Mexico's New Politics


Book Description

Tracing the key themes and dynamics of a century of political development in Mexico, David Shirk explores the evolution of the party that ultimately became the vehicle for Fox's success.




Contemporary Mexican Politics


Book Description

Now in a thoroughly updated edition, this comprehensive and engaging text explores contemporary Mexico’s political development and examines the most important policy issues facing Mexico in the twenty-first century. The first half of the book traces Mexican political development after the 1910 Revolution and the creation of a single-party dominant system headed by the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party). It includes detailed treatment of the “classic” PRI system’s characteristics, as well as a thorough account of the PRI’s demise and an insightful examination of how the country’s institutions evolved under two successive PAN (National Action Party) presidential administrations before returning to PRI rule. The second half of the book analyzes the most pressing policy issues confronting Mexican society today—including macroeconomic growth and stability, poverty and inequality, the development of civil society, combating drug trafficking, strengthening the rule of law, and migration—and weighs their influence on the future of democracy in Mexico. The text to this revised edition is richly supplemented by new figures and tables that illustrate broad political, social, and economic trends and by boxes that provide in-depth treatment of a variety of subjects and concepts. Readers will find this widely praised book continues to be the most current and accessible work available on Mexico's politics and policy. A test bank for instructors is available through [email protected]. A website with study guides and links to online resources is available at https://contemporarymexicanpolitics.wordpress.com




Politics in Mexico


Book Description

"This is the best introductory text of Mexican politics for American students. The book keeps an updated account of contemporary events and places them in comparative perspective. It also explains many idiosyncratic issues of Mexican politics in a very accessible way. Politics in Mexico is not only a great textbook for students but also a very useful reference for scholars interested in Mexican politics"--Provided by publisher.




The Oxford Handbook of Mexican Politics


Book Description

Since achieving independence from Spain and establishing its first constitution in 1824, Mexico has experienced numerous political upheavals. The country's long and turbulent journey toward democratic, representative government has been marked by a tension between centralized, autocratic governments (historically depicted as a legacy of colonial institutions) and federalist structures. The years since Mexico's independence have seen a major violent social revolution, years of authoritarian rule, and, finally, in the past two decades, the introduction of a fair and democratic electoral process. Over the course of the thirty-one essays in The Oxford Handbook of Mexican Politics some of the world's leading scholars of Mexico will provide a comprehensive view of the remarkable transformation of the nation's political system to a democratic model. In turn they will assess the most influential institutions, actors, policies and issues in its current evolution toward democratic consolidation. Following an introduction by Roderic Ai Camp, sections will explore the current state of Mexico's political development; transformative political institutions; the changing roles of the military, big business, organized labor, and the national political elite; new political actors including the news media, indigenous movements, women, and drug traffickers; electoral politics; demographics and political attitudes; and policy issues.




The Power and Politics of Art in Postrevolutionary Mexico


Book Description

Stephanie J. Smith brings Mexican politics and art together, chronicling the turbulent relations between radical artists and the postrevolutionary Mexican state. The revolution opened space for new political ideas, but by the late 1920s many government officials argued that consolidating the nation required coercive measures toward dissenters. While artists and intellectuals, some of them professed Communists, sought free expression in matters both artistic and political, Smith reveals how they simultaneously learned the fine art of negotiation with the increasingly authoritarian government in order to secure clout and financial patronage. But the government, Smith shows, also had reason to accommodate artists, and a surprising and volatile interdependence grew between the artists and the politicians. Involving well-known artists such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, as well as some less well known, including Tina Modotti, Leopoldo Mendez, and Aurora Reyes, politicians began to appropriate the artists' nationalistic visual images as weapons in a national propaganda war. High-stakes negotiating and co-opting took place between the two camps as they sparred over the production of generally accepted notions and representations of the revolution's legacy—and what it meant to be authentically Mexican.




