, this provision threatened to end the PRI's control of the lower house. Finally, the 1996 reforms made the position of head (Jefe) of the Federal District, a combination governor of the nation's second-largest federal entity and mayor of the world's largest city, subject to election for the first time since before the revolution. From this position, an opposition politician would have an unusually high-profile bully pulpit from which to criticize the president and the federal government.

To liberalize the electoral process, the opposition parties succeeded in restructuring the IFE. The Secretary of Gobernación and the representatives from the two chambers of congress lost their votes on the IFE's General Council; henceforth, the General Council would include only a president and eight electoral councilors, all chosen by two-thirds vote of the Chamber of Deputies. This General Council would be free from both party and government pressure because all electoral councilors are to be nonpartisan. In addition, electoral law was put under the jurisdication of the Supreme Court and the Federal Electoral Tribunal was restructured, with the magistrates nominated by the Supreme Court.

To democratize the electoral process, public financing of the political parties was greatly increased. Past electoral performance still determined the public financing formula, thus favoring the larger parties, especially the PRI, but no more than 10 percent of campaign funds could come from private sources. In addition, the parties' media access was increased, again determined in part by past performance.

Several aspects of the 1996 reforms that been included in the president's initiative to congress, based on agreements reached in negotiations among the parties and the Secretary of Gobernación (the Bucareli agreements), did not make it to the new COFIPE. The PRI modified the president's initiative in fifteen of its proposals, including curbing measures on campaign finance reform and limiting its loss of past advantages in access to the media.⁽⁶⁸⁾ Although they proved to make significant progress toward a more democratic electoral process, the 1996 reforms were hence what they could have been.

Conclusions: Perpetuation of Privilege or Democratic Advance?

The long process of electoral reform making that has characterized the past twenty years of Mexican politics forces one to ask whether reform making has truly led to democratic progress or has permitted the regime and its party to perpetuate their privileges. The regime's legitimacy has rested in part on its party's electoral success. That success, however, has sometimes endangered the regime's legitimacy when it permitted no room in the legislature for oppositionists, who existed even if they were relatively small in number. Likewise, excessively lopsided margins of victory and the lack of real options at the voting booth, secured as everyone knew by often unscrupulous methods, also discredited the regime. A yearning for too much control and the insistence on the carro completo (the clean sweep of all positions up for election) so that no PRI candidates had to face losing their elections simply did not convince modern Mexico that it had been democratically consulted on election day.

To give up such control, however, has been too threatening to the PRI, and it has thus fought to avoid making real reforms at almost every juncture. When reforms were made in 1977 and 1986, the concessions made to the opposition principally came in the realm of representation, and even then the increased representation was to be largely token in character. Only unexpected setbacks, such as the 1988 debacle, put the PRI in danger of losing control of the congress. As could be expected, the government's response was to reinforce governability provisions in the constitution so that a loss at the polls did not have to be a loss of the society's representative institutions. Where the PRI knew its greatest advantages lay, in the organization of the electoral process and in access to campaign resources, reforms came slowly and only when absolutely necessary in order to insure a credible electoral process--in 1994 and 1996. Likewise, governability provisions have only been pared back when the government felt that the opposition had to be mollified by such changes.

Yet, reform has come to Mexico. The narrow openings made available to the opposition parties have allowed them to build their strength. The PAN has grown slowly in electoral support, taking advantage of the society's rejection of the populist measures of the López Portillo government (especially the 1982 nationalization of the banks) to build its middle-class base, especially in the north and in the Bajío in the center-west. The PRD has similarly found itself able to capitalize on discontent with the social consequences of the Salinas and Zedillo governments' neoliberal economic policies to find voters in Mexico's popular classes, including the peasantry, and especially in the south and the Mexico City area. The obviously growing number of Mexicans willing to defect from the PRI has forced the Salinas and Zedillo governments to offer more genuine political reforms because to fail to do so would discredit the electoral process, threatening to send more Mexicans into the arms of guerrilla insurgents. The widespread sympathy with the Zapatistas in Chiapas provides the most flagrant manifestation of this worry.

