Campaigning in an electoral authoritarian regime: The case of Mexico

Comparative Politics

Volumn 41, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 165-181

  Langston, Joy ^a   Morgenstern, Scott ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 62749188779     PISSN: 00104159     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5129/001041509X12911362971954     Document Type: Review

References (84)

1. Timothy Carothers, "The End of the Transition Paradigm," Journal of Democracy, 13 (2002), 5-21
2. Julio Carrión, ed., The Fujimori Legacy: The Rise of Electoral Authoritarianism in Peru (College Station: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006)
3. Larry Diamond, "Elections without Democracy: Thinking about Hybrid Regimes," Journal of Democracy, 13 (2002), 21-35
4. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, "The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism," Journal of Democracy, 13 (2002), 51-65
5. and Andreas Schedler, ed., Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2006).
6. Barry Ames, "Bases of Support for Mexico's Dominant Party," American Political Science Review, 64 (1970), 153-67
7. Frank Dinka and Max Skidmore, "The Functions of Communist One-Party Elections: The Case of Czechoslovakia, 1971," Political Science Quarterly, 88 (1973), 395-422
8. Ronald Hill, "The CPSU in a Soviet Election Campaign," Soviet Studies, 28 (1976), 590-98
9. Everett Jacobs, "Soviet Local Elections: What They Are, and What They Are Not," Soviet Studies, 22 (1970), 61-76.
10. Hill.
11. Kenneth Greene, Why Dominant Parties Lose: Mexico's Democratization in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)
12. Beatriz Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and Its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
13. For exceptions in Taiwan, see I-Chou Liu, "Campaigning in an SNTV System: The Case of the Kuomintang in Taiwan," in Bernard Grofman, Sung-Chull Lee, Edwin Winckler, and Brian Wbodall, eds., Elections in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan under the Single Non-Transferable Vote: The Comparative Study of an Embedded Institution (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 181-208
14. Shelly Rigger, "Machine Politics and Protracted Transition in Taiwan," Democratization, 7 (2000), 135-52.
15. For a more general treatment, see Guy Hermet, Richard Rose, and Alain Rouquié, Elections without Choice (New York: Wiley, 1978).
16. C. I. Eugene Kim, "Patterns in the 1967 Korean Elections," Pacific Affairs, 41 (1968), 60-70. See also Hill; Jacobs; and Schedler.
17. This article will use the term gestoría to denote clientelistic practices because, while many of the deputy candidates who were interviewed denied involvement in a clientelistic network, all openly admitted and were proud of their efforts to provide gestoría.
18. Under hegemonic PRI rule, there was no independent electoral agency with a self-sustained bureaucratic body that could organize and monitor elections. Much of this work was done by the candidate, the local sectoral leadership, or the governor (who was also a member of the PRI).
19. The PRI had a mass base that was made up of peasant, teacher, and labor unions grouped into large-scale national organizations. Millions of Mexicans were incorporated into one of these corporatist organizations that were tied politically to the hegemonic party, including teachers and government bureaucrats.
20. Wayne Cornelius, Politics and the Migrant Poor in Mexico City (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975)
21. Susan Eckstein, The Poverty of Revolution: Social Controls of Mexican Urban Poor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).
22. Denise Dresser, "Bringing the Poor Back In: National Solidarity as a Strategy of Regime Legitimation," in Wayne Cornelius, Ann Craig, and Jonathan Fox, eds., Transforming State-Society Relations in Mexico (La Jolla: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, 1994), 143-66
23. Juan Molinar and Jeffrey Weldon, "Electoral Determinants and Consequences of National Solidarity," in Cornelius, Craig, and Fox, eds., pp. 123-42.
24. Jonathan Fox, "The Difficult Transition from Clientelism to Citizenship: Lessons from Mexico," World Politics, 46 (1994), 151-84
25. Merilee Grindle, Bureaucrats, Politicians, and Peasants in Mexico: A Case Study in Public Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).
26. Michael Coppedge, "Parties and Society in Mexico and Venezuela: Why Competition Matters," Comparative Politics, 25 (1993), 253-74
27. Luis Roniger, "Caciquismo and Coronelismo: Contextual Dimensions of Patronage Brokerage in Mexico and Brazil," Latin American Research Review, 22 (1987), 71-99.
28. Robert Agranoff, The Management of Election Campaigns (Boston: Holbrook Press, 1976)
29. James Reichley, The Life of the Parties: A History of American Political Parties (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992)
30. Martin Wattenberg, "From Parties to Candidates: Examining the Role of the Media," Public Opinion Quarterly, 46 (1982), 216-27.
31. Candidate-centered campaigns must sell the candidates to a wide group of potential supporters who are not necessarily loyal members of the party, with television being the most important component of selling this image. See Ronald J. Hrebenar, Matthew J. Burbank, and Robert C. Benedict, Political Parties, Interest Groups, and Political Campaigns (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999), p. 6.
