i

LEVERAGE, LEGITIMACY, AND THE LEGISLATURE:

INSTITUTIONAL EVOLUTION UNDER MEXICO’S PRI,

1929-2000

Dissertation

Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree doctor of philosophy in

the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Miryam Chandler, B.A, M.A

Graduate Program in Political Science

The Ohio State University

2013

Dissertation Committee:

Marcus Kurtz (adviser)

Sarah Brooks

Jeremy Wallace

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Copyright by

Miryam Dvorah Farrar Chandler

2013

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Abstract

How is it that an institution designed to promote democracy can be subverted to

provide long-term support to an autocracy – and then again, later, become the instrument

of democratization? Institutions are not stagnant; they perform distinctly different roles

over time. The process by which they come to change roles is understood as evolution.

This dissertation answers the question, “How does institutional evolution vary over

time?” By examining the case of Mexico from 1929 to 2000, I am able to show that

institutional evolution varies in terms of speed and in terms of content.

In the case of Mexico, the same party – the PRI – ruled from 1929 until 2000 in a

dominant party authoritarian regime. I study the Mexican constitution to demonstrate

that the speed of institutional evolution is associated with the struggle for power between

the ruling party and the opposition party or parties, while the content of institutional

evolution is associated with the struggle between the executive and the legislature.

Dominant party regimes face challenges for leverage between the executive and the

legislature (branch power) and the ruling party and opposition party (party power). When

those leverage relationships shift – when one side increases its leverage over the other –

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the patterns of legislative evolution shift as well. Institutions change course, from

favoring one side to favoring the other. The proximate cause of these evolutionary shifts

is the regime’s response to legitimacy crises; legitimacy crises create opportunities to

alter leverage relationships, which in turn affect the direction of legislative evolution.

I argue that shifts in legislative evolutionary patterns are correlated with shifts in

the two leverage relationship axes outlined above, branch power (executive-legislature)

and party power (ruling party-opposition party). When the weaker actor – the legislature,

in terms of the branch axis, and the opposition, in terms of the party power axis –

increases its leverage over the traditionally stronger actor, the weaker actor is able to

pursue institutional changes which strengthen its position. I demonstrate this by

analyzing constitutional amendments between 1929 and 2000 in Mexico, and showing

that those amendments push the legislature towards being a more powerful institution in

some periods and towards being a weaker institution in others, as well as enshrining

opposition powers in some periods and diminishing them in others. Tracing the path of

the legislature’s evolution further highlights that institutions do not evolve in a strictly

linear fashion; rather, they may evolve towards an end for some time and then devolve, or

move away from that ultimate end, before eventually altering course to evolve once

again.

I utilize the comparative method (adapted from Mill’s method) to show an

association between my two sets of hypotheses. My theory speaks to two dimensions of

legislative evolution: its speed and its content. In terms of the speed, I argue that (1a)

When the ruling party has leverage over the opposition party, rate of constitutional

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change will be lower and (1b) When the opposition party has leverage over the ruling

party, rate of constitutional change will be higher. In terms of content, I posit that (2a)

When the executive has leverage over the legislature, changes are more likely to

constrain legislative powers and (2b) When the legislature has leverage over the

executive, changes are more likely to increase legislative powers.

The shifts in leverage balance are brought about by the regime’s response to a

legitimacy crisis. In the case of Mexico, there were four legitimacy crises bracketing five

periods of institutional evolution. The legitimacy crisis – an exogenous shock – forced

the regime to take action in order to address the crisis and rebuild its damaged legitimacy.

The regime response facilitated a shift in leverage relationships, which brought about

institutional evolution.

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Dedication

To my husband Will and my parents, Rhonda Moskowitz and Chris Farrar, without

whom I would have given up long ago.

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Acknowledgements

There is some great irony to the fact that a dissertation, while technically only

written by one person, is in reality the work of many. My name is on the front, but I

would not have reached that point without the help and support of quite a few people.

I must of course thank my committee for their assistance over the years. Marcus

Kurtz’s willingness to be a springboard for all of my ideas, from the most far-flung early

days (“I’d like to interview some dictators!”) to this ultimate iteration, has been

immensely valuable. His patience in sitting through my meanderings and in explaining

his thoughts for the umpteenth time made it possible for me to finally sit down and write

my dissertation. Sarah Brooks’ careful examination and diligent critiques of each stage

of my dissertation work helped me to work through both the logic and the flaws of my

arguments and ultimately led to a much stronger document. Jeremy Wallace’s expertise

in authoritarian systems helped ensure that I at least thought about cases other than

Mexico.

Far back in the dark ages of pre-candidacy graduate school I had the privilege of

knowing Amanda Yates and Rebecca Haimowitz King. From the first day of graduate

school, through the terror of candidacy exams, to the prospectus and now to the finish

line, they have been my colleagues, my friends, and my cheering squad.

I also owe an immense debt of gratitude to my dissertation group. Across four

time zones and three continents, Danielle Langfield, Soundarya Chidambaram, Jennifer

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Nowlin, Tahseen Kazi, Jiwon Suh, and Emily Lamb offered insightful comments, lasting

friendships, and immense support. Danielle and Soundarya in particular paved the way

for me; by their examples they made the entire process of completing a dissertation seem

possible.

My research in Mexico was facilitated by a series of grants. I am grateful to the

Department of Political Science, the Alumni Grant for Graduate Research, the Office of

International Affairs, and the Mershon Center for funding my fieldwork.

My parents, Chris Farrar and Rhonda Moskowitz, have been enormous sources of

support through this entire seven-year marathon. They have fed me when I was too busy

to cook, babysat when I needed to work, and unequivocally encouraged me when I

became frustrated. Without them, as without my siblings, Rebekah and Zach Farrar, I

would have been lost.

Finally, there are two very important people whose role in all of this must be

acknowledged. My son Henry will have no memory of his mother’s time in graduate

school, but my memories of my last year of school will be enormously lightened by the

memories of his first year of life. And my husband, Will, made all of this possible.

When I made the decision to move from Minnesota to Ohio for graduate school, he came

with me. When I was so stressed out from exams that I couldn’t decide whether to laugh

or cry, he took care of me. When I considered quitting graduate school multiple times, he

talked me out of it. Throughout this entire process he has been my center – he has

brought me calm when I am anxious, and offered solutions when all I could see were

problems. Without his love, patience, and support I would have given up long ago. This

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dissertation belongs to him and to all the others who helped and supported me as much as

it does to me.

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Vita

2005…………B.A., Political Science and International Studies. Macalester College, St.

Paul MN.

cum laude

2008…………M.A., Political Science. The Ohio State University, Columbus OH.

2010-2011……Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow, U.S. Department of

Education

2006-2013……Graduate Teaching and Research Assistant

Fields of Study

Major Field: Political Science

Specialization: Comparative Politics

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Table of Contents

Abstract………………………………………………………………………………….ii

Dedication……………………………………………………………………………….v

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………...vi

Vita………………………………………………………………………………………ix

Field of Study…………………………………………………………………………....ix

Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………..x

List of Tables………………………………………………………………………….....xii

List of Charts…………………………………………………………………..………..xiii

List of Graphs……………………………………………………………………….......xiv

Glossary of Terms………………………………………………………………………..xv

Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………………1

1.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………..1

1.2 The Puzzle…………………………………………………………………3

1.3 Institutional Evolution in the Literature: Failure of Existing Arguments

…..……………………………………………………………………………...…6

1.4 The Importance of Understanding Institutional Evolution……………..10

1.5 Dominant Party Democracies, Dominant Party Autocracies, and

Hegemonic Party Regimes…………………………………………..…...12

1.6 Why Mexico?.............................................................................................15

1.7 Hypotheses to be Tested………………………………………………....15

1.8 Legislative Evolution under the PRI: A Periodization…………………..18

1.9 Order of the Dissertation………………………………………………...23

1.10 Conclusion…………………………………………………………….…23

Chapter 2: A Theory of Institutional Evolution under Dominant Party Regimes……….25

2.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………...25

2.2.1 Institutions under Authoritarianism…………………………………..….27

2.2.2 Institutional Evolution…………………………………………………...32

2.2.3 Institutional Disequilibrium……………………………………………...36

2.3 Theory…………………………………………………………………....40

2.4.1 Executive-Legislative Relations………………………………………....49

2.4.2 Constitutional Powers under Dominant Party Authoritarianism………...52

2.4.3 Bargaining under Authoritarianism……………………………….……..54

2.4.4 Leverage Relationships………………………………………………….55

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2.5 Causal Links: Legitimacy……………………………………………......60

2.6 Conclusion……………………………………………………………….62

Chapter 3: Responses to Legitimacy Crises as the Causal Mechanism……………..…...63

3.1 Introduction………………………………………………………….….63

3.2 Theory Review…………………………………………………………..63

3.3 The Causal Mechanism…………………………………………………..67

3.4 Legitimacy Crises in Mexican History……………………………….….80

3.5 Conclusion………………………………………………………….……93

Chapter 4: Testing the Theory: The Evolution of Legislative Powers……………..……95

4.1 Introduction………………………………………………………..…….95

4.2 Mexican History: From the Revolution to 1929………………........……96

4.3 Legislative Evolution: A Periodization…………………………………102

4.4 Data Sources and Coding Decisions……………………………………116

4.5 Research Design and Findings……………………………………….…125

4.6 Conclusion………………………………………………………….......144

Chapter 5: Case Study: Tracking Legislative Evolution Through Land Reform………146

5.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………….146

5.2 Brief Restatement of Theory……………………………………………148

5.3 Article 27 in the Context of Institutional Evolution……………………150

5.4 A Brief History of Article 27…………………………………………...156

5.5 Accommodating the Theory to the Facts: the Challenge of a Small n....160

5.6 The Amendments in the Historical Context: 1933-1992……………….163

5.7 Research Design………………………………………………………..173

5.7.1 Coding Decisions and Data Sources……………………………………174

5.8 Findings……………………………………………………………...…177

5.9 Conclusion…………………………………………………………...…198

Chapter 6: Conclusion…………………………………………………………………..201

6.1 Existing Arguments Revisited………………………………………….201

6.2 Summary of the Findings…………………………………………….…204

6.3 Unanswered Questions…………………………………………………209

6.4 Conclusion…………………………………………………………...…213

Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………....215

Appendix: Executive-Legislative Bargaining in Democracies……..………………….222

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List of Tables

Table 2.1: Variation in axes of institutional evolution……………………………….…48

Table 2.2: Deals behind prominent Concertacesión agreements……………………….55

Table 3.1: Explaining variation in institutional evolutionary patterns…………………66

Table 3.2: Summary of legitimacy crises………………………………………………94

Table 4.1: Rate of constitutional change over time…………………………………….104

Table 4.2: Summary: Predicted leverage relationship winners by period………...……115

Table 4.3: Party power and rate of evolution by period………………………………..127

Table 4.4: Branch dominance and legislative power by period………………………..132

Table 4.5: Branch power and modified legislative power by period…………………..135

Table 5.1: Land use and tenure by general type, 1988…………………………………155

Table 5.2: Coding and hypothesis findings by case……………………………………177

Table 5.3: Party power axis leverage findings…………………………………………178

Table 5.4: Coding decisions for hypotheses 1a and 1b………………………………...179

Table 5.5: Branch axis leverage findings………………………………………………189

Table 5.6: Recoded branch axis leverage findings……………………………………..190

Table 5.7: Coding decisions for hypotheses 2a and 2b…………………………………192

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List of Charts

Chart 3.1: Categories of evolutionary shifts…………………………………………..79

xiv

List of Graphs

Graph 1.1: Total constitutional changes to legislative powers by year……………….18

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Glossary of Terms

PRI: Partido Revolucionario Institucional, the ruling party

PAN: Partido Acción Nacional, the primary opposition party

PPS: Partido Popular Socialista, a minor opposition party

PNR: Partido Nacional Revolucionario, the former name of the PRI

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Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Introduction

