electoral competition in mexico and career trajectories of pri gubernatorial candidates, 1991–2001
TRANSCRIPT
Electoral Competition in Mexico and Career Trajectories of PRI Gubernatorial
Candidates, 1991-2001 ~~ ~ ~~
Christopher Diaz Morehead State University
This study examines the relationship between increased competition in Mexican gubernatorial elections and changes in the career trajectories of PRI gubernatorial candidates between I991 and 200I. Specifically I examine whether or not the PRI changed its elecforal strategy in response to increased competition in gubernatorial elections by nominating gubernatorial candidates in subsequent elections who were more “homegrown ” and less likely to be perceived by the voters in a state as being imposed on them by the national party organization? To test this hypothesis, the level of Competition in gubernatorial elections in twenty- seven Mexican states was correlated to the PRI gubernatorial candidates ’ career trajectories in the subsequent elections in those states. The results of the correlation analysis suggest that while winning PRI gubernatorial candidates in subsequent elections have less leadership experience in the federal bureaucracy where competition was high in a previous election, there was only modest evidence to suggest that increased competition in previous elections influenced the amount of prior statdlocal leadership experience of PRI gubernatorial candidates in subsequent elections. Paradoxically, losing PRIgubernatorial candidates had less prior national partyhector leadership experience and more prior leadership experience in the state/local bureaucracies in states where competition was high in a previous election.
I t is a truism in the party change literature that adjustments in party electoral strategy are the result of changes in the competitive nature of the party system. Simply put, when a party is defeated or “scared” in an election, the party responds to its “customers,” the voters, by shifting its strategy and giving the voters what the party perceives they are looking for in a candidate in the next election. If the party believes that the voters rejected its candidates because of specific characteristics the candidate had or lacked, then the party will react in the next election by offering candidates whose characteristics are more appealing to the voters. In this way, parties and voters communicate to each other. Does this neat logic reflect empirical reality, however? More
Politics & Policy Volume 33 No. 1 March 2005
Electoral Competition in Mexico 37
precisely, does electoral competition in one election have the ability to prod a party to change its electoral strategy in terms of its candidates’ characteristics in the subsequent election?
To shed some light on these questions, this study examines the effects of increased competition on the career trajectories of gubernatorial candidates for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico between 1991 and 200 1, Specifically, this study explores the degree to which increased competition in previous gubernatorial elections in Mexico is correlated with the nomination of PRl gubernatorial candidates in subsequent elections whose career trajectories are more state/local-oriented and less national-oriented. In other words, did the PRI change its electoral strategy in response to increased competition in gubernatorial elections by nominating gubernatorial candidates in subsequent elections who were more “homegrownyy and less likely to be perceived by the voters in a state as being imposed on them by the national party organization?
This study is grounded in Mexico’s democratization of its party and electoral systems, which has evolved at both the center and the periphery since 1988. One of the first cracks in one-party dominance in Mexico occurred in the 1989 Baja California gubernatorial election, where for the first time the opposition National Action Party (PAN) triumphed. The erosion of the PRI’s dominance became most evident in 1997, when the party lost its absolute majority in the Chamber of Deputies, and became a fait uccompli when the party lost the presidential race to the PAN’S candidate, Vicente Fox Quesada, in 2000. This democratic evolution has been documented at the national level in executive-legislative relations (Amparo Casar 1998; Weldon 1 997 and 1999), in the behavior of the national legislature itself (Nacif-Hernindez 1996 and 1998; Teeters-Reynolds 1998), in the party system itself (Alcocer V. 1994; Bruhn 1997 and 1999) and in mass-level electoral behavior (Moreno 1999).
As competition has increased and democratization has progressed in Mexico at all levels since 1988, scholars of Mexican politics have been paying an increasing amount ofattention to democratization at the sub-national level, focusing on municipal-level politics (de Remes 1999; Eisenstadt 1999; Rodriguez 1997; Rodriguez and Ward 1992 and 1995a; Ward 1998), state government generally (Espinoza Valle 1993; M i d i 1994 and 1995; Rodriguez and Ward 1995b; Ward and Rodriguez 1999), and more specifically, state legislative politics (Beer 1999) and gubernatorial politics (Amezcua and Padrinas 1997; Langston 1997a and 2000; Loyola Dim 1997; Mizrahi 2000a and 2000b). This literature has shown that democratization in Mexico has been a “bottom-upyYy in addition to a “top-down” process.
