Research On The Process Of Incremental Democratic Transition Of Mexico

In summary, this paper finds out three theoretic perspectives about the democratic transition: the perspective of political agents'actions, the perspective of structural variable, the perspective of political incidents. Based on the above-mentioned perspectives and the actual experiences of democratic transition of PRI's authoritarian regime, this paper presents three assumptions:the initial type of PRI's authoritarian regime, the domestic political agents'actions of Mexico and several important political and economic crises in the mid of70s of20th century, all play significant or decisive role in Mexico's democratic transition.First of all, the initial type of PRI's authoritarian regime has important influence in the Mexico's democratic transition. This paper analyzes the PRI's authoritarian regime from three aspects:the institutionalization of administrative centralization, the "enveloped" political participation and the one party hegemony of party pattern. Specifically speaking, during the period of1910s and1940s, Mexico experienced the phrase of destroying the old institutions and the phrase of building the new political order of institutionalization of administrative centralization. By the establishment of a corporatism party, the Mexico's revolutionary government strengthened the administrative centralization of the president, at the same time, established the institutionalized transfer of supreme administrative power. By the establishment of corporatism organization system, the PRI finished the integration of the masses inspired by the revolution, realized the "enveloped" political participation. By the reform of electoral system, the PRI realized the normalization of political competition, at the same time, in the help of clientelism patron system, the PRI always in the hegemonic situation in several decades of times.Secondly, crisis instants played important role in the democratic transition of the PRI's authoritarian regime. To cope with the economic crisis abrupt in the1980s, the PRI government forced to impose the neo-liberalism economic reform. Along with the privatization of public enterprises and the laid-off of the government employees, the PRI's clientelism patron sources drained out rapidly, for the loss of clientelism patron, the corporatism organization system was placed in tension. Plus with the National Solidarity Program (PRONASOL), put into effect in the Salinas government, the retreat of the government action from the rural area and its hard attitude when the tension between the union and government exacerbated, resulted in the collapse of the PRI's corporatism organization system finally.Under the dual effect of structural change of political power and the economic crisis, the main political agents all experienced profound change and transformation. In the efforts of the homogeneous presidential cabinet in power, the crisis countermeasures of the Miguel de la Madrid government upgraded rapidly and profoundly, which resulted in the Democratic Current (DC) took the inner-party action out of dissatisfaction, nevertheless, irreconcilable inner-party conflict at last caused the DC split from the PRI. One of the1976inner-party crises of PAN was the electoral crisis of PRI's authoritarian regime, in order to recover the legitimacy of the so called particular Mexican democracy; the Portillo government chose to reform the electoral system. But the following economic crisis in the early1980s, in addition to the reckless crisis countermeasures resulted in many political outcomes unexpected by the reformers, in which the advent of opportunity of PAN's transformation and the rise of left opposition parties.Thirdly, the main domestic political agents'action played the decisive role in the democratic transition of PRI's authoritarian regime. The main opposition parties timely grasped the opportunity resulted from mistakes of the crises countermeasures, and made good use of the newly established electoral norms, made a good presentation in the1988general election, and realized the increase of the opposition parties. However, the fundamental structural pillars of the PRI authoritarian regime still worked, which finally made the PRI win the presidential election, and got away with the possible ingovernability.The mark of accomplishment of the transformation of the PAN is that, it chose to cooperate with the Salinas government after the1988general election. It is this cooperation between these two parts that ensured plenty of electoral victories for the PAN, plus with its hard work, this party has developed into a mass party which could substitute the PRI in the late1990s. Different from the PAN's practices, the PRD chose to conflict with the Salinas government, and these conflicts finally encountered brutal repression from the later, which cost it possible electoral victories and party development. By the cooperation with the PAN, plus with the PRONASOL and the enforcement of electoral reform, Salinas restored the strength of PRI in the elections. But, these political and economic reforms generated some important negative results too, the most important ones of them is that, the corporatism organization of PRI collapsed finally, the inner-party elites did not took care of the loyalty and unity of the PRI, which caused plenty of defections of PRI elites in the elections.Under the effect of competitive election, in addition to some external factors, Mexico transformed into a semi-democracy from an authoritarian regime, which provided the opposition parties, especially the PAN, the real opportunity to defeat the PRI in the presidential election and accomplish the democratic transition of Mexico. Along with the deepening of the electoral reform, plus with the efforts of the opposition parties, the specific competitive contexts have changed too:the advent of the leveling field, the PAN finally eliminated the uncertainty in the electorates which prevented them from seeing it as a real choice in the presidential election. In2000general election, Fox established an image of "change", which meaning that he was the most possible candidate that could defeat the PRI candidate in presidential election, this image finally help him got the support of the supporter of the PRD and the independent electorates, win the2000presidential election and accomplish the democratic transition of Mexico.