In 1977, the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, controlled by the PRI supermajority,

passed a package of reforms designed explicitly to increase the number of opposition

legislators in that body. The package changed the electoral system from strictly

majoritarian to a mixed majoritarian/proportional representation system with a mandated

opposition presence. It also lowered the barrier to electoral participation, essentially

inviting in all potential opposition parties. The amendments were introduced by PRI

legislators, supported by the PRI, and passed by the PRI supermajority. The main

opposition party, the PAN, had no role in the introduction of the package and did not

advocate for it, despite being the primary beneficiary from the changes. Prior to the

reform, the PRI was electorally at its zenith and the PAN was not a threat to regime

dominance in elections. The system appeared to be functioning perfectly well without

greater opposition involvement. By increasing opportunities for opposition within the

legislature, the PRI almost unavoidably risked diminishing its own hold on power –and

yet it singlehandedly promoted and passed the electoral reforms.

Why would a party so committed to maintaining itself in power that it held the

legislature not just by a majority but by a supermajority initiate, support, and pass a series

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of reforms explicitly designed to cut into that power? The answer, as my dissertation will

show, has to do with how and why legislative evolution occurs in dominant party

authoritarian regimes. I contend that legislative evolutionary patterns change based on

shifts in leverage capabilities along two axes: the branch power axis and the party power

axis. Dominant party regimes face challenges for leverage between the executive and the

legislature (branch power) and the ruling party and opposition party (party power). When

those leverage relationships shift – when one side increases its leverage over the other –

the patterns of legislative evolution shift as well. Institutions change course, from

favoring one side to favoring the other. The proximate cause of these evolutionary shifts

is the regime’s response to legitimacy crises; legitimacy crises create opportunities to

alter leverage relationships, which in turn affect the direction of legislative evolution.

In the case of the 1977 reforms, which will be discussed in detail in a later

chapter, the opposition’s failure to nominate a presidential candidate for the 1976 election

created a legitimacy crisis for the regime, where it appeared to be running unopposed.

The regime partially based its claim to legitimate rule on electoral victory and being

selected over the alternatives in each election.1 The regime’s response to the legitimacy

crisis, the reform package, was meant to ensure that there were enough opposition groups

and enough of an opposition presence that there would always be an opposition candidate

in the presidential election. Although the package appeared to benefit the opposition, it

was tailored to protect the regime. However, the changes put in place by the reform

1 As is discussed in chapter 3, the other base for regime legitimacy was its role in the revolution.

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package changed the leverage relationship between the ruling party and the opposition,

and helped set the stage for later reforms which increased the opposition’s power.

1.2 The Puzzle

In a dominant party authoritarian regime, political institutions exist to maintain

and strengthen the ruling party. They do not exist to create opportunities for the

opposition to increase its power, as the PAN was able to do when it forced the PRI to

accept independent administration of elections. Nor do these institutions exist to

undermine the authority of the party head, the executive – yet that was precisely what

occurred when the legislature severed magisterial terms from the presidential term,2

decreasing the president’s ability to directly control the magistrates’ careers. In a

dominant party authoritarian system, these actions to the regime’s detriment should never

occur – and yet they did, in Mexico, and in many cases they occurred when the regime’s

control was undisputed.

What affects how legislatures evolve under dominant party authoritarian regimes?

What accounts for changes in evolutionary direction – how do we explain an institution

that had been progressing towards democracy suddenly regressing towards autocracy?

The cornerstone of dominant party authoritarian regimes is, simply, that the party

is dominant. The role of institutions, particularly the legislature, is to maintain the ruling

party in power and prevent the opposition from winning. Rank and file party members,

in turn, operate to maintain the executive in power – the executive and the party-

2 A move that was later reversed.

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controlled legislature come together to keep the party in control of the state. Elections

are not intended to create an alternation in power; they are intended to return the regime

to office. The constitution does not enshrine democratic values and the importance of

opposition; it provides a mechanism for legally justifying the regime’s control.

Legislators do not represent the people, they represent the party. It is not an exaggeration

to state that virtually every aspect of political life in a dominant party regime is designed

to maintain the ruling party. Why, then, would a dominant party regime – a regime with

a clear majority or even supermajority of political offices – take actions that diminish its

power and create opportunities for the opposition to grow? Why would the legislature

pass constitutional amendments that weaken the ruling party’s grip? Why would the

executive allow the legislature to strengthen its power at the expense of his power? None

of this should happen, and yet, demonstrably, it does. My dissertation aims to answer

these questions by proposing a theory of legislative evolution under dominant party

authoritarian regimes.

My theory of shifting leverage relations focuses on the evolution of the

legislature. This is primarily because the legislature provides the clearest and most

consistent examples of interaction between the four actors (executive, legislature, ruling

party and opposition party). The recurring cycle of legislative sessions throws all the

actors (in the case of the executive, via his appointed go-betweens) together regularly,

and the large number of laws presented in the legislature creates a substantial pool of

data. Although the basic dynamics I identify – legitimacy crisis, regime response,

shifting leverage relationships – should define the evolution of any number of

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institutions, the actors in this theory are specific to the legislature. Many other

institutions are affected; for instance, electoral evolution is driven by changes arising

from the legislature and shifts in those relationships – but the connection is indirect, often

routed through the legislature.

As laid out in Chapter 2, I argue that shifts in legislative evolutionary patterns are

correlated with shifts in the two leverage relationship axes outlined above, branch power

(executive-legislature) and party power (ruling party-opposition party). When the weaker

actor – the legislature, in terms of the branch axis, and the opposition, in terms of the

party power axis – increases its leverage over the traditionally stronger actor, the weaker

actor is able to pursue institutional changes which strengthen its position.3 I demonstrate

this by analyzing constitutional amendments between 1929 and 2000 in Mexico, and

showing that those amendments push the legislature towards being a more powerful

institution in some periods and towards being a weaker institution in others, as well as

enshrining opposition powers in some periods and diminishing them in others. Tracing

the path of the legislature’s evolution further highlights that institutions do not evolve in a

strictly linear fashion; rather, they may evolve towards an end for some time and then

devolve, or move away from that ultimate end, before eventually altering course to

evolve once again.

3 For the purposes of my dissertation, I treat the opposition as a unitary actor. I make the same assumption

of the ruling party, and of the legislature as a whole vis-à-vis the executive. For a more detailed

justification of this simplification see chapter 2.

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1.3 Institutional Evolution in the Literature: Failure of Existing Arguments

There are two major approaches to the study of institutional evolution, and a third

lesser-known but important approach.4 The major approaches argue either that

institutional evolution occurs gradually (Shepsle 1989), or that it is a series of major

shifts caused by critical junctures (Krasner 1984, Mahoney 2001). The lesser-known

approach essentially unifies these two divergent theories into an argument for both

gradual and major evolutionary moments; practitioners include Greif and Laitin (2004),

Thelen (2004), and Baumgartner et al (2009). Each approach has different flaws. The

gradual evolution and critical junctures approaches are flawed in that each is able to

explain only one set of changes – the gradual approach cannot explain sudden moments

of institutional evolution, and the critical junctures approach cannot explain the slow and

gradual accumulation of instances of evolution over time. The unified approach theorists

are able to bring in both gradual and sudden change, but generally lack either a

theoretical explanation for how the two are related or a practical way to capture those

shifts. Essentially, these theorists recognize that evolution may occur gradually or

suddenly, but do not discuss how those two categories of change are connected.

My theory, which may be categorized as the landslide approach, bridges this gap.

I argue that institutions are subject to moments of seismic change, which then allow

smaller and larger changes to build up and move the institution further down the

evolutionary path – a process which continues until the next major change occurs.

Landslides are caused by seismic shifts and composed of major land shifts as well as the

4 These are not specifically theories of legislative evolution, but the legislature should fall under these same

theories.

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flow of minor rubble. The seismic shifts can alter the direction of the overall path

followed by debris. The rubble – small rocks and large boulders - taken as individual

pieces, appear inconsequential, until they pile up so much that they help to direct the next

seismic shift. Similarly, institutions undergo seismic changes which lead to major and

minor moments of evolution. The seismic changes suddenly alter the overall

evolutionary path of the institution. The major moments jump the institution a ways

down the path, making further evolution more feasible. The minor moments, taken

individually, do not alter the path – but enough minor moments cascading together can

result in a reconsideration of the leverage relationships, which affects the evolutionary

paths available at the next seismic shift.

The other major challenge facing many of the existing evolutionary approaches is

that they focus primarily on a system change, the shift from autocracy to democracy or

vice versa. These are major events, to be sure, but by focusing exclusively on that shift,

scholars often miss an equally important but potentially less rare event: a shift in the

institution from performing one role to performing an entirely different one, for instance

from rubber stamp to check on the executive. The focus on total system change rather

than role change means that institutional reversals may be overlooked; that is, by setting

the limits of analysis as “starting from autocracy and ending at democracy,” we may miss

periods where the institution moves away from that end goal. A state moving from

authoritarianism to democracy can still experience periods of authoritarian reversion,

where more conservative elements triumph and efforts at liberalization are shut down.