38 Politics Or Policy Vol.33 No. 1
With regard to gubernatorial politics, the literature on clientelistic politico- tkcnico (politician-technocrat) relationships during the non-competitive era informed much of the research on PRI governors and gubernatorial candidates. In one comparison of losing PRI pre-candidates versus winning PRI pre- candidates for governorships that predates the competitive era, Camp (1 977) finds that a combination of factors such as previous career experience, cumurilla membership, and “qualifications peculiarly suited to the political- economic situation of the state in question” were significant in determining which pre-candidates of the official party were more likely than others to be nominated (23).’ The key to success for a priista gubernatorial pre- candidate-that is, one affiliated with the PRI, was having had experience at the federal level in either the government or the party (24), and acquiring such experience meant having extensive connections in the party. Hence, a gubernatorial nomination was a clientelistic reward for faithful party service in the past and an inducement to ensure continued loyal service to the president. Extensive service at the state and local levels was not as valuable for political career advancement, and ambitious politicians knew this. In any event, whether or not a candidate was nominated to be the PRI’s gubernatorial candidate largely depended upon receiving the president’s deduzo (nomination)-a practice not abandoned until recently (Langston 1997b and 2000).
Camp’s ( 1977) analysis assumed that whomever won the pre-candidate race for the party was assured victory in the general election, and at the time this was by and large the case until the PAN captured the governorship of Baja California in 1989. Since then, governorships, like deputyships, can no longer be used for clientelistic purposes as inter-party competition has grown, making party strategy in terms of candidate nomination all the more important. How then have the prerequisites for securing a gubernatorial nomination in the PRI changed in the past decade with the advent of party competition? Does it make a difference to the party that a candidate has based his career at the state and local level rather than at the national level? Has this competition made the National Executive Committee (CEN) of the PRI more willing to respect the rule changes in party nomination procedures made in 1990 and 1996 by truly allowingthe temtorial bases of the party to select gubernatorial candidates rather than imposing them from above (Langston 1997b)?
Langston (1997% 30) finds evidence suggesting that in states where competition was high for the PRI, the gubernatorial candidates it nominated after 1988 tended to be more tied to their states rather than to the capital. In part, this shift in candidate ties had to do with party rule changes in 1990 and 1996 which allowed the territorial bases of the party more voice in selecting
Electoral Competition in Mexico 39
candidates (Langston 1997b). Langston’s analyses on nomination rule changes in the PRI, made in response to growing electoral competition in the early 1990s, suggest that these rule changes were met with only mixed success in terms of nominating gubernatorial candidates who were less tied to the national party organization and whose careers in the party were more state and local- oriented; rather, he finds that increased competition itself played a greater role than party rule change in prompting these changes in gubernatorial career trajectories (1 997% 16-1 7; 1997b, 29-3 1). Still, the evidence from Langston’s (1 997a) study is inconclusive as to whether increased competition, rather than just changes in nomination rules, has had an impact on the prior career characteristics of PRl gubernatorial candidates.
Subsequent research by Langston (2000) suggests that with the introduction of gubernatorial primaries in the PRI during the 1990s, it makes more sense strategically for gubernatorial aspirants in the party to pursue a local career path in order to cultivate a local following prior to running for governor (14). In addition to benefiting from negative retrospective evaluations by voters of incumbent state governors belonging to opposition parties like the PAN, the PRI has achieved electoral success where it has nominated charismatic candidates who are less tied with the traditional base of the party- as it did most notably in the 1998 gubernatorial election in Chihuahua(Mizrahi 2000 b, 1 89 and 203).
