Institutional Change and Party Development in Mexico

Examines organization, leadership and changes within Mexico's historic pro-democratic opposition parties, the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD). Explores the implications for overall party organization and the future of Mexico's democratic experiment.

Mexico finally shed its authoritarian past with the victory of the PAN candidate Vicente Fox in the 2000 election. But the consolidation and growth of democracy in Mexico have been complicated by the institutional residues of the past. Steven Wuhs’s investigation of the PAN and PRD begins by depicting how the PRI functioned and then, in successive chapters, compares how PAN and PRD leaders reacted to the PRI’s institutions in choosing rules for selecting candidates to run for office, organizing their party’s bureaucracy, and linking to groups in civil society. What he shows is that “savage democracy has undermined the nomination of electable candidates, fostered intense intraparty factions and fights, and interfered with the development of party organizations capable of mounting effective campaigns.”