This occurred, for instance, in a different competitive authoritarian setting in Jordan when

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the king instituted democratic reforms in the legislature and then, upon encountering

opposition, disbanded the legislature entirely and nullified the elections (Lust-Okar 2005,

49-55). In that instance, Jordan’s progression from more to less authoritarian was

temporarily reversed to a more authoritarian state. As I will demonstrate throughout the

dissertation, this same pattern manifested in Mexico, where progress towards democracy

was occasionally reversed. The focus of most institutional evolutionary theories on total

system shifts leaves devolutionary periods overlooked.

My theory allows for both evolution and devolution by demonstrating shifts in

leverage capabilities, as manifested by constitutional amendments. I further show that

external events challenge the regime’s legitimacy, but the regime response to those

legitimacy crises can force a sudden shift in leverage relationships. The ensuing period

of evolution builds on those altered leverage relationships, increasing or decreasing each

actor’s power, until the subsequent legitimacy crisis forces another renegotiation of

relationships.

As detailed in chapter 3, legitimacy crises are events that challenge the regime’s

right to rule the state, less by decreasing the regime’s electoral share than by introducing

elements (the absence of opposition, for instance, or obvious fraud) at odds with the

regime’s image. In the case of Mexico, these challenges are targeted either at the

regime’s electoral victories, or at its connection with the revolution. For instance, when

the opposition party PAN had a crisis of direction in 1976 and failed to nominate a

presidential candidate, it led to a legitimacy crisis for the regime because of its reliance

on the appearance of opposition in elections. Without an opposition candidate over

9

whom to triumph, the PRI’s image as the chosen representative of the people was

severely damaged.

Additionally, my theory recognizes the role of actors in shaping evolution, and by

doing so demonstrates that shifts in the political balance within the state are often

associated with shifts in the direction of the legislature’s development. When actors that

are generally in a weaker position are able to maneuver into positions of greater strength,

they will use their new power to force institutional changes to their benefit, often in a

direction away from that preferred by the regime. As discussed above, there are two axes

of tension in the evolutionary process: struggles between the executive and the

legislature, and struggles between the ruling party and the opposition. At the height of

the regime, the executive is far more powerful than the legislature and the ruling party is

far more powerful than the opposition. However, when that balance shifts – when the

legislature begins to have more sway vis-à-vis the executive, or when the opposition

party can exert its influence on the ruling party – the traditionally weaker actors are able

to force concessions that the regime would otherwise refuse to grant. I show that the

nature of these concessions is such that the evolutionary process gradually changes

direction. This is not to argue that the weaker parties are somehow able to remove the

regime from power; rather, I assert that as the opposition party or parties gains leverage

on the regime party, and as the legislature as a whole gains leverage on the executive,

these weaker actors are able to force the regime and the executive to pass laws that do not

benefit the stronger actors.

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1.4 The importance of understanding institutional evolution

Improving our understanding of institutional evolution is important on two levels:

in terms of understanding transitions, particularly protracted transitions, and in terms of

understanding the role of actors.

Many institutional evolution theories are primarily focused on structural causes of

change at the expense of agentive ones; as outlined above, most of the theories essentially

assume that change is caused by purely structural causes and actors’ capabilities are so

circumscribed as to be unimportant. This is not to say that these theories assume failure

cannot happen; rather, the assumption appears to be that when failure occurs it is because

the wrong option was chosen – not because different actors would have made a different

choice. In this way, these theories subsume variation in actors’ preferences. These

structuralist assumptions lead to more rigid theories; if actors don’t matter, and

alternatives are constantly and unswervingly closed off, only a very narrow evolutionary

path is possible. As I demonstrate with Mexico, however, if we look closely at specific

cases of evolution, legislative evolution is frequently less rigid and more adaptable and

reversible. The core of that adaptability stems from variation in interactions between

actors. Purely structural explanations imply more rigid institutions, missing the shifting

power dynamics that underlie the institution itself. The focus on purely structural sources

of change goes hand in hand with attention to major changes at the expense of minor ones

– but as we see with Mexico, the minor changes can help set the stage for major ones.

Gradual shifts in leverage relationships can manifest in new and dramatic policies at

moments of crisis – small evolutionary steps are linked to large ones. By bringing actors

11

back in, we gain a much more complete picture of institutional evolution as a process that

operates not in fits and starts but continually over time, at both micro and macro levels.

Understanding institutional evolution in an authoritarian setting also speaks to our

perception of the transition process. There is a tendency in the literature to assume

transition is a linear process (see for instance O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986). The state

moves from authoritarianism to democracy, whether by revolution or by pacted transition

– but it consistently moves towards that goal. Problems may arise in consolidating new

democracies, but prior to the point of forming the democracy, the path from

authoritarianism is monotonic. The problem, however, as my dissertation argues, is that

the assumption of linearity can be a false one. States can have periods of forward

movement as well as periods of backwards movement as they proceed down the

transitions path. Without a full understanding of the evolutionary process, especially how

periods of evolutionary reversion – what I call devolution – can occur, we may find

ourselves making false assumptions about the transitions process. This is particularly

true when we make assumptions of linearity towards protracted transitions, which by

their nature have more opportunities to reverse course. Those false assumptions of

linearity, in turn, can lead to scholars inadvertently masking some of the actors’ behavior

in the transition process, and missing important elements as to how, why, and when

transitions occur and are completed.

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1.5 Dominant party democracies, dominant party autocracies, and hegemonic party

regimes

This dissertation is intended to speak to institutional evolution in dominant party

and hegemonic party authoritarian regimes. These terms, however, have similar

meanings which need to be parsed out, along with the democratic variant.

The issue of what is – and what is not – a dominant party has been examined in

great detail within the literature. Arian and Barnes (1974) essentially argue that there is

no difference between autocratic and democratic dominant parties – by their measure, all

dominant party regimes are at least minimally democratic. This is a key detail, as it

speaks to the historic disagreement over whether Mexico’s regime was democratic or

authoritarian. The justification for Arian and Barnes’ argument and others like it is that

in a dominant party system an opposition exists, elections are held, and those elections

are at least minimally competitive. From that standpoint, the system appears to be a

procedural or electoral democracy. The challenge to this approach, however, and one

that emerged in later research and led to the complete differentiation of dominant party

autocracies and dominant party democracies, is that it fails to recognize how the

opposition’s capabilities and options change from system to system. In both autocracies

and democracies, a dominant party regime is one in which the same party wins repeated

elections and uses its incumbency to build an advantage over the opposition, to return

future victories. In a democratic dominant party system, however, the incumbency

advantages are legal – for instance, gerrymandering to isolate opposition voters, or using

incumbency to monopolize important committees. In an authoritarian dominant party

13

regime, the advantages are extra-legal: channeling government funds to party uses, for

instance (Greene 2007).

The amount of time necessary to classify a regime (whether democratic or

autocratic) as dominant party varies; there is no strictly accepted timeframe in the

literature. Pempel (1990) uses 11 years as a threshold for democratic dominant party

regimes; Greene (2007) sets the bar at 20 years for autocracies.5 Przeworski et al (2000)

consider a regime to be dominant party if the ruling party wins more than a single

election; this seems like an impossibly low bar that could lead to a great deal of

misclassification. While there is no consensus on this point, Greene’s 20 year guideline

has significant merit because of the impact such a time horizon has on voter expectations.

Greene argues that 20 years represents a generation – enough time for children to grow

up without ever experiencing an alternation in power.

A further important distinction, particularly in terms of Mexico, is that between a

dominant party regime and a hegemonic party regime. The two terms are often used

fairly interchangeably, as Schedler (1998) does in his piece “What is Democratic

Consolidation?” But in fact they have slightly different connotations which are

particularly important in the context of an evolving institution. Dominant party regimes

are those in which there is some possibility, however reduced, of the opposition winning

an election. Hegemonic party regimes, on the other hand, have legal opposition parties

but no possibility of those parties displacing the regime. My theory is in fact equally

applicable to hegemonic and dominant party regimes, since the outcome is not the

5 Greene offers an excellent review of the dominant party literature in his book. Since this is a major part

of his argument and a minor part of mine, I recommend interested readers read pgs X-X.

14

opposition actually winning but simply increasing leverage. However, for clarity’s sake

it is important to distinguish between the two, and to examine how Mexico fits into the

classification schema. Both Greene (2007) and Magaloni (2006) label Mexico a

dominant party regime. This labeling has to do with the time period of primary interest

to both scholars – their work starts in the 1980s, when the protracted transition begins. In

this period, Mexico is indeed a dominant party system. However, I would argue that the

full scope of Mexico under the PRI is more complex. From the inception of the party that

would become the PRI in the early 1920s, until the Maximato under Plutarco Calles in

the late 1920s, Mexico could be considered a dominant party regime – increasingly the

odds were stacked in favor of the PRI, but there was still some possibility that an

opposition party might win elections. This possibility of electoral defeat in fact informed

the party’s strategy of co-opting as much opposition as possible. However, beginning

with the Maximato, when Calles unified the various factions of the party, the regime

became hegemonic – while opposition existed, it was not until the 1980s that there was

any possibility of the regime actually losing elections. In the 1980s the regime once

again can be classified as dominant party, until the 2000 election and the transition to

democracy brought it to an end.

Although it is important in terms of accurately understanding Mexico’s history to

distinguish between these periods, the distinction between hegemonic and dominant party

regimes does not affect my theory, as I am not theoretically concerned with the

opposition’s ability to win the presidency. Because it has no impact on my theory, and

15

because it would be confusing to the reader to switch between the two terms throughout

the dissertation, I will refer to the Mexican regime strictly as a dominant party regime.

1.6 Why Mexico?

This is a Mexico-specific project. However, the basic argument should pertain to

essentially any durable dominant party authoritarian regime (durable here follows

Greene’s argument for 20 years, or one generation), which has at least formal branch

separation and a legal opposition party. Given that universe of cases, it is particularly

important to understand why Mexico matters, and why it is the appropriate case for this

study. Primarily, Mexico tends to be seen as the paradigmatic dominant party regime

case, in part due to its longevity (see for instance Magaloni 2006). Identifying patterns

present in Mexico helps to predict patterns in other dominant party regimes as well. If

the theory is not supported in Mexico, it is unlikely to be supported elsewhere.

The longevity of Mexico’s regime has other practical impacts, as well. The PRI

kept extensive records; the long time horizon of the regime, coupled with those extensive

records – unusual in an authoritarian setting – provide a much more detailed, in-depth

look at the evolutionary process than is typical. Records of legislative sessions allow us

to develop a fuller picture of the debates that occurred in a formal setting. As a test case,

Mexico provides a wealth of resources.