Comparing gubernatorial elections between 199 1 and 200 1 in 27 Mexican states with varying levels of competition, this study empirically tests the assumption that inter-party competitiveness, combined with changes in party nomination rules, have affected the characteristics of PRI gubernatorial candidates nominated to run in elections between 1991 and 2001. Specifically, it asks whether losing or facing higher levels of competition in an earlier election influenced the PRI to nominate gubernatorial candidates in the subsequent election with a more state or local-oriented career trajectory at the expense of candidates who based their political careers at the national level. Such changes in the career trajectories of PRI gubernatorial candidates are important because they indicate that party elites are strategically adapting to increased competitiveness in the Mexican party system by nominating candidates who represent the “New PRY’ as opposed to nominating “old hacks” who may remind voters why they are disaffected with the PRI. As suggested by such scholars as Langston and Mizrahi, PRI gubernatorial candidates with less national-level trajectory and more state-level trajectory in the party might be preferable to party elites because of their appeal to voters.* Anecdotal evidence suggests that this strategy has paid off for the
40 Politics 43 Policy Vol. 33 No. 1
party, as it did in Chihuahua in 1998. The results of this study offer conflicting evidence as to whether increased
inter-party competition in Mexico in the early 1990s affected the PRI’s electoral strategy in gubernatorial campaigns between 1991 and 2001 by making candidates with StateAocal career trajectories more likely to receive the party’s nomination than those with primarily or exclusively national-level career trajectories.
Speci ficaliy, I hypothesize that increased competitiveness in the Mexican party system between 1991 and 2001 has resulted in PRI gubernatorial candidates having more local/state-level career trajectories, rather than national-level career trajectories. This hypothesis tests the linkage between increased inter-party competition and candidate characteristics as they relate to party campaign strategy. As the number ofcompetitive parties in the political arena increases, we should see a corresponding change in the characteristics of gubernatorial candidates presented by the PRI as part of its strategy to win in this newly competitive electoral environment. Because the electorate now has a larger number of choices in terms of viable parties, it also is offered more choice in terms of individual candidates. Recognizing this increased competitiveness in the party system as a whole, the PRI will want to present candidates who are known locally to the voters and who are less likely to be perceived by the voters in a particular state as being imposed upon them by the national party organization. Such a “homegrown” candidate should have a high profile in his or her state by way of his or her career trajectory in the state or local politics, either in the party organization, or in electedlbureaucratic politics, or some combination of both. This should be evident particularly in states where the formerly dominant party either lost or experienced a “close” race in the prior election. Changing the characteristics of the gubernatorial candidates in terms of their career trajectories, that is more careers at the stateAoca1 level rather than national level, is a recognition on the part of the party leadership of the increased competitiveness in the party system, which Kaare Strom ( 1990) defines as “the aggregate uncertainty of electoral contests as perceived by party leaders” (582). If the party leadership wants to win an election, then it must provide what it perceives the voters want in terms of a candidate. As party system competitiveness increases, parties will more keenly pursue votes (582). Thus, as party system change occurs, formerly dominant parties like the PRI respond by paying closer attention to the characteristics of the candidates they field in elections.
It is important to emphasize that making these qualitative changes in its gubernatorial candidates is not necessarily guaranteed to bring electoral success
Electoral Competition in Mexico 41
to the party in a particular state. Rather, this hypothesis concerns the strategy the PRI will adopt as its response to increased party competition. Whether or not the PRI’s gubernatorial candidate won a state in which it lost or faced high competition in a previous election is irrelevant to accepting or rejecting this hypothesis. The mere fact that the party’s strategy changed in regard to the career trajectories ofthe gubernatorial candidates it presented in a particular state is sufficient to lend support to this hypothesis.
Methods
The level of competition in gubernatorial elections between 199 1 and 2001 is measured on a scale of “0” to “1,” with “0” being the lowest and “1” being the highest.’ This indicator of competition is the independent variable. In order to better evaluate whether increased competition in the early 1990s prodded the PRI leadership to choose “homegrown” gubernatorial candidates rather than those with career trajectories based largely in Mexico City in subsequent elections, as Langston (2000) and Mizrahi (2000b) suggest in the case of Chihuahua, these career trajectories are broken down into six categories: national party/sector experience, for example, the secretary general of the National Executive Committee of the PRI; national elected office, such as prior service in the Congress as bothpropietario and suplente deputies and senators; national administrative office, such as prior leadership positions held in the federal ministries and bureaus at the director or subdirector level; state and local party/sector experience, such as secretary general of the State Executive Committee of the PRI; state and local elected office, that is those having held prior positions as a local deputy or municipal president; and finally, state and local administrative office, or those who have held prior leadership positions in the federal ministries and bureaus at the director or subdirector level, or who have had prior service as a governor’s personal secretary! The number of prior leadership positions held in each of these categories by late 1990s gubernatorial candidates up to the time of their nomination as the PRI’s standard-bearer were then counted using the candidates’ biographie~.~ I did not count prior positions held as a “member” or “delegate” of various assemblies or commissions unless they included service in a leadership position.
