Citizens' evaluation of the president and democratic transition: Determinants and effects of presidential approval in Mexico

Political institutions affect presidential approval, and the political regime works as the market when people evaluate the president. What determines presidential approval in democratic systems does not necessarily explain approval in authoritarian regimes. I use Mexico as a case study in comparative politics to analyze the determinants and effects of presidential approval before and after a democratic transition.;The analysis follows four steps. First, I examine the determinants of presidential approval at the individual level in Mexico, paying special attention to citizens' perceptions of rising crime and corruption as key determinants of voters' evaluation of the president after the democratic transition. Second, I extend my argument by analyzing the determinants of presidential approval as the subnational level. Third, I conduct a multi-level analysis in order to show that after the 2000 presidential election, the turning point of the democratic transition, perceptions of crime and corruption strongly affected voters' evaluation of the president. And fourth, I examine the effects of presidential approval on roll call voting in Mexico before and after the transition.;I show that since the 2000 democratic transition, perceptions of rising crime and corruption have become more salient, and citizens have begun to evaluate the president in terms of his determination to address these two problems. Moreover, I find that while presidential approval had positive effects on roll call voting before the democratic period, after the 2000 presidential election, the effects of presidential approval were positive for members of the president's party, but negative for opposition deputies. In the new Mexican democracy, opposition deputies considered that the best strategy to advance in their political careers was to embarrass and frustrate the president's plans in Congress.