Assessing the consequences of electoral competition: Legislative reform, political recruitment, and fiscal policy in the Mexican states

Does democracy matter? Unlike most current research on democratization, this dissertation focuses on the consequences, not the causes, of democratic politics. To assess the impact of democratization on political life, my research explores how increased electoral competition creates new opportunities and incentives for politicians that shift political power away from established elites and into the hands of ordinary citizens. The theoretical framework that informs the research draws together insights from classic democratic theory (Black 1958; Dahl 1971; Downs 1957; Key 1949; Schattschneider 1942; Schumpeter 1942), the new institutionalist literature (Ames 1987; Carey 1996; Cox 1990; Geddes 1994; Jones 1995; North 1990; Mainwaring and Shugart 1997), and the critiques of contemporary Latin American democracy (O'Donnell 1994a, 1996, 1998; Oxhorn 1998; Roberts 1998) in an attempt to establish the micro-level foundations for a theoretical linkage between increasing electoral competition and institutional change. I test the theoretical propositions with an intra-country comparative analysis of state-level politics in Mexico. Qualitative comparative studies of three states with very different patterns of political competition are nested within a statistical analysis of all thirty-one states. Individual chapters focus on the impact of increased electoral competition on legislative behavior, the recruitment of political leaders, and fiscal policy. The dissertation utilizes original survey data of state legislators from across Mexico, an original national database of governors' career paths, and over seventy in-depth interviews with elected officials and bureaucrats.