Given the small sample size, regression analysis is not appropriate for this study. Splitting the data set between the 18 PRI winners and nine PRI losers, I then correlated the number of these prior positions in each category held by PRI gubernatorial candidates nominated in the late 1990s to the level of competition in early 1990s gubernatorial elections in 27 states.6 I calculated
42 Politics 43 Policy Vol. 33 No. 1
and reported both the Spearman’s rho and Kendall’s tau statistics. I also used a paired samples t-test to compare the means between each category of prior leadership experience, that is, prior career trajectories, among all PRI gubernatorial candidates in the early 1990s and the 27 candidates nominated to run in the subsequent election six years later.
Data
Election Data I obtained election data for gubernatorial elections held in 27 states
between 199 1 and 2001 from the website ofthe Centro de Investigaci6n para el Desarrollo, A.C. (CIDAC), available online at http://www.cidac.org.
Candidate Trajectories Much of the data on governors are available through 1994 in the
Diccionario biogr@ico del gobierno rnexicano, which is a government- published encyclopedia listing the biographies of elected officials at all levels of the Mexican government. Where the Diccionario leaves off in 1994, the internet has since taken up the informational slack on the biographies of government officials. Most Mexican state governments now have their own web pages, some of which prominently feature the vitae of their chief executives. With the help of the Lijphart Elections Archive at http:// dodgson.ucsd.edu/lij, I was able to find data on most of the losing PRI gubernatorial candidates. Using both the internet and the Diccionurio, I gathered data on the indicators of candidate career trajectories.
Findings
The hypothesis presupposes that a PRI gubernatorial candidate who develops his political career at the national level will do so at the expense of forming StateAocal ties and vice versa. The results of the paired samples t- test, reported in Table 1 support Langston’s (1997a and 2000) and Mizrahi’s (2000b) suggestion that PRI gubernatorial candidates in the late 1990s tended to be less connected to national-level politics as indicated by their career trajectories. In particular, these candidates had less administrative leadership experience at the national level when compared to the other categories of career trajectories. At the same time, these candidates overall had more state and local administrative leadership experience than PRI gubernatorial candidates in the early 1990s. For all PRI gubernatorial candidates, the mean
Tab
le 1
. Diff
eren
ce o
f M
eans
bet
wee
n C
aree
r T
raje
ctor
ies
of P
RI
Gub
erna
tori
al C
andi
date
s in
the
Ear
ly 1
900s
ver
sus
the
Late
190
0s
Paire
d C
ateg
orie
s
Nat
iona
l Par
tyIS
ecto
r Le
ader
ship
Exp
erie
nce
Nat
iona
l Ele
cted
Le
ader
ship
Exp
erie
nce
Nat
iona
l Adm
inis
trativ
e Le
ader
ship
Exp
erie
nce
Stat
efLo
cal P
arty
ISec
tor
Lead
ersh
ip E
xper
ienc
e St
ateL
ocal
Ele
cted
Le
ader
ship
Exp
erie
nce
Stat
eLoc
al A
dmin
istra
tive
Lead
ersh
ip E
xper
ienc
e Pr
ivat
e Sec
tor E
xper
ienc
e N
=27
Paire
d D
iffer
ence
s
Mea
n D
ev.
of th
e M
ean
Std.
