Mexican President Salinas (1988-1994) Political Reform

With the direction of Marxist meterialist conception of hisory ,this dissertation aims to investigate Mexican political reform durding the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994). It is composed of the following five chapters:Chapter one discusses the historical necessity of the political reform during the Salinas Government. When President Salinas was in power, the situations had been changed greatly for Mexico. After the new liberalism economic reforming, Mexico abandoned the Import Substitution Industrialization Developing Model which had been applying for one half of the century, established the new liberalism market ecnomic model. The situation of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)owing the absolute dominance and the predomination status in Mexico was over, the Partido Acción Nacional(PAN) and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) , standing for the right party and the left party respectively, made a pincer attack on PRI and challenged the PRI's predominent position. All this changes collapsed the Mexican traditional political foundations, and threated PRI's dominace seriously, so political reform has been necessary.Chapter two examines the contents of the electoral system reforms during the Salinas Government. During the six years of Salinas being in power, Mexico reformed electoral system in 1989, 1993 and 1994, including reinstitute the apportion exercise of the congress seats, reform the structures and duties of the federal electoral institutions, reform the electoral procedure such as registration of voters, electoral supevision and deal with the electoral disputes ect. These reforms democratized the way of apportioning congress seats preliminary, strengthened electoral institutions' independence and specialization, the electoral process became more transparent and equitable, which made the foundation for Maxican real multi-party politics in the future. But these couldn't make the real competitive democratic election come ture in Mexico , because the reform contents couldn't be implemented in the political practices for lacking specific policies to implement these reforms, , which made the reform effectiveness weaken.Chapter three examines the reform of PRI itself. PRI faced new embarrassments after 1980s. In order to preserve domination, PRI decided to change party strategies and reform itself. The reform included changing its' guiding ideology, in other words, from revolutionary nationalism to social liberalism , reforming the electing method of all ranks of PRI's candidates, from nominating to democratic election. By changing the ways to taking part in the PRI, abolishing traditional corporatism departments, establishing new type of corporatism departments, the reform weakened the strenth of the corporatism. PRI changed political strategies, developing cooperation with PAN.Chapter four examines the changing of the social structures during the government of Carlos Salinas. The relations between government and interest groups had been changed by the economic crisis and the new liberalism economic reforms.This changes destroyed the social foundations of PRI's domination. In order to preserve domination, the government of Carlos Salinas adopted a series of measures to regulate the relations between the government and interest groups.The government gained the supports of private sector, advanced new syndicalism and rebulided labor in order to keep it in PRI and weak its' strenth, promoted the National Solidarity Program(PRONASOL) ,which relieved poverty brought by the economic crisis and the new liberalism economic reforms , in order to put down the grievance of presents and regain their supports for PRI.Chapter five comments the political reforms during the government of Carlos Salinas. Comparing to the political reforms that have taken place before 1988, the political reforms during the government of Carlos Salinas appeared some defferent characteristics at goals ,proters, contents and means ect. So far as the cosequences are concerned, on the one side ,the political reforms during the government of Carlos Salinas removed some barriers for the new liberalism economic reform and accelerated it to develop furtherly on some degree, but the political reforms didn't get rid of the hidden dangers, such as social enquality, grievances of the populace ,social unrestect, which resulted the political circumstances got worse and worse , and destroied the new liberalism economic reform; on the other side, the political reforms alleviated the adverse circumstances for PRI temporarily, but didn't get rid of the crisises at all which acclerated the PRI to fall out of the power. Therely, the political reforms during the government of Carlos Salinas didn't neither defend the PRI's dominace, nor accerate the new liberalism economic reform.However, the political reforms brought some by-products, the real competitive multi-party structure.