Politics of Mexico

Lore & Background

The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) held near-hegemonic power for over seventy years, a dominance rooted in the political framework established after the Mexican Revolution. The party originated as the National Revolutionary Party, founded by Plutarco Elías Calles to resolve a leadership crisis and ensure stable presidential transitions. It was later reorganized under Lázaro Cárdenas into the Party of the Mexican Revolution, structured on a corporate basis with sectors for peasants, labor, the popular sector, and the military, functioning as an extension of the state to mediate internal conflicts. In 1946, the party became the PRI, and the military was removed as a sector. During this period, the government nationalized key industries and enacted land reforms. The PRI’s authoritarian rule faced growing opposition, including student and left-wing protests in the late 1960s, which were met with a violent crackdown known as the Tlatelolco Massacre. Economic instability in the 1980s prompted market reforms and gradual democratic transition. The 1988 election, won by Carlos Salinas de Gortari, was widely regarded as fraudulent, leading to the formation of the Party of the Democratic Revolution by dissident PRI members. Subsequently, the Federal Electoral Institute was created in 1990 to administer elections independently and restore public confidence.

Reader's Guide

The politics of Mexico are defined by a federal presidential representative democratic republic with a multi-party congressional system. The government is divided into executive, legislative, and judicial branches, as established by the 1917 Constitution. The executive branch is led by the President, who serves as both head of state and head of government, advised by a cabinet of secretaries independent of the legislature. The legislative branch is a bicameral Congress of the Union, composed of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. The judiciary includes the Supreme Court of Justice, the Council of the Federal Judiciary, and various tribunals. For most of the twentieth century, Mexican politics were dominated by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which evolved from earlier revolutionary parties. This period began after the Mexican Revolution, which overthrew a dictatorship and led to a new constitutional framework. The PRI’s rule was characterized by a semi-authoritarian model, where the party mediated conflicts between societal sectors like peasants and labor, effectively acting as an extension of the state. Key industries were nationalized, and land reforms were implemented. However, political tension grew, marked by protests against authoritarian rule, culminating in the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre. The fraudulent 1988 presidential election further eroded public trust, prompting the creation of an independent electoral institute to oversee elections. Political parties must register with the National Electoral Institute, receive public funding, and obtain at least three percent of the vote to maintain registration. Major parties include the PRI, the National Action Party, and the National Regeneration Movement.

Did You Know?

• The 1988 presidential election was regarded as 'the most fraudulent in Mexico's history.'

Defining the Discipline and Its Analytical Scope

Comparative politics stands as a systematic branch of political science dedicated to examining how diverse political systems around the world function, differ, and evolve. Rather than studying a single nation in isolation, scholars in this field seek to identify patterns, trends, and regularities that emerge when political regimes, governance structures, electoral mechanisms, and policy outcomes are placed side by side. The discipline asks fundamental questions about why certain systems share characteristics while others diverge sharply, and how developmental shifts have produced these variations over time. Concrete examples illustrate its reach: researchers might contrast presidential systems with parliamentary ones, analyze the mechanics of multi-party arrangements in countries like Canada against the two-party dynamics of the United States, or trace the trajectories of democratization across regions. The field also engages with broader themes such as globalization and political integration, making it a vital lens for understanding the full spectrum of human governance.

Intellectual Lineage: Two Ancient Roots

The intellectual ancestry of comparative politics stretches back to the ancient Greek philosophers, and scholar Philippe C. Schmitter has mapped this lineage into two distinct traditions. The first, which he terms sociological constitutionalism, traces to Aristotle and encompasses a long chain of thinkers including Polybius, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Pareto. In the twentieth century, this tradition was often labeled historical political sociology and carried forward by figures such as Stein Rokkan, T. H. Marshall, Lipset, Juan Linz, and Harry H. Eckstein. The second tradition, legal constitutionalism, originates with Plato and runs through scholars like Léon Duguit, Georges Burdeau, James Bryce, and Woodrow Wilson. Its twentieth-century heirs include Maurice Duverger, Giovanni Sartori, Carl Joachim Friedrich, and Klaus von Beyme. Harry H. Eckstein himself traced the field's history from Aristotle through Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Mosca, Weber, Pareto, Michels, Bryce, and Friedrich, illustrating how deeply layered and continuous this scholarly conversation truly is.

Methodological Debates and the Shift to Subnational Analysis

A central tension in comparative politics concerns whether the field is defined by what it studies or by how it studies it. Arend Lijphart argues the discipline carries no inherent substantive focus; instead, its identity is methodological, concerned with the how of analysis without prescribing the what. Peter Mair and Richard Rose offer a slightly different framing, insisting that comparative politics is shaped by both a substantive commitment to examining national political systems and a method of identifying and explaining similarities and differences through shared conceptual frameworks. Additionally, the discipline requires that comparisons be made at a fixed point in time, typically the present, since systems cannot be meaningfully compared across different historical periods. In recent decades, a significant methodological shift has occurred: while the field historically relied on broad between-country comparisons, contemporary scholars increasingly turn to subnational analysis. This newer approach contributes important methodological, theoretical, and substantive insights, enriching the overall study of political systems and expanding the discipline's analytical toolkit beyond the nation-state boundary.

Theoretical Renewal and Relevance to Global Affairs

Over the past four decades, comparative politics has fueled a wave of new theoretical approaches that have reshaped political science more broadly. Among the influential frameworks are political culture, dependency theory, developmentalism, corporatism, indigenous theories of change, comparative political economy, state-society relations, and new institutionalism. These tools allow scholars to dissect why politically similar organizations operate so differently in different contexts. A striking illustration involves India and the United States: both are majority-rule democracies, yet the U.S. employs a liberal presidential system with a president as head of government, while India operates under a parliamentary system led by a prime minister, and its decision-making processes differ markedly in diversity. The field also plays a critical role in international relations and conflict resolution, helping clarify global legislative issues and the conditions under which nations navigate their strategies. By examining how worldwide frameworks and approaches influence domestic political conduct, comparative politics bridges the gap between internal governance and external strategy, making it indispensable for understanding the interconnected nature of modern political life.

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