St
d. E
rror
om
2
3.7
.7128
-0.1
1 I1
2.59
.4988
137
3.53
.67!?7
-0.37
04
3.44
.6627
-3.7
~10
~
0.939
8 .18
09
-133
2.6
7 -5
147
-0.17
39
0576
2 ,12
01
Sign
ifica
nce
(2-ta
iled)
0.312
.76
-0.2
23
.83
2.0 I6
.05
-0.5
59
.58
-0.2
05
.84
-2.5
9 .02
- 1
.447
.16
44 Politics & Policy Vol. 33 No. 1
number of national-level administrative leadership positions previously held dropped from 3.26 for early 1990s gubernatorial candidates to a mean of 1.88 for candidates in subsequent gubernatorial elections. In contrast, the mean number of prior state and local administrative leadership positions held rose from 1.29 for PRI candidates in the early 1990s to 2.63 for PRI candidates running in subsequent gubernatorial elections.
This finding offers some support for the conventional wisdom that in response to electoral defeat in Chihuahua and elsewhere in the early 1990s, the PRI nominated gubernatorial candidates with fewer ties to the federal bureaucracy. Candidates with such ties, it is argued, ran the risk of being perceived by voters as being “imposed” upon them by Mexico City. However, these results do not indicate a similar shift away from nominating candidates with a national-level party/sector trajectory or those with experience in national- level elected office.
These results tentatively confirm half of the hypothesis, that is, they suggest that with increased competition in one election, PRI gubernatorial candidates are less likely to have career trajectories built primarily in Mexico City; however, they also suggest that this increased competition has not necessarily favored candidates with a longer career trajectory at the state and local level either. Though the PRI leadership may have recruited gubernatorial candidates in the late 1990s who were more popular locally in their home states than candidates in the previous election, this is not positively correlated with competition in the previous election.
When the sample is split between winners and losers, the results become even more nebulous. Correlation coefficients in Table 2 show that losing PRI gubernatorial candidates, most of whom were nominated in the late 1990s or early 2000s, were more likely to have prior career trajectories in the state and local bureaucracy and less likely to have prior leadership experience in the national-level partyhector organizations in states where competition in the previous gubernatorial race was high. The candidates who reflected a “New PRI” and who were less nationally and more locally oriented in their past careers were the ones most likely to lose. Although this seems like a paradox- that is, that the PRI is responding to past competition by giving the voters in a particular state what it perceives they want in the subsequent election, and that the voters should have responded accordingly by rewarding the party’s candidates, it is likely that there was nothing the party could have done in terns of candidate selection in the subsequent election to stave off defeat. The high level of competition in the previous gubernatorial elections in those states may have just been an indication that the days of PRI dominance in
Tabl
e 2.
Cor
rela
tion
betw
een
Com
petit
ion
in M
exic
an G
uber
nato
rial
Ele
ctio
ns a
nd t
he C
aree
r Tr
ajec
tori
es o
f Lo
sing
PRI
Gub
erna
tori
al C
andi
date
s, 19
91-2
001
Nat
iona
l St
atek
ocal
N
atio
nal P
arty
/ N
atio
nal E
lect
ed
Adm
inis
trativ
e St
ateL
ocal
St
atek
ocal
A
dmin
istra
tive
Inde
pend
ent
Sect
or
Ofi
ce
Offi
ce
Party
Sec
tor
Elec
ted O
ffice
O
ffice
V
ariab
le Ex
perie
nce
Expe
rienc
e Ex
perie
nce
Expe
rienc
e Ex
perie
nce
Expe
rienc
e
C I Ken
dall'
s tau
-.4
63*
- .m
-.3 14
26
9 -2
32
.508
* Sp
earm
an's
rho
-.577
* -.35
-.386
24
8 -.3
18
.654
* N
=9
* p <
.05,
one
-taile
d
~~ ~~~ ~
46 Politics Policy Vol. 33 No.1
state-level politics in those states was numbered. Moreover, these results show that the party did in fact change its electoral strategy in terms of candidate characteristics where competition was highest, confirming the hypothesis. That this strategy did not pay off for the PRI is irrelevant. The fact that the career trajectories of PRI gubernatorial candidates changed in states where the party was most likely to lose, and did lose, offers sufficient support for the hypothesis.
