The Mexican Standoff: Looking to the Future

The aftermath of the 2006 federal election in Mexico has been turbulent, to say the least. We argue that this is the result of conducting an election using 1996 electoral rules and pre-1996 institutions. Based on these results, the future success of Mexican democracy rests, first, upon recognizing the need to couple electoral and institutional reforms that align incentives in a given direction and, second, choosing among alternative institutional arrangements to update institutions accordingly. We set forth an evaluation of electoral rules and institutions, point out some of their main failures, and propose a set of reforms.