1.7 Hypotheses to be tested

I detail the research design in chapter 4. In brief, I utilize the comparative

method (adapted from Mill’s method) to show an association between my two sets of

16

hypotheses. My theory speaks to two dimensions of legislative evolution: its speed and

its content. In terms of the speed, I argue that (1a) When the ruling party has leverage

over the opposition party, rate of constitutional change will be lower and (1b) When the

opposition party has leverage over the ruling party, rate of constitutional change will be

higher. In terms of content, I posit that (2a) When the executive has leverage over the

legislature, changes are more likely to constrain legislative powers and (2b) When the

legislature has leverage over the executive, changes are more likely to increase

legislative powers. In chapter 2 I outline how these hypotheses are derived, and the logic

that underlies them.

Because I am simply interested in showing a correlation between the independent

and dependent variables, I use cross-tabs to demonstrate the frequency with which the

hypotheses are upheld. My hypotheses require the identification of six variables: ruling

party leverage, opposition party leverage, rate of institutional evolution, executive

leverage, legislative leverage, and increases/constraints to legislative powers. As

discussed in chapter 4, these variables are all drawn from the Diario Oficial. The Diario

Oficial is the Mexican government’s transcript of all Chamber of Deputy sessions and

includes the text of proposed amendments, debates, and finalized constitutional

amendments. Through a qualitative analysis of the proposed and finalized text of each

amendment, I determined how the amendment affected leverage relationships along both

the branch power axis and the party power axis. Where possible, I substantiated my

findings with government records and letters between significant political actors,

collected over 2.5 months of archival research in Mexico City. Rate of institutional

17

evolution is calculated twice: first, in terms of how many amendments are passed in a

given year, and then, in terms of how many occur per year over each of the periods of

evolution that I have identified and which are laid out in section 1.7.

Because of the Mexican regime’s focus on maintaining and utilizing the

constitution – it was amended more than 500 times over the lifetime of the regime, with

over 120 modifications relevant to my research – the constitution provides a written

record of formal changes to the function of the legislature. Those formal changes are

indicative of broader patterns of evolution; whether, for instance, a change increases

legislative powers or diminishes them.

I test my hypotheses over two distinct data sets: the set of all constitutional

amendments to formal legislative powers (articles 50-79; chapter 4), and the set of all

amendments to one specific article, article 27 (chapter 5). This provides a robustness

check on the theory, as it ascertains that the same underlying dynamics of institutional

evolution are present in two distinct scenarios. The broad test of articles 50-79

demonstrates the applicability of the theory across a significant subset of the constitution,

with 123 cases between 1929 and 2000. Article 27, on the other hand, demonstrates how

the same dynamics of shifting leverage relationships were present even in the most

contested aspects of the constitution. The principles enshrined in the article, which

outlined rules of land ownership, were among the cornerstones of the regime’s claim to

legitimacy. A major facet of peasant support for the regime was the promise, based in the

revolution, to redistribute land rights. Article 27 became one of the most hotly-contested

areas of the constitution, and was vital both to the party’s image and to its claim to

18

legitimacy. By demonstrating that the same shifting leverage relationships describe

legislative evolution in this most important article as in other, less vital articles, I am able

to show that the patterns of institutional evolution I have identified are present throughout

a variety of aspects of political life.

1.8 Legislative Evolution Under the PRI: A Periodization

In order to demonstrate at an initial level how the theory fits with the reality in

Mexico, I offer a relatively brief discussion of my periodization of legislative evolution

under the PRI. This periodization will be revisited in much greater detail in chapter 4,

when I engage in theory testing, but at this point it serves to give the reader a brief

understanding of the development of politics in Mexico. It is drawn from major

historical events and supported by an analysis of variation in the rates of changes to the

constitution over time, an approach following Polina and Yañez (2003). I identified

events which threatened the regime’s legitimacy and used those events to separate the

years of the study (1929-2000) into five periods, bracketed by the regime’s response to a

legitimacy crisis. The periods are: 1929-1945, 1946-1976, 1977-1986, 1987-1993, and

1994-2000. Each period demonstrated markedly different levels of institutional evolution

from the periods immediately preceding and succeeding it. The table below shows

constitutional changes per year; the vertical lines indicate the breaks between each

period.

19

Following Thelen’s theory of evolution in both large, sudden shifts and small,

gradual ones, this dissertation relies on a periodization of institutional evolution. The

basic premise is that because institutions undergo dramatic shifts as well as subtle ones,

the institution’s development can be broken down into major periods divided by what are

essentially external seismic events – events that drastically and fundamentally alter the

shape of the institution, but that originate from outside the institution rather than from

within. These periods then contain cases of institutional shifts, both large and small,

which combine to affect the institution’s evolution. A clearer way of picturing this type

of evolution may be through the metaphor of a landslide. Seismic shifts – major,

dramatic changes that are external to the piece of land under consideration – occur,

causing a landslide to begin. The landslide then shakes loose pieces of the mountain,

some large and some small. Both large and small pieces affect the path of the landslide,

as large pieces each individually tear out chunks of the mountain and change its shape,

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

1925 1935 1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

Total change

Total change

Graph 1.1 Total Constitutional Changes to Legislative Powers by Year

20

while small pieces are shaken loose individually but begin falling in the same direction

and eventually exert enough combined force to tear out chunks as well. The landslide

continues in this direction until another seismic shift occurs which causes it to shift

course. The pattern – seismic shift, landslide, large and small debris – continues until the

entire landslide ends. The mountain still bears the same name as it did initially, but looks

substantially different.

In the case of this dissertation, the seismic shifts are major events that originated

outside6 of the Mexican legislature and had such dramatic effects on political life that the

legislature took a shape that would not have been previously possible. This manifested,

for instance, in the exclusion of almost all opposition where previously opposition was

permitted, and later in the inclusion of that previously excluded opposition.

Changes within each seismic shift can be large (major amendments, caused by the

external event) or small (amendments which do not individually shift the institution, but

together with the majority of other minor amendments are representatives of the new

institutional direction).

Between 1929 and 2000, the Mexican legislature experienced four major external

events which bracket five periods (the events leading to 1929 are excluded as being

before the period of study because the ruling party had not yet been formed). The periods

will be discussed in greater detail in chapters 3 and 4; here I will only offer a brief

6 “Outside” is a relative term. Within the political sphere, many actions may be connected. I do not argue

that the actions which cause legislative shifts are wholly independent of legislative processes – proving this

would be almost impossible, given the existence of formal as well as informal legislative actions. Rather,

they are actions that are not explicitly started from within the legislature – so, not begun by the passage of a

bill or a constitutional amendment .

21

overview. The study begins in 1929, with the formation of the Partido Nacional

Revolucionario (PNR) which eventually became the PRI. I do not consider this a

legitimacy crisis, as the regime was only then forming. The party’s formation was

external to the legislature, but dramatically altered the institution. Prior to the PNR’s

founding, Mexico had many small personalistic parties with high party volatility, as

parties popped into existence around specific people and then largely disappeared after

elections. There was no clear dominant or ruling party until the PNR was formed. In this

initial period, opposition parties came and went, but most political power was gradually

subsumed into the PNR and its head, who was often (though not exclusively) the

Mexican president. Major internal events in this period, caused by the formation of the

PNR, facilitated the gradual consolidation of power in the hands of the ruling party and

the president.

The legitimacy crisis which touched off the second period was the armed

rebellion of supporters of rejected presidential candidate General Juan Almazán in 1941.

Almazán was a member of the PRI who did not receive the dedazo, or tap, to name him

the presidential nominee. When that happened, his supporters within the PRI split off,

formed their own party, and began an armed rebellion. The public nature of the split

challenged the regime’s electoral legitimacy, and led to the passage in 1946 of an

amendment which severely limited the ability of opposition parties to compete at a

national level. The amendment was an attempt to remove any incentive for party

members to split, by making it extremely difficult to gain national representation. This

22

caused the legislature to shift from a multiparty system with democratic tendencies, into a

functionally single-party system promoting authoritarianism.

The third period began in 1977. The legitimacy crisis that caused it was the 1976

presidential election. Due to division within the PAN, the PRI candidate ran unopposed.

This was an embarrassment for the PRI as it called the legitimacy of the political system

into question. That major external event caused internal legislative shifts increasing the

opportunities for opposition involvement, such as the change from a straight majoritarian

electoral system to a mixed majoritarian/proportional representation system. This period

ended with a legitimacy crisis in 1986, in the form of the fragmentation of the PRI as an

internal faction, the Corriente Democrático, broke off to form its own party.

The fourth period, then, began in 19877 as a result of the formation of the PRD

out of the Corriente Democrático. This period saw an increase in opposition power and

capabilities as the ruling party was forced to court the PAN following significant

allegations of fraud in the 1988 elections. Major internal events here helped to

institutionalize the increased opposition power.

Finally, the last period began in 1994 with the ruling party almost losing the

majority in the Chamber of Deputies. It should be remembered that the near-defeat is an

external event in that it is not a legislative action; rather, it was an action from the

political system which had significant legislative ramifications. Chief among these were

the internal shifts from this period, which served to increase the opposition’s power to a

7 As I explain in chapter 4, the CD actually split and formed what would eventually become the PRD in

1986. However, 1986 was the middle of a legislative session. I have divided my periods based on the

beginning of the nearest legislative session to the major event, in order to keep rate of change calculations

consistent. In this case, the session began in 1987.

23

level where it was on par with the ruling party, essentially driving democratization. The

last event, which marked the end of this period as well as the end of institutional

evolution as a whole – the end of the landslide – was the PRI’s loss of the presidency in

2000.

1.9 Order of the Dissertation

This dissertation proceeds as follows. Chapter 2 introduces the theory in greater

detail, including the relevant literature. Chapter 3 expands on the theory by discussing

the causal mechanism, regime response to legitimacy crises. This chapter addresses the

regime’s bases for claiming legitimacy – its relationship to the revolution, and its

repeated massive electoral victories – and argues that the regime’s responses to crises of

legitimacy led to significant evolutionary shifts in the legislature. Chapter 4 tests the

theory and hypotheses on a broad set of cases, all amendments to the constitution passed

between 1929 and 2000. Chapter 5 tests the theory and hypotheses on a much narrower

set of cases, amendments to Article 27 on land rights, in order to show that even in the

most contested areas of institutional evolution, the same patterns of shifting leverage

relationships prevail. Chapter 6 offers brief concluding thoughts, along with suggestions

for future research.

