Old hacks or new blood? The effects of heightened inter-party competition on PRI candidates and campaigns for the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, 1994--2000

Using biographical data from the curricula vitae of members of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies belonging to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) between 1997 and 2000, expenditure data on PRI deputy campaigns for the same years, data collected from newspaper advertisements for PRI deputy candidates between 1991 and 2000, and data derived from interviews with sitting PRI deputies of the 57th Legislature (1997–2000), this study gauges the effects of increased district-level competitiveness both on the qualities of PRI deputy candidates running for single-member districts and on the style of their electoral campaigns. Since losing its absolute majority in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies in 1997, the PRI must now compete with other parties to win seats in the Chamber. To retain the seats they managed to win in 1997 and to recoup the lost seats in 2000, the PRI must change its electoral strategies, both in terms of the quality of the candidates that the party nominates to run for seats in the Chamber and in terms of the style of the campaigns of these candidates.; For this dissertation, candidate “quality” is operationalized as the degree to which these deputy candidates are visibly connected to the PRI in terms of prior leadership experience in party/sector organizations, administrative positions, elected office, and political ties to influential individuals in the party. Where district-level competitiveness is above the mean in 1997, the PRI leadership attempts to counteract this competition by nominating deputy candidates in 2000 who are less visibly connected to the party.; As for campaign style, where district-level competitiveness was above the mean in 1997, PRI deputy campaigns are hypothesized to become more “Americanized” in terms of both the levels of campaign professionalization and the degree of candidate-centeredness in newspaper campaign advertisements. While there was no marked increase in campaign professionalization between 1994 and 2000, the newspaper advertisements of PRI deputy campaigns became more focused on the candidate, as opposed to the party, as competitiveness increased between 1994 and 2000. Based on these results, the conclusion is that formerly dominant parties like the PRI do in fact adapt their electoral strategies to confront newly-competitive party environments.