Crafting sustainable democracy in Mexico: Preferences, policy choices, and democratic transition

Crafting Sustainable Democracy in Mexico: Preferences, Policy Choices, and Democratic Transition draws on the theoretical work of Andreas Schedler, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Hilton L. Root, on the analysis of Mexico's economy by Jonathan Heath, on the analysis of the Mexican presidency and the legislature by Jeffrey Weldon, on its political parties by Michael Coppedge and others.; The dissertation analyzes the changes in the formal and informal institutional decision-rules as constructed by the Mexican presidents, those effects on the legislature, and the influence of the political parties in Mexico's democratic transition. Specifically it investigates the interaction of the presidents' preferences, incentives, and the economic and political rules of the game with the development of Mexico's democracy. The dissertation introduces new concepts and terminology with regards to decision making in the executive and the legislature. These include the influence of the simultaneity of economic and political policies on democratic transition, and the breadth of decision making of the political parties within the legislature and between the legislature and the executive.; An inverse causal relationship is found, meaning that a reduction in institutional restrictions on economic participation and political participation causes the transition to democracy. Where these policies are equal, in other words they are occurring simultaneously; the effect on the transition is robust. It also finds that when the Mexican government shifted from a vertical authoritarian hierarchy to a horizontal accountability structure embodied in a plural legislature, and when the president's metaconstitutional powers were removed and those institutions returned to their constitutional limitations, that these interactions are robust causal elements in Mexico's transition to democracy. The implication is that it is the changes in the rules of game, together with the conscious and deliberate crafting by individuals and groups that are the causal elements of Mexico's transition to democracy.