Of those PRI gubernatorial candidates who won their races, Table 3 indicates that while a negative correlation is present between increased competition in a previous election and the amount of prior leadership experience in the national-level bureaucracy, no statistically significant correlation exists between competition and any of the other categories of prior leadership experience. There are two potential interpretations for this finding. The first explanation is the most obvious: that the PRI avoided potential nominees in high-competition states whose career trajectories in the national bureaucracy tied them too closely with Mexico City. However, this explanation fails to account for why the party did not opt for candidates with less leadership experience in the national-level party/sector organizations as well. The second explanation for these findings is more convincing: that in states where the PRI won, there was little need for the party to offer candidates with a more state or local oriented career trajectory because competition in the previous election was insufficiently high to warrant such a change in strategy in the next election.
In any event, the local popularity of a gubernatorial candidate may not necessarily be correlated with an extensive curriculum vita of party/sector, elected, and administrative ofice at the state/local level. Rather, it may be that the PRI recruited gubernatorial candidates with more private sector experience and who possess only the bare minimum requisite party credentials to win the nomination as enumerated in the party rules (Langston 1997b). Such private sector experience could include past leadership positions in non- governmental and grass-roots community organizations in addition to for-profit endeavors. Any such previous high-profile activity could afford a potential gubernatorial candidate much-needed notoriety and popularity. However, the results of the paired samples t-test show no significant difference between PRI gubernatorial candidates in the early 1990s versus those nominated six years later in terms of previous private sector experience. Similarly, no statistically significant correlation between competition and prior private sector experience exists in either the winning or losing PRI gubernatorial candidates. The results for candidates’ experience in the private sector are not reported
Tab
le 3
. C
orre
latio
n be
twee
n C
ompe
titio
n in
Mex
ican
Gub
erna
tori
al E
lect
ions
and
the
Car
eer
Tra
ject
orie
s of
Win
ning
PR
I G
uber
nato
rial
Can
dida
tes,
1991
-200
1
Nat
iona
l St
ateL
ocal
N
atio
nal P
arty
/ N
atio
nal E
lect
ed
Adm
inist
rativ
e St
ateL
ocal
St
ateL
ocal
A
dmin
istra
tive
Inde
pend
ent
Sect
or
Offi
ce
Offi
ce
Party
Sec
tor
Elec
ted O
ffce
O
ffice
V
aria
ble
Expe
rienc
e Ex
perie
nce
Expe
rienc
e Ex
perie
nce
Expe
rienc
e Ex
perie
nce
C Ken
dall’
s tau
-.I81
.w
-.45
**
-.I46
25
5 -2
68
Spea
rman
’s rh
o -.2
98
.128
-.5
75**
-2
14
306
-.358
N
= 18
**p <
.05,
one-
taile
d
48 Politics Or Policy Vol. 33 No. 1
in the tables. One interesting finding is that the amount of prior national elected office
experience held by PRI gubernatorial candidates in the late 1990s was neither negatively nor positively correlated with competition in the previous gubernatorial election. Again, national elected office experience was coded as any prior service in the Congress as either a federal deputy or senator, propietario or suplente. A possible explanation for this finding is that prior service in the Congress gave PRI gubernatorial candidates visibility with the voters in their home states, especially if these candidates served in single- member plurality districts as opposed to multi-member circunscripcidnes- that is, those districts in which candidates are elected on the basis of proportional representation. Hence, because prior service as a legislator may make the gubernatorial candidate a known quantity to the voters in the state, it may not prove to be as great an electoral liability as prior national-level service in the bureaucracy or party/sector organizations.
Conclusion
The results of this study represent a further empirical step toward understanding the relationship between competition and candidate characteristics in Mexican gubernatorial elections, particularly with regard to how the PRI has adjusted its electoral strategy in these races to face such competition. While the party avoided recruiting gubernatorial candidates in the late 1990s whose careers were too focused in Mexico City, at the same time it does not appear from these results that the PRI shifted entirely towards candidates whose careers developed primarily at the state and local levels.
Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Deborah Wellborn for her invaluable assistance in helping collect data for this article. Any errors are wholly the responsibility of the author.