32. John Carey and Matthew Shugart, "Incentives to Cultivate a Personal Vote: A Rank Ordering of Electoral Formulas," Electoral Studies, 14 (1995), 417-39.
33. Graciela Bensusán, "A New Scenario for Mexican Trade Unions," in Kevin Middlebrook, ed., Dilemmas of Political Change in Mexico (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, Center for U.S. Mexican Studies, 2004)
34. Roger Hansen, The Politics of Mexican Development (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971)
35. Kevin Middlebrook, The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism in Mexico (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
36. Karl M. Schmitt, "Congressional Campaigning in Mexico: A View from the Provinces," Journal of InterAmerican Studies, 11 (1969), 93-110, esp. 100 and 106.
37. See also Philip B. Taylor, "The Mexican Elections of 1958: Affirmation of Authoritarianism?," Western Political Quarterly, 13 (1960), 722-33.
38. Interview with Humberto Roque Villanueva, former member of the CEN and former federal deputy, Mexico City, November 17, 2003.
39. Interviews with Fausto Zapata, former federal deputy, April 11, 2000, and with Ruth Blanca Esponda, Mexico City, February, 2000. Luís Medina, a former PRI deputy, also reports that neighborhood leaders were the true organizational base of the party in the district. Interview, Mexico City, September 26,2001.
40. Interview with Jesús María Ramón, former federal deputy, Mexico City, June 15,2004.
41. Luís Maldonado, a former deputy undersecretary of the powerful Secretary of the Interior (Gobernación) stated that "the PRI had the monopoly over the gestión social" because people could not get anything done going through their local government agencies. Lower level PRI affiliates had access to the government resources, which gave the party enormous influence. Interview, Mexico City, July 1, 1996.
42. A former Secretary of Finance of the CEN stated that during electoral periods money was given out at every level to make the clockwork of the PRI function. In exchange for this money, the winner of the seat had to "pledge himself to the party and get the votes." Interview with Eduardo Guerrero Del Castillo, Mexico City, August 9, 1996.
43. Interview with Fausto Zapata.
44. Interview with Luis Medina. Dulce María Sauri, former federal deputy and president of the CEN reports that the sectors were an important element in getting people to the mass rallies in her district. Interview, Mexico City, September 10, 2003.
45. Interview with Dulce Maria Sauri.
46. Interview with Teofilo Arreola, a congressional candidate for the PAN in Jalisco in the 1970s, Mexico City, February 18, 2005.
47. One federal campaigner did state that it was necessary to pay bribes to newspapers to insure positive campaign coverage.
48. Roque Villanueva reports that the CEN paid approximately 10 percent of the congressional campaigning costs. Dulce Mária Sauri reports that the sectors helped pay for her campaign, which was inexpensive because of the lack of media appeals. Jorge Sandoval stated that the CEN paid for part of the campaign, with the governor paying the rest. Interview, Mexico City, May 22, 2002. In cases in which the candidate was not supported by the governor, he had to self-finance the campaign, according to Ing. Garcia Leal, a former federal deputy. Interview, Mexico City, April 29, 2002. Claudia Esqueda, a candidate from the CTM, who won one race and lost another, stated she received money from local businesses that had contracts with the CTM. Interview, Mexico City, April 29, 2002.
49. Heladio Ramírez, former federal deputy (also, former governor and leader of the CNC), reports that he even decided where the voting stations would be placed in more remote areas. Interview, Mexico City, May 16, 2002.
50. Interview, Mexico City, June 15, 2004.
51. Todd Eisenstadt, Courting Democracy in Mexico (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
52. "The PRI vote in rural areas was faked (simulada), but it wasn't outright vote-stealing. Rather, the PRI padded its vote totals. Interview with Federico Berrueto, former member of the CEN, December 10, 2001. See also Jorge Castefieda, "El fraude moderno," Proceso, 773-17, Aug. 26, 1991.
53. Mapache or raccoon was the term used for fraud experts within the PRI because, like these small woodland creatures, the mapaches made off with things of value in the night, but it was hard to prove their presence.
54. A comment made by a former member of the CEN who wishes to remain anonymous.
55. These data have several potential problems. First, during this period fraud was common, and the electoral authoritarian regime was in control of vote counts. The data, therefore, should absorb some contamination. Second, while the PRI was the dominant player, it sometimes allowed "satellite" parties to compete and win, largely in order to avoid a two-party system. In terms of fraudulent vote counts, one can do little, and most analysts believe that a great deal of the fraud perpetrated by the PRI up until the mid 1980s was to inflate its results, not necessarily to change electoral outcomes. See Casteñeda and Eisenstadt. However one sees this issue, any fraud at the district level should inflate the PRI's numbers, and so the bias should work against localism. Another problem in testing the data for signs of localism is distinguishing small independent parties from "satellite" parties, that is, those parties dependent on the PRI. Several autonomous, small left parties cropped up during the 1970s and ran deputy campaigns during the late 1970s and 1980s. The PRI's vote aggregates the PRI with the satellite parties, and the small independent parties are excluded from the analysis. (Running the data without the satellite parties has only a marginal effect on the results.)