Gaining real reforms in 1994 and 1997, the opposition has been able to make effective use of new institutions and rules. Most significantly, in 1997 the PRI failed to regain its majority in the Chamber of Deputies and lost its two-thirds majority in the Senate. Any further reforms to come before the 2000 presidential election will have to have the support of at least one large opposition party. The PRI likewise failed to win the Mexico City local government when it came up for election, losing it to Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and the PRD. In addition, the PAN has taken significant victories in state and local races since 1994. As a result, the PRI's capacity to reward its supporters has been greatly impaired. The PRI will have to embark on a major internal renovation to avoid being marginalized in the future. All of these changes have been overseen by a federal electoral authority, the IFE, that now can operate autonomously.

Electoral reform making has clearly been a process in which the PRI and the government have given up only that margin of their control of the electoral process and the nation's representative institutions that they have felt was necessary to relegitimate the regime. The society, rocked by evidence of the PRI's failure when in government and given an opportunity to see the opposition in campaign, in the legislature, and increasingly governing in city halls and state houses, has demanded further reforms in order to encourage it to continue to use the electoral arena as its major channel of political participation. The PRI and the government have now yielded so much that they no longer control Mexican politics, a situation that must be considered a democratic advance.

1. Frank Brandenburg, The Making of Modern Mexico (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1964), pp. 161ff.

2. Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 230, defines a hegemonic party system as follows: "The hegemonic party neither allows for a formal nor a de facto competition for power. Other parties are permitted to exist, but as second class, licensed parties; . . . the possibility of a rotation in power is not even envisaged."

3. Jorge I. Domínguez and James A. McCann, Democratizing Mexico: Public Opinion and Electoral Choices (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 154-9.

4. The theme of legitimation versus control in Mexican electoral reform has been explored in Joseph L. Klesner, "Electoral Reform in an Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Mexico," Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988; Leopoldo Gómez, "Electoral Processes and Political Legitimacy in an Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Mexico, 1982-1988," Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 1991; and Juan Molinar Horcasitas, El tiempo de la legitimidad: Elecciones, autoritarismo y democracia en México (Mexico City: Cal y Arena, 1991).

5. Elections, of course, provide an excellent opportunity to express criticism because more of the population may be listening. Likewise, the legislature is a good locus for criticism because it is a central political arena. But if elections do not matter and the legislature is just a rubber stamp, people ignore them.

6. Stephen D. Morris, Political Reformism in Mexico: An Overview of Contemporary Mexican Politics (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995), p. 69.

7. Prominent works include Susan Kaufman Purcell, The Mexican Profit-Sharing Decision: Politics in an Authoritarian Regime (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975); José Luis Reyna and Richard S. Weinert (eds.), Authoritarianism in Mexico (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1977); and Peter H. Smith, Labyrinths of Power: Political Recruitment in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).

8. Kevin J. Middlebrook, The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism in Mexico (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); Dale Story, Industry, the State, and Public Policy in Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986).

9. Brandenburg, Making of Modern Mexico; Roger Hansen, The Politics of Mexican Development (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971); Smith, Labyrinths of Power; Roderic Ai Camp, Mexico's Leaders: Their Education and Recruitment (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980).

10. Purcell, The Mexican Profit-Sharing Decision.

11. Evelyn Stevens, Protest and Response in Mexico (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974).

12. The Mexican political weekly Proceso has led the way in producing investigative reports of the repression of peasant uprisings and other protests since it appeared in 1977.

