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 Editorials | April 2007 
The Mexican Option
 Alejandro Quiroz Flores - Moneyweb
The battle over the succession to the ANC presidency has proved to be one of the biggest challenges the ruling party has had to face since coming to power in 1994. In the following article Flores describes how the PRI in Mexico, one of the world's most successful ruling parties, managed the succession issue through its seven decades in power.
The selection of candidates is one of the most important issues in politics. Indeed, choosing the right candidate will have important consequences not only for the organization that supports the candidate, but for a population in general. The rules and procedures of selection depend on political institutions. Based on the characteristics of these institutions we can make some predictions about who will be the candidate of a particular political organization. However, these predictions are always slightly uncertain. In spite of this, some cases might be quite illustrative, particularly when it comes to the selection of candidates in "mixed regimes", that is, regimes that occupy a space somewhere in between democracy and autocracy.
One of these cases is Mexico under the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or Institutional Revolutionary Party) government. Mexico was ruled by a single political party from 1929 to the year 2000, when the official PRI candidate lost the federal elections against an even older opposition. For more than 70 years the PRI and its ancestors ruthlessly and effectively ran one of the largest countries in the Americas through a combination of cooptation and repression that has found almost no match in recent political history. The success of the PRI was so well known that, according to some people, high ranking PRI officials were invited by party officials of autocratic governments to come and advise them on ways in which to increase their survival time. The long political survival of the PRI was determined by a number of factors which have been thoroughly analyzed elsewhere. Yet, in this article I want to superficially investigate one of the factors that increased the PRI's time as Mexico's ruler: the selection of candidates.
In short, there were two very basic rules that established who was going to be the new PRI candidate. The first rule was explicitly stated in the Constitution, whereas the second one, just like many others, was unwritten. First, the new candidate could not be a person that had occupied the presidential office before. In other words, once the President had served out his single term in office he was not allowed to stand for re-election. The last President who tried to do so was assassinated while having lunch in 1928. Second, the President was the one and only elector. As long as he did not select himself, he was allowed to freely decide who would succeed him. Indeed, this is exactly how candidates were selected for almost 70 years.
Of course, the selection process was not always smooth. The Mexican President, like many other heads of government, had a menu of potential successors. They were usually drawn from the cabinet. However, ministers were not equally likely to be selected. As it happened, immediately after the end of the revolution, most presidential candidates were generals. After that, most candidates lucky enough to be selected were Ministers of the Interior. This minister was, and still is, a key political operative, as he is in charge of the internal politics of the country. Being a Minister of the Interior, once the transition to civil rule was achieved in 1946, greatly increased the probability of being selected as presidential candidate.
But what happened to those who lost out? Most of them obeyed another rule that complemented the procedure that I just mentioned above. That third rule was succinctly summarized as follows: "whoever moves will not be in the photo". This meant that the "losers" had to obey the presidential mandate. Obedience would, however, pay off, as they would be compensated with some transfer of private goods such as the government of their home state, a seat in the senate, or even an embassy in a civilized country. Nevertheless, there were some bad losers who produced some political instability. The degree of instability produced by the losers varied, as some of them tried to fight the government whereas other founded new political parties.
Finally, the last complementary rule had to do with the untouchable character of the outgoing president. The new president, after being "elected" by the electorate, was pretty much free to do whatever he wanted to do as long as he did not touch the person that had appointed him previously. Of course, this was not always the case. For instance, one President successfully invited a former president to abandon the country for an indefinite period of time. More recently, one president blamed the previous administration for the economic trouble that the country experienced. This has even provided material for some illustrative jokes: an incoming President was told that the previous President had left three letters that would help him to get out of trouble in times of hardship. The first letter said that: "in times of trouble, find a scapegoat (i.e. blame a minister)". The second letter said: "if you are still having problems, blame me (the previous President)". The third letter said: "if you are still having problems, write three letters". At the time, people in Mexico used to say that the President had opened those three letters at the same time.
In spite of the jokes, outgoing Presidents were always insulated from the political process in which the new President had to operate. This also applied to key ministers, usually high ranking officials of the PRI or modern caciques (political actors with strong political support in specific areas of the country). In any case, many ministers were usually given new portfolios in successive administrations. This thickened the wall that protected the private activities of outgoing president and ministers from questioning, investigation, and debate.
These selection rules contributed to the long lasting rule of the PRI in Mexico. These rules were not the only determinants of the PRI's enduring hold on power, but they did contribute to the stability and constant renewal of the PRI. Why did this work? How did the PRI solve the potential commitment problems? It has been argued that authoritarian regimes face a high risk of deposition during their early periods of government. However, once this "risky" period is gone, authoritarian regimes tend to survive much longer than democratic governments. I believe that the PRI managed to survive these difficult initial times due to the political strength of the leaders that founded it and had been controlling the country since 1920. These leaders applied the rules to themselves and made sure that incoming Presidents would do the same. Only through this combination of cooperation and coordination would they be able to survive as a political family, as they did, with the PRI managing to become one of the most successful parties in political history.
Alejandro Quiroz Flores is an advanced PhD student in the Wilf Department of Politics at New York University. He specializes in international relations and methodology. |
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