56. Scott Morgenstern and Richard F. Potthoff, "The Components of Elections: District Heterogeneity, DistrictTime Effects, and Volatility," Electoral Studies, 24 (2005), 17-40.
57. Scott Morgenstern and Stephen Swindle, "Are Politics Local? An Analysis of Voting Patterns in 23 Democracies," Comparative Political Studies, 38 (2005), 143-70.
58. The data for the years 1977 to 1988 was collected from Silvia Gomez Tagle, Las estadisticas electorales de la reforma politica, Cuadernos del CES, no. 34 (México City: El Colegio de México, 1989). Those from the 1970s were taken from the Diario Oficial de la Nación.
59. Morgenstern and Swindle.
60. Magaloni.
61. Ruth Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political Arena (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)
62. Maria Lorena Cook, Organizing Dissent: Unions, the State and the Democratic Teachers' Movement in Mexico (College Station: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996)
63. Nora Hamilton, The Limits of State Autonomy: Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); Middlebrook.
64. Guadalupe Pacheco, "Los sectores del PRI en las elecciones de 1988," Mexican Studies, 7 (1991)
65. Juan Reyes del Campillo, "Candidatos y campañas en la elección federal de 1991," in Alberto Aziz and Jacqueline Peschard, eds., Las elecciones federales de 1991 (Mexico City: M. A. Porrua, 1992).
66. st, 2nd, 3rd eds. (Mexico City: Presidencia de la República, 1984, 1987, 1989).
67. If the career posts of the deputy were mostly in state government and the state party, he was considered affiliated with a governor or state faction. If he had come up through a union, then he was aligned with a sector. Those whose posts had been mostly in the federal government were assigned that category.
68. The official distribution of PRI deputy affiliation across the three elections from 1979 to 1985 was as follows: Popular sector, 61 percent, Workers, 24 percent, and Peasant, 15 percent. Reyes del Campillo, p. 147. Both Reyes del Campillo and Pacheco recognize that many of the Popular sector's candidates were made up of local candidates tied to local political leaders.
69. The 1991 elections are not considered because after the 1988 electoral scare the PRI leadership changed the distribution of candidacies more radically.
70. Interviews with Pedro Ojeda Paullada, former president of the CEN, Mexico City, March 19, 1996, and with Hector Hugo Olivares, former federal deputy and secretary of Electoral Action of the CEN, Mexico City, February 24, 2000.
71. See Javier Hurtado, Familias, politica y parentesco: Jalisco 1919-1991 (México City: Fondo de Cultura Económica-Universidad de Guadalajara, 1993), for a fascinating picture of the allocation of PRI candidacies in the state of Jalisco.
72. The Popular sector was the most amorphous of the three. In Table 4 only the leaders of the CNOP, or from the FSTSE (bureaucrats), SNTE (teachers), or CNPP (small property owners), were included.
73. This distribution, then, explains the difference between the 42 percent overall score for sectors in Table 3 and the 32 percent of district ownership for sectors in Table 4.
74. Interview with Humberto Cervantes, former federal deputy, Mexico City, June 1, 2004
75. Claudia Esqueda; Maria de las Heras, former PRI strategist and public opinion expert, Mexico City, November 22,2001
76. Ignacio Marván, former PRI strategist, Mexico City, April 5, 2000; Jesús Maria Ramón; and Dulce María Sauri.
77. Interviews with Claudia Esqueda, Hector Hugo Olivares, Heladio Ramírez, Humberto Roque Villanueva, and Fausto Zapata. Ing. García Leal states that the cane workers union was strong in his district, but because he was not a member of this group, it refused to work on his campaign. Jesús Maria Ramón, former federal deputy, states that the CTM was strong only in those districts in which they had a housing project.
78. Interview with Luis Medina.
79. Interview with Fausto Zapata. Also, interview with Miguel Montes, former leader of the PRI in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, April 13, 1999.
80. A leader of the state PRI of Jalisco remarked that in many rural municipalities in the state they had no idea who the militants were, and it was even difficult at times to find the municipal PRI headquarters. Interview with Carlos Sepulvera, April 17,1997, Guadalajara, Jalisco.
81. There were no opposition governors in Mexico until the PAN won its first governorship in 1989. Interview with Ing. García Leal, Socorro Díaz, a former federal deputy, Mexico City, April 23, 2002
82. Fausto Zapata; and Francisco Arroyo Vieyra, a former local and federal deputy from Guanajato, Mexico City, April 21, 1999.
83. Interview with Jorge Esteban Sandoval. Tristan Canales, a former member of the CEN, states that, because the governors had to guarantee the electoral outcomes, they were able to place at least a few of the federal deputy candidates. Interview, Mexico City, February 25, 1997.
84. Fausto Zapata.