1.10 Conclusion

The study of legislative evolution is particularly important in an authoritarian

setting. Understanding how, when and why legislatures evolve helps us to explain

24

transitions, and importantly, brings the actor back into institutional conversations. The

recent focus on exclusively structural aspects of evolution masks the important shifts in

power relationships that occur below the surface; my dissertation aims to bring those

shifts back into focus. In the chapters that follow, I argue for those restructured power

relationships, and for the importance of legitimacy crises in shifting the direction of

institutional evolution. Although my findings do not provide unequivocal support for my

theory, they do point to the importance of further research in this area.

25

Chapter 2: A Theory of Institutional Evolution Under Dominant Party Regimes

2.1 Introduction

How does institutional evolution vary – that is, what variation exists as an

institution comes to perform an entirely different function than their original design? Is it

a slow process, where changes to institutional structure occur incrementally? Or is it a

rapid process, where the institution is stable and unchanging until suddenly it begins to

perform an entirely different role? Most existing theories fall into one of these two

camps – either slow incremental change or sudden dramatic change. However, neither of

these theories alone can explain institutional evolution in a dominant party authoritarian

regime like Mexico. The incremental evolution approach fails to address moments when

the entire balance of the institution shifts, for instance from protecting the ruling party to

challenging its control. In contrast, the sudden evolution approach cannot explain the

myriad small changes that build up over time to alter relationships between the actors.

The accumulation of many small capabilities – for instance, the expansion over time of

the areas over which the legislature has sole legal authority – can increase resources

available to legislative actors so that, when presented with the opportunity, they opt to

challenge the executive.

Neither theoretical approach can fully explain institutional evolution. Therefore,

expanding on approaches laid out by Thelen (2000) and Greif (2006) detailed below, I

26

argue for an approach in which both sudden and gradual changes can be explained in

terms of shifts in the leverage relationships between the ruling party and the opposition,

and between the executive and the legislature. Those shifts occur due to the regime’s

response to legitimacy crises.

This chapter lays out my theory of institutional evolution, which aims to answer

the question, “What affects how institutions evolve under dominant party authoritarian

regimes?” I examine legislative evolution specifically. I define evolution as a total

alteration in the institution’s function from its original purpose. In the case of Mexico,

the legislature was initially designed as a democratic institution that would provide

checks on the executive, to avoid the recurrence of a dictatorship. However, it evolved

into an institution designed to maintain the executive and the ruling party in power, and

then evolved again to become an institution that promoted democratic alterations in

power. My theory argues that legislative evolution is a function of shifting leverage

relationships along two axes: branch power, characterized by varying leverage

relationships between the executive and the legislature, and party power, or varying

leverage relationships between the ruling party and the opposition party or parties. I

contend that as leverage relationships shift along each axis, the newly-strengthened side

is able to force the newly-weakened side to make concessions. Depending on which side

is strengthened, these changes can alter the system to strengthen the regime or the

opposition, and the executive or the legislature. These institutional changes come about

via bargaining, and are manifested in constitutional amendments. I further argue that this

process of institutional evolution is brought about by an exogenous (to the legislature)

27

factor: the regime’s response to legitimacy crises. I will also discuss some of the relevant

literature on institutional evolution, as well as other relevant fields of literature like the

role of institutions under autocracy, executive-legislative relations, and legitimacy in

authoritarian regimes, which divided legislative evolution in Mexico into five periods.

2.2.1 Institutions Under Authoritarianism

In order to understand institutional evolution, I begin by drawing out the role of

institutions themselves in authoritarian political life. Specifically, what is the role of the

legislature in electoral authoritarian regimes, and how are legislatures linked to

institutional evolution? A first step in answering these questions comes in identifying the

role legislatures play in authoritarian regimes, providing an area of political life that

encourages, and even depends on, opposition participation. In an electoral authoritarian

setting, legislatures are unique in that they are one of the few formal political arenas in

which opposition may participate. That participation may be constrained – and the

opposition itself may also be constrained, both in terms of its capabilities and in terms of

who the executive allows to participate – but nevertheless, the legislature remains a

forum for opposition participation within the regime. By creating an area for airing

opposition, the regime may achieve any of several goals: to provide a veneer of

legitimacy (Conaghan 2005), to hand-tie the executive and encourage investment (Levi

1988, Geddes 1999, Wright 2008a and 2008b), or to co-opt the opposition (Gandhi

2008). Brownlee (2007) also points out that legislatures may be used for signaling and

information gathering, and Lust-Okar (2005) argues that in certain cases the real role of

28

the legislature is not to affect policy but to allow rent redistribution. Finally, the

legislature may function as a theoretical check on executive action (Tsebelis 2002),

though often not an actual check. Because, as my theory argues, institutions evolve when

the weaker actor can exert pressure on the stronger one, institutional evolution is most

likely to occur in a setting where the weaker part has a legal voice. In authoritarian

regimes, the opposition is generally shut out of the executive and the courts; while it may

participate in elections, elections are discrete events rather than ongoing ones. The

legislature, though, meets regularly and has repeated legal opportunities for opposition

involvement, making it an institution in which evolution is likely to be visible. If despite

the presence and voice of the opposition the legislature does not demonstrate evolution,

we must question whether evolution occurs as described anywhere under the regime’s

aegis.

It has been noted that this is a theory of institutional evolution in dominant party

authoritarian regimes. In chapter 1 I discussed the distinction between hegemonic and

dominant party regimes. As I stated there, for Mexico the distinction is relatively

inconsequential – the division between the two regime types basically boils down to the

absence or presence of an opposition party. For my period of study, 1929-2000, Mexico

is actually generally considered both hegemonic (for the first 50 or so years) and

dominant party (for the last 20 or so years; see Magaloni 2006 for more). For the theory

as a whole, however, while the dynamics of altered leverage relationships should exist in

hegemonic regimes as well, the difficulty in consistently identifying informal opposition

29

implies that for testing purposes the universe of applicable cases be limited to dominant

party regimes, where there is a formal, legal opposition party.

A further scope condition pertains to regime longevity. In periods of extreme

volatility, where regimes are struggling to survive, it may be difficult to determine what

the institution’s long-term goal is. Therefore, in order to determine the institution’s

initial purpose and allow for some evolution to occur, I propose limiting the sample to

regimes that have lasted more than 20 years. This is the same cut-off Greene uses in

identifying dominant party regimes, with the logic that a 20 year period is a generation

and allows time for all actors to become accustomed to the political situation. The only

real scope conditions on the theory, then, are that the regime has lasted a sufficient time

to build institutional clarity of purpose, and that there be some opposition. This latter

point in particular is met by all electoral authoritarian regimes.

Legislative opposition in an electoral authoritarian regime may take several

forms. In addition to regimes where the opposition forms legal parties, the opposition

may be in factions from the ruling party itself, or (as Lust-Okar demonstrates) individuals

with ties to family groups rather than formal party organizations. In many cases,

however – and particularly in the case of dominant party regimes, the category with

which I am concerned and which I discussed in detail in chapter 1 – opposition parties are

permitted to compete in order to create legitimacy for the regime: “A hegemonic party

must therefore accept the existence of opposition parties and share some spaces of power

with them. It does so in order to convince both outsiders and its own citizens that the

regime is indeed essentially democratic, as well as to encourage opposition forces to

30

continue participating in a game that they know ahead of time they will lose.” (Crespo

2004, p. 61)

The presence of opposition parties and their ability to participate in political life

alter the regime’s power dynamics. Without any opposition, the regime risks appearing

illegitimate – but with too much or too powerful opposition, the regime risks losing

control. It must therefore walk a tightrope between bringing in enough opposition to

appear legitimate, but not so much as to threaten its own survival. This balance must be

frequently renegotiated as exogenous shocks increase opposition powers or limit

opposition presence. In order to bring the opposition in to the legislature, the executive

must offer them something in exchange – sometimes rents, as Wright and Lust-Okar

argue, or policy control, as Gandhi argues. Although what is ceded to the legislature may

vary, the executive must cede something in order to secure opposition compliance.

Along with these types of exchanges, the executive must allow the legislature at least

some self-government if he does not wish to have the legitimacy of the institution

challenged, either by the legislators or by other elements of society. As will be discussed

shortly, the formal powers granted by the executive become actual legislative powers and

existing real powers expand when the executive or the ruling party is forced to bargain

with the legislature of the opposition, due to legitimacy crises threatening regime

survival. Conditional on executive yielding of power, the legislators thus have the ability

to change the legislature – to bring about institutional evolution.

The importance of this ability to make changes is the possibility of snowballing

change. As legislative powers accumulate, even minor powers, they increase the

31

legislature’s ability to withstand executive intervention. Small powers – for instance,

marginal increases in areas of taxation – can build up enough to eventually allow

legislative independence. As revenue sources increased, we might expect to see less

dependence on the center, and greater legislative independence (for a discussion of

regional revenue flow variation and its connection to legislative independence, see Beer

2003).

The legislature also functions as a funnel for broader political life. Rather than

engaging with public displays of dissent – protests, for instance, or rallies or strikes – the

regime may use the legislature to funnel dissenters’ demands, thus providing at least the

appearance of meeting voters’ demands. Having a legislature, particularly a legislature

with opposition participation, can help the ruler signal his legitimacy both domestically

and internationally. Thus when challenges to regime legitimacy arise in broader society,

the legislature becomes a convenient vehicle to attempt to quell concerns.

Does the role of the legislature vary in hegemonic and dominant party regimes as

opposed to other electoral authoritarian regimes?8 Magaloni and Kricheli (2010) suggest

that it does not. They offer an excellent review of the relevant literature, arguing that

essentially all claims made about legislatures in other electoral authoritarian settings also

apply to hegemonic and dominant party regime settings. This is a central point for my

work since, as I argued in chapter 1, Mexico under the PRI is a hegemonic regime until it

transitions to a dominant party regime. Specific to Mexico, however, there are multiple

claims about the role of the legislature. Magaloni (2006) claims that the legislature was

8 For a discussion of the distinction between hegemonic and dominant party regimes, see chapter 1.

32

primarily a vehicle for co-opting the opposition, while Gonzalez-Casanova (1970) claims

that “legislative power has a symbolic function. It sanctions the actions of the Executive.

It gives them a traditional and metaphysical legitimation.” (Gonzalez-Casanova 1970, p.

20) Regardless of the executive’s precise intent in forming a legislature, what is clear is

that authoritarian legislatures do play an important role in maintaining the regime – but

that role is generally less important than the role of the executive. In order to understand

legislative evolution, we must first understand executive-legislative relations under

authoritarianism.

