Description
The victory by Vicente Fox Quesada in Mexico’s July 2000 presidential election used to be a watershed within the country’s political history. His triumph convincingly marked the consolidation of electoral democracy and, by ending seven decades of uninterrupted national rule by the “official” Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), symbolized a clear break with the political regime established following the 1910-1920 revolution. On the other hand, many legacies of postrevolutionary authoritarianism persist, and Mexico’s democratization process is still incomplete. The seventeen contributors to this volume assess Mexico’s political dynamics on the turn of the century and the various pending challenges within the construction of a more fully democratic political order. They read about: (1) changes affecting the party system, electoral institutions, and voting behavior; (2) the evolving role of the armed forces, organized labor, big business, and rural producers; (3) the brand new importance of civil society, the mass media, and cross-border social coalitions; (4) and key problems with political representation and governance, including executive-legislative relations, judicial performance, federalism, the constitutional rights of indigenous peoples, and the political role of Mexicans resident in the USA.