Tuve el honor de escribir el capitulo relativo a Durango en este libro. El texto "Elecciones en Tiempos de Guerra" será una referencia en la Biblioteca del Congreso Estadounidense pues fue elegido entre los "70 trabajos significativos de México". Mexico: Government and Politics Shannan L. Mattiace, Professor of Political Science, Allegheny College HLAS, 69 The Mexican transition to democracy (1977-2000) was long and protracted, and conventional wisdom in political science holds that it was largely the result of a pact among the country’s political elites. Given the importance of democratization in comparative politics, it is not surprising that scholars continue to dedicate their efforts to understand the myriad processes and actors involved. Departing from this focus on the political elite, two recent books highlight the importance of non-elite actors and their role in Mexico’s democratization process. In Popular Movements in Autocracies, Guillermo Trejo argues that religion contributed to the organizational bases for powerful indigenous dissident movements during Mexico’s transition, pushing political elites toward reform. In her book, Rural Protest and the Making of Democracy in Mexico, 1968-2000, Dolores Trevizo focuses on the role of rural actors, namely students, peasants, and businessmen, in Mexico’s transition. She argues that rural protest and resistance to that protest significantly contributed to electorally competitive political parties in Mexico by forcing parties to respond to cycles of protest and counter-protest (bi2012005877). One reoccurring theme in works published on Mexican politics over the last decade has been the focus on elections and voting. This pattern continues in the works under review in this volume. The 2006 presidential election continues to be of interest to scholars. One of the best works on this topic is the edited volume, Democracia Reprobada: la elección presidential de 2006 (bi2012005876), whose authors draw on José Antonio Crespo’s careful analysis of election results (HLAS 67, #1058) to examine the role of specific actors, such as businesspeople and the teachers’ union, in the campaign. Mexican scholars have also written extensively on the 2009 mid-term elections. Los estados en el 2009 (bi2012005992) is a noteworthy treatment of these elections at the state and local level. Over the course of Mexico’s democratization period, state and local elections and governance have become more competitive and of growing interest to scholars, as has the topic of electoral reform; four notable studies are included in this section. First, in an article on state-level electoral reform, Alejandro Monsiváis Carrillo (bi2011002994) examines the effects of reform across several states on the quality of electoral fairness and finds that subnational rule-making matters. Second, in El Centro Dividido, Hernández Rodríguez (bi2012005732), examines the role of governors under PRI dominance and during the post-transition period, and argues that subnational power has increased at the expense of the federal government. Third, in an article on political recruitment, Joy Langston and Gonzalo Celorio Morayta find that state-level politics holds a powerful appeal for federal deputies after they complete their term in office (bi2011001966). Finally, in Cambio Político y Gobernabilidad en Elecciones Locales de Sinaloa (1983-2007) (bi2013000003), Verdugo López argues against the grain of conventional wisdom about electoral competition and multi-party democracy, suggesting that electoral competition and multi-party democracy in Sinaloa have weakened parties’ capacity to be representative and have crowded out social movement organizations. The tension between democracy measured more procedurally (i.e., elections) versus more substantively (i.e., socio-economic equality), has long been apparent in scholarship on Mexican politics and is displayed in the works under review here. In general, scholars who tend to focus on elections and political institutions tend to rate Mexico’s democracy higher than those who define democracy more substantively. Interestingly, David Crow makes the argument that this pattern is true for citizens as well (bi2012003669). Trying to get a bead on the quality of Mexico’s democracy has been a related issue of growing concern to scholars. In general, scholars seem to agree that Mexico scores better on procedural measures of democracy than on the question of representation, social trust, and participation. In the works under review in this volume, three major areas of concern regarding the quality of democracy in Mexico can be identified: the continuing influence of clientelism; public security and the influence of drug trafficking organizations; and low levels of citizen participation in a system dominated by political parties. The result, scholars suggest, are high levels of citizen dissatisfaction with democracy, creating a vicious cycle in which citizens are loathe to participate more fulsomely in the political process and feel increasingly alienated from it. Several notable works on these issues are highlighted below. In La Democracia en Mexico: un analisis a 10 años de la alternancia (bi2013000031), the authors present