The Mexican Midterm Congressional and Gubernatorial Elections of 1997: End of the Hegemonic Party System

Electoral Studies

Volumn 16, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 567-575

  Klesner, Joseph L ^a  

^a KENYON COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0006850610     PISSN: 02613794     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/S0261-3794(97)87818-3     Document Type: Article

References (16)

1. About 60 percent of respondents considered electoral fraud to be widespread in a 1988 poll. Franz A. von Sauer, "Measuring Legitimacy in Mexico: An Analysis of Public Opinion during the 1988 Presidential Campaign," Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 8, 2 (Summer 1992), pp. 269-270.
2. Mexico City is the national capital and is located in the DF, which it now essentially fills entirely. There are not separate governments for DF and Mexico City. The head of the Mexico City government (Jefe de Gobierno) was formerly an appointed, cabinet-level position. By the political reform of 1996, the head of government of the DF became an elected position. Whether one considers the head of the DF a mayor of Mexico City or a governor of the DF is in many ways a matter of semantics. The DF does not have the status of a state - e.g., the federal congress legislates on major laws that affect the DF and, unlike states, it does not contain multiple local governments - but it does have a legislative assembly and elects deputies and senators to the federal congress. With 8.5 million residents, the DF is more populous than all except one of the Mexican states.
3. In practice, the voter casts one ballot for the Chamber of Deputies. The candidate selected on the citizen's ballot receives one vote toward his or her seat, and the candidate's party receives one vote toward its party list in that circumscription.
4. I.e., the votes for parties not achieving the 2 percent threshold and annulled votes are thrown out and the remaining parties' vote percentages recalculated to determine the share of the seats they are eligible to receive.
5. This complicated formula reflects on-going struggles between the PRI, which has feared losing control of congress and argues the need for a congressional majority to achieve governability, and the parties of opposition, which see the PRI's effort as an attempt to deny the voters fair representation in its attempt to put off its inevitable demise. Reforms in 1987 and 1990 had earlier redefined the rules by which the proportional representation seats were distributed. The 1987 arrangement followed a relatively strict proportional representation formula, and as a result of the PRI's debacle of 1988, the ruling party entered the 1988-1991 term with a bare majority. Subsequent electoral reforms have included a "governability clause" designed to overrepresent the party receiving the plurality of congressional votes (presumably the PRI) so that it would still obtain a majority of seats and be able to govern without forming a coalition in the lower house. Opposition parties have obviously preferred to remove the disproportionalities in representation associated with the governability clause while the PRI advocates them. Felipe González Roura, Dieter Nohlen, and Daniel Zovatto, Análisis del sistema electoral mexicano: Informe de un grupo de expertos (Mexico City: United Nations Development Program, 1997), pp. 27-30.
6. The changes in the composition of the Senate prove to be just as esoteric as those of the lower house. Once composed of two senators from each state (for a total of 64 seats), one elected during the presidential election year, the other during the midterm elections, the Senate now has 128 seats (four for each federal entity). Two of those seats remain chosen by plurality as they were before. The third goes to the second-ranking party in the plurality race. The fourth is chosen on a proportional representation basis from a national constituency. As of 2000, all are to serve six-year terms that coincide with the presidential term. Because these changes have been added in two stages, the PR-elected senators should have begun a six-year term in the year 2000. Thus, to permit that to happen, those elected this year will only serve three-year terms. See Luis Farías Mackey, La jornada electoral: paso a paso (Mexico City: Miguel Angel Porrúa, 1997), pp. 8-9.
7. See Kathleen Bruhn, Taking on Goliath: The Emergence of a New Left Party and the Struggle for Democracy in Mexico (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).
8. La Jornada, 15 June 1997.
9. See http://www.infosel.com.mx/especial/elecciones/biog/textos/delmazo.htm for Del Mazo's biography.
10. Instituto Federal Electoral, The Mexican Electoral System and the Federal Election (Mexico City: IFE, 1997), pp. 137-41.
11. Ibid., pp. 163-4.
12. This marks the second time these parties have lost their registry. The PPS dates from 1948, the PDM emerged in the early 1970s, and the PC, earlier known as the Socialist Workers' Party (Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores) and then as the Party of the Cardenista Front for National Reconstruction (Partido del Frente Cardenista de Reconstrucción National) was founded in 1975. Silvia Gómez Tagle, La transición inconclusa: Treinta años de elecciones en México (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1977), pp. 140-9.
13. Although there have been suggestions that the PT and the PVEM can be bought off to form a majority with the PRI, the PT's leadership has denied that will happen (Reforma, 9 July 1977) and the PVEM leadership includes prominent anti-PRI elements.
14. Joseph L. Klesner, "The 1994 Mexican Elections: Manifestation of a Divided Society?" Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 11, 1 (Winter 1995), pp. 137-149.
15. All figures taken from Gómez Tagle, La transición inconclusa, p. 27.
16. Instituto Federal Electoral, press release, 10 July 1977.