Mexico

POLITICS IN MEXICO is unique because the country has operated mostly under a state-controlled, one-party system since 1929, even though that party has been pitted against a number of other parties in popular elections.

While the governing party has been authoritarian, it has never been totalitarian. This unique one-party system has flourished, because Mexicans tend to be more interested in practicalities like jobs and contracts than in ideology. Thus, Mexico has become known for its stability and continued economic growth. This stability has made Mexico the only Latin American country that has never experienced a military coup. Instead, Mexican presidents have peacefully yielded power at the end of their six-year terms.

While the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI), Mexico's ruling party, began as a revolutionary party, espousing secularism, nationalism, and populism, the party has encompassed all branches of Mexican political ideology. Scholars have identified the “pendulum effect” in Mexican politics, which means that control of the ruling party has consistently swung from left to right and back again, making PRI's ideology difficult to pinpoint. Overall, the party has been conservative in domestic policies but liberal on foreign policy issues.

The emphasis on liberalism or conservatism has generally been dependent on particular presidential administrations, with the extreme left represented by Lazaro Cardenas during the revolutionary period (1934–40), and the extreme right personified by Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1964–70). PRI's rightward shift began in 1940 with the election of Manuel Avila Camacho.

The Cardenas regime, with its policies of land reform, support for the ejidos, its nationalization of petroleum, as well as its foreign policy of supporting the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War, came closest to the social-democratic model of European states.

Because PRI has operated on a patronage system, the party has historically amassed enormous political loyalty. It has further enhanced its popularity by working in tandem with the Catholic Church, the Mexican military, and the academic community. PRI has sometimes retained its power through what many consider to be fraudulent means. In 1988, for example, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari was awarded 50 percent of the vote despite numerous challenges to the official vote count. Subsequent electoral reforms included counterforgery features on paper ballots and guarding privacy inside the voting booth.

PRI's major opposition, the National Action Party (PAN) was founded in 1939 but was unable to win a presidential election until 2000 when Vicente Fox became Mexico's first non-PRI president in seven decades. As a center-right party, PAN is consistently pro-business. On social issues, most members of PAN are opposed to abortion and homosexuality. Some more conservative members of PAN also believe in art censorship and hope to wipe out profanity and miniskirts.

Despite PAN's win in 2000, the PRI was not totally defeated. The party won 209 of 500 lower house seats and 60 of the 128 senate seats. PRI has splintered over possible strategies for a return to power in 2006. Because they control only 30 percent of house seats and 38 percent of senate seats, Fox and PAN have been prevented from following through on many campaign promises.

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