a rather sobering analysis of Mexican democracy ten years into the transition. Using an original index of state-level democracy, the authors note that the PRD and PAN look increasingly like the PRI in terms of their clientelistic practices, and that across Mexico’s states, citizen dissatisfaction with democracy is high. A particularly note-worthy example of scholarship on drug trafficking is John Bailey’s chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Mexican Politics, edited by Roderic Camp, in which Bailey examines the growing penetration of transnational criminal organizations into Mexican politics. In his book on police reform, Daniel Sabet also (bi2012003037) highlights the continuing influence of clientelism and patronage politics within the police promotion process. Based on an original study of over 5,000 police agents and administrators in Guadalajara, Justiciabarómetro (bi2013000038) is a must-read for students of police reform. Finally, several works address political participation. One of the most compelling is Claudio Holzner’s The Poverty of Democracy (bi2010004525). Departing from conventional analyses of why the poor do not participate in politics, Holzner underscores the influence that political institutions and state activities have on patterns of political behavior, downplaying more individualist explanations, such as human capital levels. Scholars offer mixed reviews of Mexican social movement and civil society mobilization. Diana Guillén, in her account of the post presidential election protests of 2006 (bi2012005313), provides a positive assessment of Mexican civil society, ultimately concluding that it showed increasing maturity over the course of the protest cycle. Luna Pla is similarly upbeat in her book, Movimiento Social del Derecho de Acceso a la Información en México (bi2012005739), in which she argues that a robust social network of academicians, journalists, and civil society activists was instrumental in pushing forward the legislation. Offering a more sobering analysis on the state of Mexican civil society, Alberto Olvera argues that citizens have been crowded out by the dominance of political parties in Mexican society and that existing social movements have not engaged citizens in what he calls a “democratic participatory project” (bi2011003426). In their book, Filantropía y sociedad civil en México, Michael Layton and Alejandro Moreno, also see the glass half empty regarding the state of Mexican civil society. Based on findings from the National Survey of Philanthropy and Civil Society in Mexico, the authors argue that Mexico’s civil society is comparatively unorganized and its reach limited. Similar to several other authors under review here, they argue that citizen perceptions of corruption and insecurity are obstacles to increased civil society activity. The crucial issues of political and policy reform are addressed by many of the authors reviewed for this volume and will be of interest to scholars in the coming years as the Mexican Congress is expected to tackle significant reforms in the area of education, energy, and labor, as well as oversee the implementation of a package of judicial reforms passed in 2008. To this end, the edited volume Debatiendo la reform política (bi2012005882) is a valuable contribution in that it provides readers with tools to analyze recent and upcoming political reforms in Mexico, including balance of powers, candidate selection, and judicial reform. Going forward, more work will be needed on Mexico’s ambitious judicial reform of 2008 as it begins to be implemented at the state level. Also understudied are the Mexican Congress and women in politics, duly noted by Camp in previous HLAS essays. A study on Yucatecan women in the state congress by Paredes Guerrero, Mujer y congreso local (bi2013000036), is a notable exception to this trend. Finally, more scholarship by political scientists is needed on return migration. As thousands of Mexican migrants begin to return home after living and working in the United States, often for years, they confront significant challenges of reintegration into Mexican society and politics. The national and subnational governments are beginning to take note of this trend and develop programs and policies to facilitate re-integration. Finally, as the authors of Mexico’s Democratic Challenges (HLAS 67, item 1092) point out, many questions remain about the outcomes of Mexico’s democratization. While experts, in general, concur that elections are free, freedom of the press and association are widely respected, and citizens have much greater access to public documents that were once hidden from public view, serious deficiencies remain, particularly in areas of social trust and public security. In recent years, scholars of Mexican politics have paid a great deal of attention to the procedural aspects of Mexico’s democracy, particularly to elections. Yet, the continued power of non-elected power brokers (poderes fácticos) within the Mexican political system is troubling. The time is ripe for more attention to these more difficult-to-measure aspects of democracy and non-democracy.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 02:04:45 +0000