Fragile States - Mexico

Question 1

Mexico’s “Civil War Democracy”

Answer 1

• Gained independence from Spain in 1821, after 10 years of war,
  country internally fragmented, governed by a collection of local strongmen (caudillos)
  -Fought costly wars against USA and France, losing nearly half its territory in the 1846-48 war vs. USA
  -Civil war (1910-20) which killed about 1.4M people out of a total population of 15.2M (then PRI = power)
• Regional factions seeking greater rights and autonomy battled a predatory central government

Question 2

One-Party Democracy

Answer 2

• Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) held power for 70 years: 1929-2000 = electoral autocracy
  won rigged elections and established political hegemony (semi-authoritarian)
• Governed through a fusion of state and party, establishing hegemonic control at the federal, state, and local levels
• A ‘clientelist state’, distributing resources to allies in exchange for their loyalty, and punishing opponents by withholding resources.
  -Controlled civil society by corrupting or co-opting dissidents

Question 3

Democratic Transition and Electoral Reform

Answer 3

• Economic crisis of the 1980s shook the PRI’s control of Mexican politics, National Action Party (PAN) became increasingly powerful
• 2000, PAN’s Vicente Fox won the presidency, ending the PRI’s era of control
  -Remodeled its electoral institutions, eliminating vote-rigging and massive electoral fraud
  -Replaced with an independent election body; and a mechanism to ensure oversight by political parties

Question 4

“Economic civil war” (Schedler)

Answer 4

• describes modern mexican politics
• Rather than fight against rebels with a political objective, fighting against a heavily armed enemy with economic aims: the drug cartels
• Since 1990s, Mexico has replaced Colombia as the epicentre of the drug trade in the Western Hemisphere
  drug cartels ”employ lethal violence for private gain, to exploit markets, populations, and states”
• 2006, the Calderon administration declared war on the drug cartels, militarizing a law-enforcement issue and weakening the rule of law in Mexico

Question 5

Drug Wars’ Impact in Mexico (Magaloni and Razu)

Answer 5

• Mexico has functioning democracy in practice
• however, “grip of violence” formal rights—the rights to life, due process, access to justice, and protection from abuses of power—are of little practical significance for most citizens, particularly those who do not belong to the political and economic elite.”