Democratic backsliding in Mexico

The 2024 Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index. Mexico ranked as a hybrid regime.

Historically, Mexico has had autocratic and authoritarian regimes throughout the country's history. First, during the ruling of Porfirio Díaz (1884–1911), which improved the economy but overlooked human rights. The second period occurred during the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) era, a political party that held uninterrupted power from 1929 to 2000. Lastly, the third stage during the Morena era, which began in 2018 and has been rolling back numerous democratic reforms in an effort to restore the political landscape that existed in the country prior to the year 2000.

Porfiriato (1876–1911)

Porfirio Diaz ruled Mexico from 1876 and 1911

Porfirio Díaz was a general who ruled Mexico from 1876 until his overthrow in 1911 in a period known as the Porfiriato. He ran for the first time in the 1867 general election, in which he lost to Benito Juárez in a congress dominated by Juárez's supporters. In 1871, Díaz called for the ousting of Juárez with the failed Plan de la Noria, demanding free elections and expressing his opposition to reelection.

Juárez died in 1872, and his successor, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, was overthrown under the 1876 Plan of Tuxtepec. Díaz won the 1877 presidential election unopposed. Once in power, his "no to reelection" slogan was amended to stipulate that a person could not be reelected for consecutive terms and, later, to allow for consecutive terms.

Díaz became a dictator, and during his rule he boosted the country's economy by developing telecommunications, including the expansion of the railroad network and telegraph lines, which attracted foreign capital. However, he openly displayed anti-democratic tendencies, organizing fraudulent elections and either reelecting himself or appointing provisional puppet presidents. Díaz himself said that capitalism would eventually allow more democracy. The editors of the newspaper La Gaceta Comercial downplayed the criticism that opponents of Díaz's government were voicing at the time:

Men of experience care little or nothing if governments are republican or monarchical; what is important is that, under one name or the other, in this or that form, that they realize the ends of the State—security and justice, progress through order

In 1895, 90 percent of the population was struggling financially, while 2 percent belonged to the privileged class. Justo Sierra viewed the lack of democracy as an advantage "for the sake of other phases of its social evolution", and he asserted that reelections were necessary to protect foreign capital and confidence. Díaz ruled until 1911, after the Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910.

Institutional Revolutionary Party era (1929–2000)

Plutarco Elías Calles established the Maximato, and founded the predecessor of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Amid the Mexican Revolution, the country adopted a constitution that forbids reelection. Álvaro Obregón governed between 1920 and 1924 following the revolution, and he was followed by Plutarco Elías Calles: an Obregón supporter who was elected as president in the 1924 elections. During Calles's tenure, the constitution was temporarily amended to allow former presidents to preside in non-consecutive terms. Thus Álvaro Obregón was reelected unopposed in the 1928 election. However, he was killed 16 days later by José de León Toral as a consequence of the Cristero War, which was sparked after Plutarco Elías Calles introduced a law that enforced restrictions against the Catholic Church.

As the constitution forbade Calles from being reelected, he could not formally retain the presidency. Emilio Portes Gil was selected as an interim president and the first of three puppet presidents who showed alignment toward Calles in the period known as the Maximato (1928–1934), in which Calles continued to exercise power and exert influence without holding the presidency. He founded the National Revolutionary Party (PNR) on 4 March 1929, to prevent more political crises and violence. It was formed by military personnel, high-level politicians, labor unions, peasant organizations, and members of minor political parties, which indirectly led to a lack of major opposition. The PNR was renamed the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM) in 1938 and adopted its current name, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), in 1946. The party ruled as a de facto one-party state, in which, rather than having the same politicians run for reelection, new presidents were elected with minimal opposition, in what Daniel Cosío Villegas called "six-year-term monarchies," and Mario Vargas Llosa dubbed the "perfect dictatorship." This helped prevent presidents from accumulating too much power, while allowing them to work on their respective projects.

The PRI ruled Mexico uninterruptedly for 71 years

During the period it dominated national politics, the PRI lacked checks and balances to ensure fair elections or government transparency. Despite this, numerous cases of corruption were exposed, and the population was affected by the economic crises that followed the Mexican Miracle period (1940–1970). These issues contributed to the strengthening of the opposition, leading to changes in politics. A mixed electoral system was introduced by the 1977 political reforms to enable broader representation of opposition parties in an expanded Chamber of Deputies and, in the 1980s and 1990s, further electoral reforms were enacted, including an increased number of proportional-representation deputies for the 1988 general election and the 1990 creation of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) and the Federal Electoral Tribunal (TRIFE) to independently monitor voting irregularities.

Ernesto Zedillo, elected for the PRI in the 1994 election, sought to hold fair elections and refused to endorse a successor candidate, as was customary; as a result, the party chose Francisco Labastida in an open primary instead. The IFE guaranteed objectivity and ensured that all competing political parties received equal airtime. In the 2000 general elections, the PRI lost the presidency for the first time in 71 years, and Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) was elected.