Electoral Competition in Mexico 49
Notes
I Camarillas are informal political networks. For more information, see Smith ( 1 979).
In their campaign rhetoric, PRI gubernatorial candidates have chosen to emphasize their local roots rather than their connections to the national party. For example, in his televised debate with the ultimate victor of the 1997 gubernatorial race in Nuevo Leon, PAN candidate Fernando Canales Clariond, the PRI candidate Natividad Gondlez Par&, emphasized at great length his personal ties to Nuevo Leon. “I love Nuevo Leon a lot, 1 studied here, I did not go to a prestigious school in Mexico City to study because I trusted the institutions of my state . . .” (“Canales and Natividad debate seriously” 4B).
I used the following formula to calculate Competitiveness levels: C = 1- 1 P,- P, 1 where PI = winning candidate’s percentage of vote share, P2 = second place candidate’s percentage of the vote share, and C = competitiveness.
As for national party/sector experience, no distinction is made between leadership positions held in the party itself and leadership positions held in the organized sectors of the party-for example, National Peasants’ Confederation, National Federation of Popular Organizations, and the Mexican Federation of Labor-and their affiliated unions, such as the National Union of Educational Workers. Most PAN gubernatorial candidates have had experience primarily in the private sector, whereas PRD gubernatorial candidates are often refugees from the PRI, Ricardo Monreal Avila of Zacatecas, for example, whose career trajectories are very similar to those of their PRI counterparts.
Using a ratio of previous national to state/local leadership positions held or stateflocal to national leadership positions held as the dependent variable does not work because some candidates have had no leadership experience at the state/local level or vice versa. Similarly, the age of the candidates is not a factor in whether they pursued a stateAoca1 or national level career trajectory in the PRI prior to their gubernatorial nominations.
6C = N where C is the level of competitiveness in a gubernatorial election at time t , and N,,, is the number of prior leadership positions held by PRI gubernatorial candidates at time t+Z in each category (party/sector, elected, administrative) at both the state/local and national levels.
I 1-1 ’ I
50 Politice 45 Policy Vol. 33 No. 1
References
Alcocer V., Jorge. 1994. “Party System and Political Transition in Mexico: A Pragmatic Approach.” In The Politics of Economic Restructuring: State- Society Relations and Regime Change in Mexico, edited by Maria Lorena Cook, Kevin J. Middlebrook, and Juan Molinar Horcasitas. San Diego, CA: Center for US.-Mexican Studies, University of Califomia- San Diego. 149-57.
Amezcua, Adriana, and Juan E. Padrinas. 1997. Todos 10s gobernadores del presidente: cuando el dedo de uno aplasia el voto popular. Mexico, D.F.: Grijalbo.
Amparo Casar, Maria. 1998. “Executive-Legislative Relations: the Case of Mexico.” Documento de Trabajo #84, CIDE, Divisi6n de Estudios Politicos. Mexico, D.F.
Beer, Caroline. 1999. “Democratization and Institutional Change in Mexican States.” Presented at the 1999 Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia. September 2-5.
Bruhn, Kathleen. 1997. Taking on Goliath: the Emergence of a New Left Party and the Struggle for Democracy in Mexico. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press.
-. 1999. “The Emergence of Party Competition in Mexico.” Presented at the 1999 Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia September 2-5.
Camp, Roderic Ai. 1977. “Losers in Mexican Politics: a Comparative Study of Official Party Precandidates for Gubernatorial Elections, 1970-75.” In Quantitative Latin American Studies: Methods and Findings, edited by James W. Wilkie and Kenneth Ruddle. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Press.
de Remes, Alain. 1999. “Gobiernos yuxtapuestos en MCxico: hacia un marco anditico para el estudio de las elecciones municipals.”Politicay Gobierno
Eisenstadt, Todd. 1999. “Weak Electoral Institutions or Legacies of Social Conflict? Modeling Causes of Mexico’s Local Post-Electoral Mobilizations, 1989-1 998.” Presented at the 1999 Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia. September 3-7.
“Canales and Natividad debate seriously.” 1997. El Norte. Monterrey, Nuevo Le6n, Mexico. April 25,4B.
