Poverty of Democracy: The Institutional Roots of Political Participation in Mexico

6. Democratization, Political Competition, and Political Participation

154 Most accounts of Mexico’s democratic transition emphasize its gradualism, suggesting perhaps that ordinary Mexicans had sufficient time to adapt their behavior to the emerging institutional context. However, the evolution of political competition in Mexico (in Oaxaca in particular) reveals that the transition to democracy was full of inconsistencies and paradoxes. For example , although the transition began in local and state elections and eventually spread to the national level, today democratic practices are much more solidly established at the federal level. Local elections in many states and municipalities are still marred by fraud, clientelism, and lack of choice among parties. Democratic openings are distributed unevenly across states and municipalities in Mexico. So while some citizens live in local contexts with high levels of electoral competition and the alternation of parties in power, many Mexicans still live in cities and states where autocratic leaders control locallevel participation and political competition. For these citizens democratic reforms and even President Vicente Fox’s victory in 2000 did not open up new opportunities for political activism. Rather, Mexico’s political system looked much as it had in previous decades. These varied and often contradictory local, state, and national institutional environments offer Mexico’s citizens starkly different incentives and     ChaPTER 6     Democratization, Political comPetition, anD Political ParticiPation holzner text-3.indd 154 8/6/10 10:52 AM Democratization, Political Competition, and Political Participation  155 opportunities for political action. Mexicans are struggling to read these mixed signals and to adjust their political behavior to these new and often contradictory opportunity structures. As a result, neat generalizations about how politics works or about how people respond to political stimuli may not be possible. In situations like these, in-depth interviews and detailed analysis of local political contexts are useful research strategies for disentangling the interlocking and often inconsistent political opportunities ordinary Mexicans face when contemplating political action. At the time of my interviews (1998–2000), Oaxaca was controlled by an autocratic clique and political participation was often mobilized through local and regional political machines. Thus the interviews cannot give us much insight into how politics works in states governed more democratically. Nonetheless, three of the towns where I carried out interviews had competitive local party systems, providing a window into how overlapping authoritarian and democratic political systems interact and what effect they have on the opinions and behaviors of ordinary Mexicans. Special attention must be paid to the ways in which the evolving political opportunity structure influenced the costs and benefits of political action, how it expanded or constrained choice for action, and how it affected the poor’s levels of political engagement. I then analyze national-level survey data to see if these patterns are typical of politics throughout the rest of Mexico. Electoral Reforms, Political Competition, and Political Participation Reforms that guarantee the secrecy of the ballot are necessary to eliminate fraud and to build confidence among citizens so they are free to vote for whomever they please. In the past, especially in rural communities but also in popular urban neighborhoods, there were never any independent election observers present at polling booths, making it almost impossible to guarantee the ballot’s secrecy. Such practices as husbands casting the ballots for the entire family or ejido leaders voting for the entire organization at once were common. This served not only to ensure PRI victories locally but also to show party higher-ups that the organization, village, or neighborhood was loyal to the PRI and deserving of apoyos, or governmental support. It was usually local caciques and organizational leaders, not necessarily representatives of the state or the PRI, that supervised how rank-and-file members voted. One interviewee in Teotitlán del Valle, Hector, remembers this kind of public voting, when he voted for the first time: “Yes, when I began voting, I voted for the official party (the PRI). Well, I voted for the official party because I did not know for whom to vote. I would ask my parents how to vote: holzner text-3.indd 155 8/6/10 10:52 AM 156  Democratization, Political Competition, and Political Participation What do you do when you get to the polling station, what do you say when you get there? They told me, ‘Son, just go there and tell them you want to vote for the majority.’ I didn’t know any better, so two or three times I went to vote...