Politics in Mexico


Book Description

Designed as an introduction to the history and mechanism of Mexican politics, this well-known text works within the larger framework of comparative politics. Combining the clarity and accessibility of the first edition, this fully updated second edition now includes the latest research in the field, examining not only the roots of Mexico's contemporary political culture, but its structure of government and electoral process. The book begins with an introductory essay that offers a rationale for why the reader should study other cultures and compares and contrasts the various unique features of Mexico with other countries, including the United States. It then explores the specifics, looking into such issues as corruption, the role of interest groups in Mexico, American influence on political decisions, the bi-lateral relationship, and foreign policy. The book also examines the nature and recruitment of political leaders, how decisions are reached, elections and political participation, political values and their consequences, the impact of political and economic modernization since 1988, and the possibilities for Mexico's future. The new second edition includes coverage of the NAFTA agreement, the Chiapas uprising, the 1994 elections, the new Zedillo administration, and the 1995 economic crisis.




The Science and Politics of Race in Mexico and the United States, 1910–1950


Book Description

In this history of the social and human sciences in Mexico and the United States, Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt reveals intricate connections among the development of science, the concept of race, and policies toward indigenous peoples. Focusing on the anthropologists, sociologists, biologists, physicians, and other experts who collaborated across borders from the Mexican Revolution through World War II, Rosemblatt traces how intellectuals on both sides of the Rio Grande forged shared networks in which they discussed indigenous peoples and other ethnic minorities. In doing so, Rosemblatt argues, they refashioned race as a scientific category and consolidated their influence within their respective national policy circles. Postrevolutionary Mexican experts aimed to transform their country into a modern secular state with a dynamic economy, and central to this endeavor was learning how to "manage" racial difference and social welfare. The same concern animated U.S. New Deal policies toward Native Americans. The scientists' border-crossing conceptions of modernity, race, evolution, and pluralism were not simple one-way impositions or appropriations, and they had significant effects. In the United States, the resulting approaches to the management of Native American affairs later shaped policies toward immigrants and black Americans, while in Mexico, officials rejected policy prescriptions they associated with U.S. intellectual imperialism and racial segregation.




Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico


Book Description

Covers the period from 1968 to 1989.




Murder and Politics in Mexico


Book Description

Murder and Politics in Mexico studies the causes of political killings in Mexico’s liberalization-democratization within the larger context of political repression. Mexico’s democratization process has entailed a little known but highly significant cost of human lives in pre- and post-election violence. The majority of these crimes remain in a state of impunity: in other words, no person had been charged with the crime and/or no investigation of it had occurred. This has several consequences for Mexican politics: when the level of violence is extreme and when political killings that are systematic and invasive are involved, this could indicate a real fracture in the democratic system. This book analyzes several dimensions regarding impunity and political crime, more specifically, the political killings of members of the PRD in the post-1988 period in Mexico. The main argument proposed in this book is that impunity for political killings is a structured system requiring one central precondition, namely the failure of the legal system to function as a system of restraint for killings. Dr Schatz’s research finds that political assassinations are indeed rational, targeted actions but they do not occur within an institutional vacuum. Political assassinations are calculated strategies of action aimed at eliminating political rivals. As a form of interpersonal violence, political assassination involves direct or implied authorization from political leaders, the availability of assassins for hire and the willingness of some political leaders to utilize them against political opponents, and violent interactions between political parties combined with judicial system ineffectiveness. A corrupt legal system facilitates the use of political assassination and explains the persistence of impunity for political murder over time. To reduce political violence in the transition to electoral democracy, specific institutional conditions, namely a structured system of impunity for murder, must be overcome.




Palace Politics


Book Description

Bringing rare interviews and meticulous research to the cloaked world of Mexican politics in the mid-twentieth century, Palace Politics provides a captivating look at the authoritarian Mexican state—one of the longest-lived regimes of its kind in recent history—as well as the origins of political instability itself, with revelations that can be applied to a variety of contemporary political situations around the globe. Culling a trove of remarkable firsthand accounts from former Mexican presidents, finance ministers, interior ministers, and other high officials from the 1950s through the 1980s, Jonathan Schlefer describes a world in which elite politics planted the seeds of a mammoth socioeconomic crisis. Palace Politics outlines the process by which political infighting among small rival factions of high officials drove Mexico to precarious situations at all levels of government. Schlefer also demonstrates how, earlier on, elite cooperation among these factions had helped sustain one of the most stable growth economies in Latin America, until all-or-nothing struggles began to tear the Mexican ruling party apart in the 1970s. A vivid, seamlessly narrated history, Palace Politics is essential reading for anyone seeking to better understand not only the nation next door but also the workings of elite politics in general.