Courting democracy in Mexico
Subtitle: party strategies and electoral institutions
By: Todd A. Eisenstadt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 354
Subjects: Elections -- Mexico -- History -- 20th century; Political parties -- Mexico -- History -- 20th century; Democratization -- Mexico; Election law -- Mexico
Description: "This book is perhaps the most comprehensive explanation to date of Mexico's gradual transition to democracy, written from a novel perspective that pits opposition activists' postelectoral conflicts against their usage of regime-constructed electoral courts at the center of the democratization process.

It addresses the puzzle of why, during key moments of Mexico's twenty-seven-year democratic transition, opposition parties failed to use autonomous electoral courts established to mitigate the country's often violent postelectoral disputes, despite formal guarantees of court independence from the Party of the Institutional Revolution, Mexico's ruling party for seventy-one years preceding the watershed 2000 presidential elections.

Drawing on hundreds of author interviews throughout Mexico over a five-year period and extensive original archival research, the author explores choices by the rightist National Action Party and the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution between postelectoral conflict resolution through electoral courts and traditional routes - mobilization and bargaining with the Party of the Institutional Revolution authoritarians.

He argues that these mobilizations divided the ruling party and facilitated the National Action Party's watershed presidential victory in 2000"--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 307-339) and index
Table of contents: title: Electoral courts and actor compliance : opposition-authoritarian relations and protracted transitions; title: Ties that bind and even constrict : why authoritarians tolerate electoral reforms; title: Mexico's national electoral justice success : from oxymoron to legal norm in just over a decade; title: Mexico's local electoral justice failures : gubernatorial (S) election beyond the shadows of the law; title: The gap between law and practice : institutional failure and opposition success in postelectoral conflicts, 1989-2000; title: The National Action Party : dilemmas of rightist oppositions defined by authoritarian collusion; title: The party of the democratic revolution : from postelectoral movements to electoral competitors; title: Dedazo from the center to finger pointing from the periphery : PRI hard-liners challenge Mexico's electoral institutions; title: A quarter century of "Mexicanization" : lessons from a protracted transition