Espinoza Valle, Victor Alejandro. 1993. Reforma del Estado y empleo pubiico. Mexico, D.F.: INAP.
23-33.
6( 1): 225-54.
Electoral Competition in Mexico 51
Langston, Joy. 1997a “The PRi Governors: an Empirical Portrait.” Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Econbmicas, Division de Estudios Politicos, Documento de Trabajo #66. . 1997b. “Why Rules Matter: the Formal Rules of Candidate Selection
and Leadership Selection in the PRI, 1978- 1996.” Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, Divisidn de Estudios Politicos, Documento de Trabajo #58. - . 2000. “The Death of the Dedazo: PRI Gubernatorial Primaries and
their Consequences for State Party Organization.” Presented at the 2000 Meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Miami, Florida.
Loyola Diaz, Rafael. 1997. La disputa del reino: las elecciones para gobernador en Mkxico, 1992. Mexico, D.F.: UNAM.
Mizrahi, Yemile. 1994. “Conciliation against Confrontation: How Does the Partido Accion Nacional Rule in Chihuahua?” Documento de Trabajo 28, Mexico, D.F., Division de Estudios Politicos del CIDE. . 1995. “Democracia, eficiencia y participacion: 10s dilemas de 10s
gobiemos de oposicion en Mexico,” Polifica y Gobierno 2(2): 177-205. - .2000a “Elecciones en Puebla: la continuidad de la dominacidn priista.”
Centro de lnvestigacion y Docencia Economicas, Division de Estudios Politicos, Documento de Trabajo #I 12. - . 2000b. “La altemancia politica en Chihuahua: el regreso del PRI.”
Gobiernos de Oposicidn en Mixico. Mexico, D.F.: Grijalbo. Moreno, Alejandro. 1999. “Campaign Awareness and Voting in the 1997
Mexican Congressional Elections.” In Toward Mexico ’s Democratization: Parties, Campaigns, Elections and Public Opinion, edited by Jorge I . Dominguez and Alejandro Poire. New York: Routledge Press. 1 14-46.
Nacif-Hemhdez, Benito. 1996. “Electoral Institutions and Single Party Politics in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies.” Documento de Trabajo 48, Mexico D.F., Divisidn de Estudios Politicos del CIDE.
-. 1998. “Legislative Parties in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies.” Presented at the 1998 Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, Massachusetts. September 3-6.
Rodriguez, Victoria E. 1997. Decentralization in Mexico: From Reforma Municipal to Solidaridad to Nuevo Federalismo. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
March 16-19.
52 Politics 6 Policy Vol.33 No. 1
Rodriguez, Victoria E., and Peter M. Ward. 1992. Policymaking, Politics, and Urban Governance in Chihuahua: the Experience of Recent Panista Governments. Austin, TX: LBJ School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin.
-. 1995a. Opposition Government in Mexico. Albuquerque, N M : University of New Mexico Press.
-. 1995b. Political Change in Baja California: Democracy in the Making? La Jolla, CA: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California-San Diego.
Smith, Peter H. 1979. Labyrinths of Power: Political Recruitment in Twentieth-Century Mexico. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Strom, Kaare. 1990. “A Behavioral Theory of Competitive Political Parties.” American Journal of Political Science 34(2): 565-98.
Teeters-Reynolds, Holly. 1 998. Institutional Change: The Mexican Chamber of Deputies. Ph.D. dissertation. Rice University, Houston, Texas.
Ward, Peter M. 1998. “De clientelismo a tecnocracia: cambios recientes en la gestion municipal en MCxico.” Politica y Gobierno 5( 1 ) : 95-1 33.
Ward, Peter M., and Victoria E. Rodriguez. 1999. New Federalism and State Government in Mexico: Bringing the States Back In. Austin, TX: LBJ School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin.
Weldon, Jeffrey. 1997. “Political Sources of Presidencialismo in Mexico.” In Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America, edited by Scott Mainwaring and Matthew Soberg Shugart. New York: Cambridge University Press. 225-58. - . 1999. “Executive-Legislative Relations in Mexico in the 1990s.” Presented
at the conference “Dilemmas of Change in Mexican Politics,” Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California October 8-9.