Attempted democratic transition

The PRI's removal from the presidency in 2000 marked a major step in Mexico's democratic transition. Other democratic reforms during this period included the creation of independent checks-and-balances institutions and the adoption of laws, including the Federal Law on Transparency and Access to Information (IFAI), the Superior Auditor of the Federation (ASF), the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL), and more independence to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), among others.

However, Fox's presidency was undermined by gridlock in Congress, a lack of institutional reforms, and an inability to curb corruption. Fox continued the PRI's neoliberal economic policies and failed to reduce social inequality. His successor, Felipe Calderón, launched the war on drug trafficking in Mexico, in which he sent the army to fight against cartels. Additionally, his actions were aimed at gaining legitimacy and demonstrating that he had the support of the military. However, the war contributed to an increase in violence and weakened the state.

As a consequence, public disillusionment over the PAN's failure to fulfill its promises allowed the PRI to regain power under Enrique Peña Nieto in the 2012 elections. His administration was mired in corruption scandals and human rights violations, including media censorship, the Tlatlaya massacre, and the Iguala mass kidnapping, plus introducing ineffective reforms. In 2018, Peña Nieto's last year as president, the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) reported that Mexico was undergoing a process of democratic regression. Similarly, The Economist's Democracy Index defined Mexico as a flawed democracy in the same year.

Negative perceptions of the PRI and the PAN, combined with the rise of populism in the 2010s, led the public to seek a third alternative.

Morena (2018–present)

The Morena party has ruled Mexico since 2018

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) competed in the 2006 and 2012 elections. He alleged that there were several irregularities and the IFE helped to commit fraud during both elections and initially refused to accept the results. In opinion of Adam Przeworski, democracies require the losing side to accept the results. Todd A. Eisenstadt and Alejandro Poiré argue that, despite lacking solid evidence of electoral fraud, AMLO undermined public trust in the country's electoral system, leading to questions about the independence of its electoral authorities.

Following both defeats, López Obrador founded the National Regeneration Movement civil association, which later became a political party in 2014, Morena. He won the 2018 elections, after basing his campaign on promises of an agenda of social justice, anti-corruption measures, economic reform, transparency, and accountability.

Once elected, AMLO openly attacked those he considered adversaries during his conferences, including journalists. He attempted to create an electoral reform to change electoral institutes, a move seen in autocratic societies. Among these reforms were proposals to allow electoral authorities to be elected and to reduce the number of legislators and senators. According to Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Franz, the first step to erode democracy is to "install loyalists in key positions of power". Lisdey Espinoza Pedraza says that it was common during the PRI era to "reward loyalty over competence and prioritize political control over institutional reform".

During his presidency, López Obrador prioritized clientelism to gain electoral support and political dependency. He also influenced the Supreme Court of Mexico to some degree to serve his political interests, despite the constitution requires a separation of powers. Analysts have viewed the 2024 judicial reform as a pivotal moment that accelerated democratic backsliding. The reform allows citizens to elect judges by popular vote. Consequently, it could lead to judges being corrupted into serving the interests of Morena politicians or those of criminal organizations. Additionally, several independent checks-and-balances institutions were dissolved, mainly those responsible for transparency and market competition, and were merged into government agencies.

Many of these reforms and changes were reflected in The Economist's 2021 Democracy Index, which reclassified Mexico from a flawed democracy to a hybrid regime. The country was downgraded from "mostly free" to "low freedom", while its ranking in the Prosperity Index increased in 2024; legal freedom dropped from 54 to 48.6 points; judicial independence dropped from 62.2 to 50.4 points; and political freedom dropped from 65.4 to 55.4 points.

López Obrador lacked a supermajority during his tenure, but his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum obtained it during the 2024 election following an interpretation of laws rather than the popular vote. She promised continuity for AMLO's platform. In the opinion of Javier Martín-Reyes, Sheinbaum's reforms significantly increased democratic erosion after assuming position. She organized the 2025 judicial elections, in which nine Supreme Court judges with a Morena background were elected, in one of the lowest turnouts in the history of the country. She called for a recall election to be held in 2027, coinciding with the legislative elections. Opposition members saw this as an attempt to get her name on the ballot so that her popularity would rub off on her political party, which was already beginning to lose support. The 2026 BTI Index ranked Sheinbaum's administration as "illiberal", describing the Morena regime as "slowly advancing [from an] imperfect democracy to one that more closely resembles what existed during the years of hegemonic control under the [PRI]".

References

This article "Democratic backsliding in Mexico" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Democratic backsliding in Mexico. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

📰 Article(s) of the same category(ies)

• Magdalena Affair
• Marxist–Leninist Centre in Mexico
• Dominion of Pakistan – United Mexican States relations

---