2.2.2 Institutional Evolution

The concept of institutional evolution – that an institution changes over time –

hinges on institutional equilibrium, or the point at which the institution is no longer

changing. In order to understand what evolution looks like, we must first understand

what its opposite, equilibrium, looks like.

While the definition of institutional equilibrium – the point at which no actor has

an incentive to alter the institution – is fairly clear from a theoretical perspective, the

practical implication of what equilibrium looks like has far less consensus. Identifying

institutional equilibria is particularly vital for those studying institutional evolution:

without a clear idea of what an equilibrium state is, we cannot explain how such an

equilibrium might be reached. And yet, for all the importance of the theory, there is no

single clear empirical understanding of institutional equilibrium. Is it the complete

cessation of all change, the preservation of the institution in perfect stasis? Or is it

33

merely the point at which changes appear minor, rather than fundamentally altering the

institution? Is it a short-term phase that an institution might experience many times, or a

longer-term outcome that is achieved only rarely? The answer appears to depend to an

extent on scholars’ theoretical approach,9 resulting not so much in a dialogue among

scholars about evolution as in a series of monologues by various scholars. Since these

conceptions are rarely spelled out, though, such distinctions are often overlooked.

Machlup (1958) points out that what equilibrium is varies between theoretical approaches

and practical ones, as well as between economic and political science approaches, and

even between scholars interested in different sets of variables. The risk of failing to have

a clear empirical definition of equilibrium is that it creates conceptual confusion, which

leads to competition between theories. Without a clear base definition and concept, no

theory can disprove any other theory, leading to a total disconnect between different

schools of thought – in this case, between those who see evolution as a gradual sliding

process and those who see it as a series of sudden jumps.

The struggle to identify equilibrium is also an extension of the debate over

endogeneity vs. exogeneity in institutional evolution (Engerman and Sokoloff 2008), in

terms of where changes originate – whether within the institution or outside it. After the

behavioral revolution, institutional evolutionary theorists generally fell into two camps –

those who espoused more linear evolutionary theories, and those who espoused

punctuated equilibrium theories. The principle distinction between these two approaches

is whether change is seen to occur gradually, largely due to endogenous actions, or at

9 Thelen 2003 p. 214-218 offers an overview of different approaches to institutional change and how that

affects views of institutions and equilibrium.

34

distinct points, primarily from exogenous shocks. Hibbing (1999) lays out several

different approaches to legislative evolution, both exogenous and endogenous, and links

this variation to a failure to agree on the primary purpose of institutions: “In effect, we

are left to decide whether legislators want to look good (Mayhew), do good (Krehbiel), or

ladle pork (Shepsle).” (Hibbing 1999, p. 155) Most scholars, with the notable exception

of Thelen and Greif and Laitin (discussed in greater detail in section 2.2.4), argue for

either endogenous or exogenous sources of change rather than unifying both sources in

one theory. This again contributes to scholars’ tendency to speak past each other on the

subject of institutions, making it difficult to identify a single universal conception of

equilibrium. The next section explores different conceptions of equilibrium in detail.

Shepsle (1989)’s work is a prominent example of the more linear structural

approach to equilibrium and evolution. While he recognizes that change may occur

either endogenously or exogenously, his theoretical approach emphasizes the more

endogenous changes. His theory of structure-induced equilibrium argues, generally, that

form (structure) matters. He defines structure-induced equilibrium as

“an alternative (a status quo ante) that is invulnerable in the sense that no

other alternative, allowed by the rules of procedure, is preferred by all the

individuals, structural units, and coalitions that possess distinctive veto or

voting power… the idea of equilibrium contained in this concept is

founded on the structural and procedural features of the process being

modeled.” (Shepsle 1989, p. 137)

In this scenario, equilibrium is arrived at only when no pertinent actor(s) prefers a

different institutional set-up. Conversely, changes occur when those actors do prefer a

different system. These changes often take the form of rule modification or a breakdown

over dissenting opinions – but in either case, they originate with the actors that make up

35

the institution. The changes are generally more gradual, a series of smaller changes

leading gradually towards an equilibrium outcome.

Structure-induced equilibrium theories, however, struggle to explain sudden,

sharp, and dramatic institutional changes. Punctuated equilibrium theories arose in part

to address this issue. The theory, drawn from the natural sciences, essentially posits that

institutions remain at some sort of equilibrium state until a major event – a critical

juncture – occurs suddenly, dramatically altering the shape of the institution. The

institution then finds a new equilibrium, which may be maintained until a future critical

juncture (True et al, 1999). Krasner (1984) offers a valuable take on the punctuated

equilibrium perspective. He explains institutional evolution as a response to crises.

Quoting Skowronek (1982), he defines a crisis as “a sporadic, disruptive event that

suddenly challenges a state’s capacity to maintain control and alters the boundaries

defining the legitimate use of coercion” (Krasner 1984, p. 234, cf. Skowronek 1982 p.

10). Crises play a particularly complex role in Krasner’s view – while they may come

from either internal (societal) or external (international system) sources, they themselves

are exogenous to the institution (Krasner 234). The idea of exogenous change or

exogenous shock is a hallmark of punctuated equilibrium theories; because an

institution’s normal state is at equilibrium, such a dramatic change must come from

sources outside the institution.

A variant on the punctuated equilibrium theory comes from Baumgartner et al

(2009), in the form of stick-slip dynamics. In a stick-slip scenario, drawn from studies of

earthquakes,

36

“the distribution of the size of movements is leptokurtic: there are many

tiny, imperceptible slides, few moderate ones, and a great number of

extremely powerful ones – earthquakes. Note that the violent earthquake

results from the friction and the associated buildup of pressure, not any

momentary increase on the forces pushing to overcome the friction. At

any given time, the response to the pressure is out of synch with the level

of pressure applied.” (Baumgartner et al 2009, p. 607)

The value of the stick-slip approach is its recognition of varying degrees of

change contained within a single evolutionary moment. The shortcoming, however, is

that it fails to provide sufficient conceptual clarity on how those degrees of change

actually manifest differently from each other, making for a difficult empirical translation.

The theory might lend itself to a threshold model, but it would be difficult to determine

consistent cutoffs for the medium category without that conceptual clarity. Nevertheless,

the recognition of medium-sized evolution is valuable theoretically. It is also a departure

from traditional punctuated equilibrium theories, as is the implied absence of an

equilibrium state. Punctuated equilibrium theories assume, by definition, that the system

is at equilibrium – stable – between critical junctures. Stick-slip theories assume instead

that the system is always moving; that, as the authors above put it, large changes are due

to the build-up of smaller ones. This approach offers a way to link endogenous changes

with exogenous shocks. Critical junctures are still present, but may originate within the

system as well as outside it.

2.2.3 Institutional Disequilibrium

The idea that change never actually stops – along with a pronounced disagreement

about what equilibrium means – has led some scholars to argue for disequilibrium

37

theories of evolution (for instance, Bridges 2000). Non-equilibrium or disequilibrium

approaches appear to originate with Riker (1980), who states that “Disequilibrium, or the

potential that the status quo be upset, is the characteristic feature of politics” (Riker 1980,

443). This claim is not without argument – Ordeshook (1980) for one accuses Riker of

not accurately understanding what equilibrium is (again reflecting the lack of consensus

among scholars on a definition of equilibrium), and thus making faulty claims and

implying that politics is not worth studying. Nevertheless, Riker’s argument reverberates

in the work of later scholars such as Alexander (2001), who challenges the assumption of

path dependency which underlies many theories of institutional equilibrium. Alexander

argues that while some evolutionary processes may indeed be path dependent,

institutional evolution is not a path dependent process. He further maintains that

equilibrium does not exist in institutional evolutionary settings: “Much of what passes for

institutional persistence… conceals substantial ‘under the radar’ change, as Revision

Parties substantially alter substantive content while maintaining nominal forms.”

(Alexander 2001, p. 252) Both Riker and Alexander’s claims – as well as Ordeshook’s

response – underscore the lack of clarity in identifying and measuring equilibrium. This

is further reinforced by Colomer (2001), who shows how the most common

understandings of institutional equilibrium are routinely violated by the actual

institutions, and by Beer (2003), who – specific to Mexico – argues that institutions

change regularly.

Thelen (2000; 2004, p. 31) offers a potential way to unite path dependent and

disequilibrium theories, arguing that an institution may be formed by a critical juncture

38

and then evolve through political bargaining, thus not getting locked in to a specific path.

Greif and Laitin (2004) have a similar approach, arguing for both exogenous and

endogenous sources of institutional change. Their work helps to explain the kinds of

counter-intuitive evolution that occur when an institution evolves to hurt the interests of

its founders. I will build off of Thelen’s theoretical approach to argue that this process –

critical juncture, then political bargaining – may be cyclical, repeated over the lifetime of

an institution. That is, the first critical juncture occurs at a single time point, shifting the

leverage relationships into a different configuration. By bargaining under the shifted

relationships, the actors are able to cause the institution to evolve further down the same

path, until a subsequent critical juncture forces another reorganization of bargaining

relationships, and the pattern repeats. I incorporate Greif and Laitin in my discussion of

external sources of dramatic change, versus internal sources of gradual change.

My view of institutional evolution is arguably non-equilibrium based: with

Alexander (2001), I argue that if the institution is constantly evolving, it cannot be

viewed as at equilibrium at any point. This is a contentious claim, and grounded in the

acknowledged lack of consensus as to what equilibrium means (Shepsle 1986, p. 76; see

also Machlup 1958). Thelen herself does not argue for a non-equilibrium approach to

evolution; nevertheless, her perspective is particularly useful in addressing the issue of

costs of institutional change. One of the biggest challenges to institutional change is

presumed to be its cost – equilibrium theories in particular assume that the high cost of

changing an institution (both in terms of transaction costs and in terms of political costs)

is generally sufficient to dissuade actors from trying. Disequilibrium approaches suggest

39

that since small changes are ongoing, they are less costly than dramatic changes in terms

of the cost of altering the institution.10

My theory, building off of Thelen’s, unites these

two approaches, essentially arguing that small changes are not individually particularly

costly to the newly-weakened actor, while large changes – those occurring at critical

junctures or critical juncture-like events – are very costly. However, as Colomer

explains, “political actors may find it worthwhile to launch a process of institutional

change if the likelihood that alternative institutional formulas will produce undesired

effects and the costs of replacing the existing institutions are surpassed by the

disadvantages of playing by the existing institutional rules.” (Colomer 2001, p. 238) In

other words, minor changes occur frequently as actors engage in normal negotiations,

major changes occur less frequently due to a shift in the relationships between groups,

and seismic changes – those that in and of themselves cause the institution to evolve –

occur when the regime responds to a legitimacy crisis, where the disadvantage (to use

Colomer’s term) is the possibility of regime delegitimization.11

One distinction between my work and Thelen’s is my assumption that these

processes are repetitive, where she focuses more on a single critical juncture and its

aftermath. Perhaps the most crucial distinction between my work and other works on

institutional evolution, though, is my argument that the process involves agents and is not

purely structural – actors’ goals and capabilities can alter evolution. This focus on actors

10

Disequilibrium approaches share some elements with dynamic equilibrium approaches in chemistry, in

that both assume change is constantly occurring. However, dynamic equilibrium approaches assume that

all change is equal and the institution is in stasis, whereas disequilibrium approaches assume evolution is

ongoing. My approach is in line with disequilibrium theories but not dynamic equilibrium ones. 11

‘Delegitimization’ is intended to imply a public repudiation of the regime’s right to rule, resulting in

either a gradual regime decay – diminishing electoral victories – or a sudden challenge to the regime such

as mass protests or actual electoral defeat.