13. Although frustrated challengers for the presidency had often taken up arms in the 1920s, when General Juan Andreu Almazán, a maverick from within the ranks of the revolutionary family, lost his bid to defeat the officially-supported Manuel Avila Camacho in the violence-ridden and blatantly fraudulent elections of 1940, he backed down from his promise to lead an armed rebellion to unseat the government. Lorenzo Meyer, "La Revolución Mexicana y sus elecciones presidenciales, 1911-1940," in Las elecciones en México: evolución y perspectivas, edited by Pablo González Casanova (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1985).

14. Paradoxically, Porfirio Díaz engineered the coup that initially brought him to power behind the slogan of "no re-election." Once in power, Díaz allowed himself to be re-elected repeatedly (he did sit out one term of office, ruling behind the scenes in the second four years of his thirty-five year reign). Francisco Madero, the "apostle" of the Mexican Revolution, mounted his challenge to Díaz behind Díaz's own slogan. Jorge Carpizo, "El principio de no reelección," in Las elecciones en México, ed. by González Casanova.

15. The radical right was represented by the Unión Nacional Sinarquista (National Sinarquista Union, or UNS--the term literally means "without anarchy"), an organization which descended from the conservative peasant rebels who fought against the secularizing aspects of the revolution in the Cristero Rebellion of the late 1920s in which thousands lost their lives. See Jean Meyer, El sinarquismo: ¿Un fascismo mexicano? (Mexico City: Joaquín Mortiz, 1979).

16. David Torres Mejía, "El fin del proteccionismo electoral," Estudios Políticos, nueva época, 1, 1 (1982), pp. 3-11. See also Molinar,, El tiempo de la legitimidad.

17. The PAN was founded in September 1939 by a group of traditionally Catholic professionals led by Manuel Gómez Morín who enlisted the support of some Mexican businessmen who opposed the interventionist economic policies of Cárdenas.  Radical intellectual and labor organizer Vicente Lombardo Toledano founded the Partido Popular, later renamed the PPS, in June 1948, during the presidential term of relatively conservative and pro-capitalist Miguel Alemán, to provide an electoral option for leftists.  The PARM was founded in 1952 by retired revolutionary generals who were alienated from the PRI because of the corruption of the Alemán administration.  Chronologies of these parties are available in Alejandra Lajous, Los partidos políticos en México (Mexico City: Premia, 1985).

18. Francisco José Paoli Bolio, "Legislación electoral y proceso político, 1917-1982," in Las elecciones en México, ed. González Casanova.

19. Molinar, El tiempo de la legitimidad, pp. 42-3.

20. Article 24 of the 1946 law. The text can be found in Legislación electoral mexicana 1812-1973 (Mexico City: Secretaría de Gobernación, 1973), pp. 330-362.

21. Joseph L. Klesner, "Modernization, Economic Crisis, and Electoral Alignment in Mexico," Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 9, 2 (Summer 1993).

22. Wayne A. Cornelius, Politics and the Migrant Poor in Mexico City (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975).

23. Donald J. Mabry, Mexico's Acción Nacional: A Catholic Alternative to Revolution (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1974).

24. A 1963 reform had introduced minority deputies, called "party deputies," whereby opposition parties were granted five seats in the Chamber of Deputies if they received at least 2.5 percent of the national vote and up to fifteen additional deputies (twenty in all), one for each additional 0.5 percent of the national vote. Because only the PAN actually met this standard and the government chose to violate the law in order to give the PPS and the PARM congressional representation, in 1972 a reform of the method of selecting party deputies was introduced, lowering the threshold for representation in the Chamber from 2.5 to 1.5 percent and raising the maximum number of seats available to an opposition party under this party deputy system to twenty-five. . Luis Medina, Evolución electoral en el México contemporáneo (Mexico City: Comisión Federal Electoral, 1978), pp. 31-39; Donald Mabry, "Mexico's Party Deputy System: The First Decade," Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 16, 2 (May 1974), p. 221-233.

25.  "Social and Institutional Dynamics of One-Party Systems," in Authoritarian Politics in Modern Society: The Dynamics of Established One-Party Systems, edited by Samuel P. Huntington and Clement H. Moore (New York: Free Press, 1970), pp. 32-33.