40

is crucial to my theory. I propose that shifting relationships among each of the two sets

of actors – branch axis actors and party axis actors – can explain patterns of institutional

evolution. The party axis consists of the ruling party and the opposition party or parties.

The branch axis consists of the executive and the legislature; my next step is to outline

how these relationships shift, in a discussion of my theory.

2.3 Theory

Recalling chapter 1, the question this dissertation is intended to answer is “What

affects how institutions evolve under hegemonic party authoritarian regimes?” The

answer, I will show, is shifts in two dimensions of power: the leverage relationship

between the executive and the legislature, and between the ruling party and the

opposition party/parties. As the balance of leverage capabilities tips toward one side or

the other, the institution evolves to promote the interest of the newly-strengthened side.

This tipping, in turn, is brought about by legitimacy crises spurred on by exogenous

shocks. Specific to legislative evolution, these four actors – executive, legislature, ruling

party, and opposition party – represent the spectrum of possible agents of direct change.

Other actors – for instance the judiciary and the voters – may only cause change

indirectly. Where voters’ preferences are manifested through elections, they may opt to

remove unpopular legislators and replace them with new ones, but that still leaves the

legislator – the party member –as the agent of change. It is up to the discretion of the

legislator and the party whether and how to enact change. With respect to the judiciary,

the Supreme Court in Mexico cannot make constitutional change – it can only decide

41

challenges to amendments. The only actors directly involved in legislative evolution are

those I have identified.

On the branch axis, the executive – a unitary actor – is pitted against the

legislature – a collective actor treated as unitary. The legislature may be treated as

unitary because it can only take one action in any given situation. Even though various

interests and preferences exist, the legislature is a majority-consensus organization with

no ability for factions to break off and force a second outcome. This majority-rule set-up

is precisely what makes it possible to distinguish legislative preferences from executive

ones in dominant party systems: if the legislature is controlled by the executive’s party

but acts in a way that damages executive interests or promotes legislative independence

and capabilities, there must be dissent within the ruling party overall.

On the party power axis, the ruling party and opposition parties are both treated as

unitary actors. The simplifying assumption is derived from the presumed preference of

each group: the ruling party wants to maintain power, and the opposition parties want to

take power. Since the preference for the opposition is simply “not ruling party,”

differences between the parties are at this stage inconsequential. The secondary

preference – “not ruling party and then my party” – does not affect decisions in my

theory, because the ruling party remains in power for the duration of the study, so it is

never necessary or possible to select among alternatives.

The actual process of exerting leverage – bargaining – takes place behind closed

doors, so that only the outcome is visible (in the form of constitutional amendments).

The process involved representatives from each actor/group on the axis coming together

42

to bargain over their preferred outcome. The process typically took place after the

amendment had been introduced but before the first reading – so, while it was under

review in committee.

What makes these axes the correct ones to explain institutional evolution?

Drawing from Thelen (2004), I argue that institutional evolution occurs both due to

(institutionally) exogenous shocks, and to actors’ decisions. This follows Langston’s (65,

2002) point that “Elite ruptures were, without a doubt, the aggregate result of individual-

level strategies; and both the exits and the regime's reaction to them caused evolutionary

institutional change, which in turn brought about long-term political stability in the form

of a one-party hegemonic state.” Often, however, what first appears to be an exogenous

shock – for instance, the 1980s economic crisis – can actually be traced back at least in

part to actors’ decisions, such as the failure to invest oil revenue in infrastructure

development. More specifically, actors’ decisions in individual instances can create a

cascade effect, where each decision, while individually small, forms part of a much larger

whole which affects the likelihood of a different outcome to subsequent exogenous

shocks. The dynamics of dominant party regimes are particularly important in

understanding why these tensions define the regime. In a dominant party regime, as

discussed earlier, while the ruling party retains unfair advantages in maintaining power, it

is not the only legal party. Generally, some opposition party or parties will also be legal,

probably to provide the appearance of legitimacy. In order to keep that opposition

participating – and hence keep the regime appearing legitimate – it is necessary to make

43

some concessions to the opposition.12

Evolution occurs when the nature of the

concessions changes; sudden and dramatic evolution – the kind caused by critical

junctures – occurs when the magnitude of the concession changes, as described in chapter

3.13

The leverage relationship between the executive and the legislature – what I call

the ‘branch power axis’ – refers to the executive’s ability to utilize legislative powers,

without provoking criticisms of illegitimacy. In the majority of dominant party systems

the executive is more powerful than the legislature. However, being more powerful does

not necessarily imply the ability to act unilaterally at all times, simply that the chances for

such action are skewed in the executive’s favor. Because of the executive’s strength,

what I am interested in is not merely whether an executive-sponsored action (bill,

constitutional change, or budget) succeeds – in a heavily executive-dominant system it

generally will – but whether it is passed either unchanged or with only cosmetic

changes.14

There are two possible outcomes along the branch power axis: (1) the

leverage relationship favors the executive, in which case he is generally able to act

without making concessions to the legislature in the form of legislative powers or

capabilities; and (2) the leverage relationship favors the legislature, in which case it is

12

An in-depth discussion of legitimacy, including who must accept the regime as legitimate, follows in

chapter 3. In brief, I am concerned with public legitimacy – the voters’ acceptance of the regime’s right to

rule. 13

For a discussion of the measurement of evolution, see chapter 4. 14

My approach assumes branches have conflicting interests, an unusual assumption for an authoritarian

regime. However, as Romero argues, as I have argued in my discussion of factionalization, and as I show

in chapters 4 and 5, conflicting interests are not uncommon.

44

able to force the executive to accept concessions in most cases15

. In both scenarios, a

constitutional modification will occur – what varies is the content of that modification.

The leverage relationship between the ruling party and the opposition party has

similar connotations. In a stable hegemonic regime, the ruling party is always more

powerful than the opposition; when that balance shifts, the regime is headed for demise.

However, again, “more powerful” does not translate into “always able to act without

attempting to ensure opposition support.” There are two possible outcomes along the

ruling party-opposition party axis: (1) the leverage relationship favors the ruling party, so

that in a given time period the ruling party is able to act on legislative issues without

attempting to bargain for opposition support in the majority of cases; and (2) the leverage

relationship favors the opposition party, so that in a given time period the ruling party is

forced to make concessions to it in almost all instances16

. Both axes are concerned with

relative balances of leverage capabilities, suggesting that a side may be considered to

have greater capabilities regardless of whether the leverage balance strongly favors that

side such that it never even engages the opposition, or only weakly favors that side, so it

engages in bargaining efforts but makes few or no actual concessions. This reflects the

existence of leverage as a sliding scale, and allows for “winning” in leverage

relationships to mean many things.

15

Because this theory pertains to authoritarian systems where the executive is usually the more powerful

player, in a stable system we cannot expect the legislature to be able to act entirely without executive

support. Rather, legislative dominance manifests in its increased bargaining capabilities – that is, its ability

to force concessions. 16

As with the executive-legislative powers variable, in a stable dominant party system it is very unlikely

that the opposition could act without making concessions to the ruling party, so opposition dominance is

understood in terms of increased bargaining powers.

45

Institutional evolution is captured through the rate at which changes are made to

the constitution.17

Institutional evolution, as I define it, is the process by which the

institution comes to perform an entirely different role from the one it began with.

Because the rules of the institution – in this dissertation, the legislature – are enshrined in

the constitution, any efforts to formally change its function must arise in the constitution

as well. In authoritarian systems where the regime legitimates its rule through the

constitution, that document becomes the battleground between competing power-seekers.

The initial design of the constitution at the point of regime inception is intended to favor

the regime; that way, challenges can be set aside as unconstitutional, and continued rule

can be institutionalized. The initial bias towards the regime implies that the regime and

its supporters are content with the status quo; while constitutional change is likely to

occur since the system is in disequilibrium, that change is going to be relatively

infrequent. On the other hand, opposition groups are inherently the losers in a system

designed to maintain the regime in power; in order to become competitive with the

regime, they will need to push for significant constitutional changes to undo bias towards

the regime.

The constitution’s importance as the central legitimating document of the regime

leads to significant amounts of negotiation over its contents. Additionally, because it

represents the primary way of viewing changes to legislative and executive powers, its

amendments demonstrate broader trends among the state’s political actors. ‘Rate of

17

Rate of change is used as a proxy for institutional evolution in the theory broadly, and in chapter 4 when

the theory is tested over all legislative articles in the constitution. In chapter 5, when the universe of cases

is much smaller – only amendments to article 27 – institutional evolution is captured by looking at the

quality of the amendment (whether it is a major or minor change). This is explained thoroughly, and the

two mechanisms for capturing evolution are compared, in chapter 5.

46

change’ refers to how frequently the constitution is amended. Each of the individual

changes is aggregated, allowing for a visual inspection that coincides with significant

political events to suggest five periods of institutional evolution. The five periods were

introduced in chapter 1; the methodology behind the rate of change calculation will be

discussed in chapter 4.

The overarching argument for this dissertation can be summarized as: dominant

party authoritarian legislative evolution is a function of changing leverage relationships

between the executive and the legislature, and the ruling party and the opposition. Within

that argument, however, more specific hypotheses can be identified.

First, in terms of the party power axis, the ruling party’s preference for the status

quo leads me to predict that(1a) When the ruling party has leverage over the opposition

party, institutional evolution will occur more slowly relative to other periods.