26. Judith Adler Hellman, Mexico in Crisis (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978).

27. Klesner, "Modernization, Economic Crisis, and Electoral Alignment in Mexico."

28. See Carlos Arriola, "La crisis del Partido Acción Nacional (1975-1976)," Foro Internacional, 17, 4 (1977), pp. 542-556.

29. For a summary of the 1977 reform process, see Kevin Middlebrook, "Political Liberalization in an Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Mexico," in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Latin America, edited by Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 123-147. Also Pablo González Casanova, El estado y los partidos políticos en México (Mexico City: Ed. Era, 1981).

30.  See Klesner, "Electoral Reform," esp. Ch. 5. Silvia Gómez Tagle, "Electoral Reform and the Party System, 1977-90," in Neil Harvey (ed.), Mexico: Dilemmas of Transition (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, 1993), esp. p. 66.

31. Kenneth M. Coleman and Charles L. Davis, "Preemptive Reform and the Mexican Working Class," Latin American Research Review, 18, 1 (1983), pp. 3-31.

32. Interviews with Manuel González Hinojosa and Raúl González Schmal, president and secretary-general of the PAN in 1977, Mexico City, 26 June 1984 and 9 July 1984. Also, Klesner, "Electoral Reform," Ch. 5.

33. Ley Federal de Organizaciones Políticas y Procesos Electorales, arts. 31-34.

34. Molinar, El tiempo de la legitimidad, p. 100.

35. By a 1973 electoral law, the commission was made up of the Secretary of Gobernación, as a representative of the executive branch; one senator and one deputy as representatives of the legislative branch; and one representative from each nationally-registered political party. This made the voting lineup four-to- three for the state if the PARM and the PPS chose to vote with the PAN or six to one if they chose to vote with the government. Were there fewer government representatives on the commission or only representatives of the parties on that board, the chance would increase that the government's position on a question of a party's registration or an electoral result could be overturned. Since more independent parties would become registered and thus join the Federal Electoral Commission, the possibilities of defeating the government position on the commission was likely to be improved. So, in a blatant example of tinkering with the electoral system, Gobernación officials chose to increase the number of representatives on the commission which could be counted on to vote for the government position by giving the commission's secretary, a notary public, both voice and vote.

36. Transcript of 3 May 1978 session of the Federal Electoral Commission.

37. Unomásuno, 12 June 1981. The PSD did not meet the requirements of conditional registration by receiving 1.5 percent of the vote in 1982 and so disappeared from legal status.

38. Jorge Orlando Espíritu, "Evaluación de las elecciones locales durante 1983," Nueva Antropología, 7, no. 25 (October 1984), pp. 99-124; Wayne Cornelius, "Political Liberalization in an Authoritarian Regime: Mexico, 1976-1985," in Mexican Politics in Transition, edited by Judith Gentleman (Boulder: Westview, 1987), pp. 22-24.

39. Ibid., pp. 23-32.

40. This is the theme of Gómez, "Electoral Processes and Political Legitimacy in an Authoritarian Regime."

41. El tiempo de la legitimidad, pp. 171-200; idem, "The Future of the Electoral System," in Mexico's Alternative Political Futures, ed. Wayne A. Cornelius, Judith Gentleman, and Peter H. Smith (La Jolla: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California at San Diego, 1989), pp. 265-90.

42. On Chihuahua, see Juan Molinar Horcasitas, "Regreso a Chihuahua," Nexos, no. 111 (March 1987).

43. Gómez Tagle, "Electoral Reform and the Party System," p. 78.

44. Ibid., p. 80. For an uncritical account of de la Madrid's reform agenda, see Mauricio Rossell, La reforma política en Mexico y el Tribunal Federal Electoral (Mexico City: Joaquín Porrúa, 1988).

45. For details, see ibid., pp. 81-4. One should note that the selection of deputies remained a two-step process: First, the district seats were assigned by first-past-the-post rules. Then, the percentage of seats due to the largest party was determined based on its vote percentage. The difference between the district seats and total seats then became the PRI's allocation of PR seats. Only then were the remaining PR seats assigned to the minority parties.

46. See Diane E. Davis, "Failed Democratic Reform in Contemporary Mexico: From Social Movements to the State and Back Again," Journal of Latin American Studies, 26, 2 (May 1994), pp. 375-408.

47. Morris, Political Reformism in Mexico, p. 68.

48. By the LFOPPE, parties were permitted to form coalitions and to support joint candidacies. The satellite party that was the emptiest vessal ideologically, the PARM, became the first party to postulate Cárdenas for president. Another, the PST, renamed itself the Party of the Cardenista National Front for Reconstruction (Partido Frente Cardenista de la Reconstrucción Nacional, or PFCRN) to cash in on the cardenista phenomenon.

49. Several of Salinas's dramatic economic reforms required constitutional amendment--privatizing the banking sector and reforming the ejido, among them. In addition, Salinas sought to normalize relations with the Catholic Church.

50. Latin American Regional Reports: Mexico and Central America, 10 May 1990.

51. Morris, Political Reformism in Mexico, p. 89.

52. Gómez Tagle, "Electoral Reform and the Party System," pp. 82-3.

53. For the PAN leadership's arguments for supporting the COFIPE, see La Jornada, 13 July 1990, p.7; for a view from the dissidents within the party, see Bernardo Bátiz V., "Diputados y grupos parlamentarios," La Jornada, 18 July 1990, p. 5.

54. José Woldenberg, "Legislación electoral: lo que el PAN demanda del PRI," Punto, 9 July 1990 and idem, "Ley electoral y el carrusel de los partidos," La Jornada, 14 July 1990.

55. Jeffrey A. Weldon, "Electoral Competition under the COFIPE (1993 Reforms)," paper prepared for the XIX International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Washington, D.C., 28-30 September 1995, p. 3.

56. Ibid., p. 83.

57. The comments of Diego Fernández de Cevallos to this effect can be found in La Jornada, 18 July 1990, p. 5.

58. Jean-François Prud'homme, "La negociación de las reglas del juego: tres reformas electorales (1988-1994)," Política y Gobierno, 3, 1 (1996), p. 109.

59. Gómez Tagle, "Electoral Reform and the Party System," pp. 84.

60. Prud'homme, "La negotiación de las reglas del juego," p. 113.

61. Ibid., pp. 113-4.

62. Earlier, the distribution of the two types of seats had been linked because the number of districts won determined how many additional seats for which a party would be eligible.

63. With only 167 district wins (56 percent of districts) and 42 percent of the popular vote, the PRI would take a majority of seats (251). Even in 1988 the PRI took 233 districts. If the PRI seemed likely to reach its 300 seat ceiling, opposition parties would be more likely add to their congressional deputation by taking seats from other opposition parties rather than the PRI. See the Monte Carlo experiments conducted by Weldon, "Electoral Competition under the COFIPE."

64. For details of these reforms and the views of the parties about each, see Carter Center, Electoral Reform in Mexico (Atlanta: Carter Center of Emory University, November 1993), pp. 17-31.

65. Prud'homme, "La negotiación de las reglas del juego," p. 120.

66. For details on the 1994 reforms, including discussion of the IFE's actions during the 1994 campaign, see Carter Center, "Elections in Mexico," 3^rd Report (Atlanta: Carter Center of Emory University, August 1994).

67. A good review of the features of the 1996 reforms is given by Jeffrey A. Weldon, "Mexico's 'Definitive' Electoral Reform," Enfoque (Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego), Fall 1996.

68. Juan Pablo González Sandoval (ed.), La república de Babel: Anuario político (Mexico City: Oceano, 1997), pp. 175-7.