Conversely, the opposition party’s preference for change suggests that (1b) When the

opposition party has leverage over the ruling party, institutional evolution will occur

more rapidly relative to other periods.

It should be noted that these hypotheses are relative – they do not predict an

absolute level of institutional evolution, simply that opposition leverage is associated

with faster overall evolution while ruling party leverage is associated with slower overall

evolution. As mentioned earlier, evolution is captured by the rate at which constitutional

changes are made. The baseline is taken to be the average rate of change over the

lifetime of the regime. More rapid evolution than the baseline implies a higher rate of

change, while slower than average evolution implies a lower rate of change (in both

47

cases, relative to the average rate of change over the lifetime of the regime). The

operationalization of leverage will be addressed in chapter 4. The logic here is

essentially maintenance of the status quo vs. evolution. The ruling party in conjunction

with the executive created the system, and in many cases the constitution; formal powers

already benefit the ruling party. It is in that party’s interest to change as little as possible

for as long as possible, since the existing system keeps the party in power – unless the

facts of the situation have changed. This change occurs when the system experiences an

exogenous shock. At that point, the regime is forced to recalibrate institutional rules in

order to survive (this is discussed in greater detail in chapter 3). Outside those rare

moments of extreme stress, however, the regime’s interest is in maintaining the status

quo. It may be necessary to make changes, especially over a long time-period, but these

changes should be relatively minor and aimed more at expanding existing powers than at

creating greater oversight (for instance, changing areas over which the legislature can

legislate to include new forms of energy as they are developed). Nevertheless, they are

changes, indicating some dissatisfaction with the status quo, and are counted as such.

In terms of the branch power axis, the executive’s desire to maintain his own

power suggests that (2a) When the executive has leverage over the legislature, changes

are more likely to constrain legislative powers. However, because of the legislature’s

presumed desire to maximize its own power (Downs 1951), (2b) When the legislature has

leverage over the executive, changes are more likely to increase legislative powers.

The assumption that each branch has separate preferences arises from Romero’s

work on the relationship between the executive and the ruling party, which in a dominant

48

party authoritarian regime can be expanded to address the relationship between the

executive and the legislature. The executive is presumed to want to maximize his own

power (or, for countries with term limit laws, his office’s power) because doing so allows

him to maximize his influence and to keep the political system under his control. The

legislature’s interest here is not in constraining the executive, necessarily – as Romero

points out, a change that benefits the president may also benefit the legislature – but in

increasing its own piece of the political pie. Increased powers can translate to increased

discretionary funding, as well as (in a term-limited system) enhanced opportunities for a

political career outside the legislature, or a non-political career. In Mexico, many former

politicians enter academia – the more an individual legislator contributed to state funding

for universities, for example, the more he may be able to expect an academic appointment

upon leaving office.

The table below captures the possible variation among both sets of hypotheses:

Table 2.1. Variation in axes of institutional evolution

Ruling party leverage Opposition party leverage

Executive leverage Lower rate of change

Constrain legislature

Higher rate of change

Constrain legislature

Legislature leverage Lower rate of change

Increase legislative powers

Higher rate of change

Increase legislative powers

Whereas the party power axis hypotheses spoke to overall rate of change, the

branch power axis hypotheses speak to type of change. I contend that these axes interact

to create the patterns of legislative evolution that we see in dominant party authoritarian

regimes, and in Mexico in particular. The party powers axis alone cannot explain how

49

and why two periods of high overall change vary; however, by considering the branch

power axis, we can see how these two periods are qualitatively different from each other.

For instance, it would be possible to have two periods with higher evolutionary speed,

suggesting identical patterns of behavior, whereas in one of those periods legislative

powers were constrained while in the other they increased. Examining only one axis

would lead us to assume that no variation existed between these two periods, whereas in

reality the periods represented significantly different evolutionary dynamics that will

push the institution in two different directions.

2.4.1 Executive-Legislative Relations

In most authoritarian systems the executive is more powerful than the legislature.

However, this does not mean that the legislature is powerless – rather, as detailed above,

in order to buy participation in the legislature, the executive must cede at least some

power to the institution. Furthermore, the issue of relative power is not always clear-cut.

Especially when the regime is long-lasting, executive-legislative relations can change

over time. It is possible for one branch to exert increasing or decreasing degrees of

leverage over the other; equally, it is possible for leverage dominance to alternate

between branches.

What is leverage, in terms of executive-legislative relations? Leverage is one

group or actor’s ability to exert pressure on another group or actor in order to force

change in political institutions. That change follows the preferences of whichever actor is

dominant in the leverage relationship at that time. In terms of executive-legislative

50

relations, when the leverage balance tips in favor of the executive, the president may be

able to ensure his budget is passed unamended or with no significant amendment. On the

other hand, when the legislature is able to veto the budget, this suggests the balance

favors the legislature. Weldon (1997) uses this conception of leverage imbalance to

describe Mexico as a system where the executive was generally dominant but “Congress

also at times asserted its independence.” (Weldon 1997, p. 228) This suggests that the

operationalization of the dominant leverage partner is based in trends over time rather

than individual events. When more events favor one side than the other (here, ‘events’

means constitutional amendments) within a given time period, that side can be

understood to be dominant in the leverage relationship. Efforts by the non-dominant side

to act outside the bounds of the institution may be a reaction to being on the losing side of

the leverage relationship. For instance, in the 1920s and early 1930s the Mexican

Chamber routinely vetoed the president’s budget. The president’s response to these

vetoes was to begin using extraordinary powers (facultades extraordinarias) in order to

make an end-run around the need for Congressional approval (Weldon 2002, p. 394). In

this scenario, the legislature’s ability to veto the budget – a formal constitutional power

that convention decreed was not to be used as it undermined executive authority – points

to a leverage relationship in the legislature’s favor. The president’s retaliatory use of

extra-constitutional powers suggests he was the weaker actor.

Leverage dominance is not a black and white concept so much as it is a sliding

scale – it may be possible for the same branch to maintain dominance over time, but to

become more or less dominant within that timeframe (Casar 2002).

51

My concept of leverage relations arises in large part from patterns of executive-

legislative relations. Romero (2007) identifies four classes of executive-legislative

relations, based off of equilibria from a two-player game. Romero’s model is intended to

demonstrate the different ways in which the president can relate to his own party, but in a

hegemonic party system, because of the size of the ruling party, it can be used to

demonstrate executive-legislative relations more broadly. In his scenario, the executive

is always stronger than the legislature. His four classes are (1) aligned-preference

equilibrium, (2) no collaboration, (3), party as hostage, and (4) collaboration. In the first

class are those cases where the party and the president share interests and both believe

they can benefit from the same set of actions. In the second class, the groups’ interests

are so divergent that no action is possible. When the party is hostage, the party is forced

to go along with the president’s actions even though those actions are not in the party’s

interest – essentially, the party loses by supporting the president but would lose more if it

did not support him. The final class, collaboration, obtains when the party believes the

president will reward it for its support. Romero’s approach offers some explanation for

why parties may behave in ways that are against their own interest, as occurred in Mexico

at various points. The explanation given for this behavior in terms of Mexico is often

simply that the president was incredibly powerful while the party was incredibly weak;

Romero’s approach, however, suggests that presidential strength may be less important in

this calculus than the party’s expectation of gains and losses. Romero’s work is unique in

this regard, and highlights the importance of understanding that even in scenarios with a

very strong executive, legislative independence is possible and even rational. This

52

further supports the argument for treating the executive and the rest of the ruling party as

separate actors, which I develop into my concept of branch axis relations. Of the 71

years of my study, the PRI held both executive power and legislative majority for 68. If

the executive had such an iron grip on the party as to consistently superimpose his

preferences onto party preferences, there would be no observable variation for executive-

legislative relations in those 68 years. However, as I demonstrate in chapters 4 and 5, we

see significant variation in terms of variation in legislative powers – even when those

powers are clearly contrary to executive interests, as when the legislature gained the

ability to appoint members of the Federal District governing council without executive

authority.

These kinds of executive-legislative exchanges rested (as with the Federal District

example above) in constitutional powers. I turn next to a discussion of how

constitutional powers are used in dominant party regimes.

2.4.2 Constitutional Powers Under Dominant Party Authoritarianism

Constitutional powers provide one way of making executive-legislative relations

and ruling party-opposition party relations visible. The constitution is vital to capturing

legislative evolution because it enshrines not only the formal powers of the legislature,

but the formal powers of the executive relative to the legislature as well. Institutions are

governed by rules; those rules are set forth in the constitution. When the rules change,

the institution evolves. Constitutions play an important role in authoritarian regimes;

they provide legitimacy for the regime both to a domestic audience and to an

53

international one (Breslin 2009, p. 6). The symbolic importance of the constitution may

help explain, crucially, why the Mexican regime chose to amend it to accommodate the

executive and the legislature, rather than to entirely ignore it. The challenge, however,

lies in aligning the frequent constitutional amendments with the executive’s extra-

constitutional capabilities. Casar (2002) argues that formal powers are not a good

measure of executive strength specifically because the president was able to rule extra-

constitutionally. However, her argument fails to take into account two points: one, that

the president’s extra-constitutional powers came through loopholes rather than through

straight constitutional violations, and two, that many (though not all) of those loopholes

were closed over time, decreasing the president’s extra-constitutional abilities. The

president rarely violated the constitution; rather, he would take advantage of powers and

capabilities that were not explicitly limited within the document. One example of the

gradual removal of extra-constitutional powers comes from the president’s constitutional

ability to borrow on the credit of the state. For some time there was no limit to the

amount that the president could borrow without oversight. The intention may have been

for a collaborative process between the executive and the legislature, but what actually

occurred was strictly an executive decision where the president would borrow as much as

he wanted and spend without oversight. When the president began to systematically

overspend, however, the constitution was amended to require legislative approval of

executive borrowing.

Closing the loopholes generally consisted of explicitly granting some oversight

capability to the legislature – that is, amending formal constitutional powers. On the

54

other hand, there are many instances when the constitution was amended to strengthen

the executive at the expense of the legislature. For instance, the original 1917

constitution granted the legislature the right to name superior court judges; a 1928

amendment passed that right to the executive, and left the legislature only the ability to

approve or disapprove the naming. The approval ability held no power at all, since the

article also stated that if the Chamber twice failed to approve a judicial candidate, the

president could simply appoint someone to the vacancy. This suggests that examining

patterns of changes to formal legislative powers and how those powers increased and

decreased over time is in fact a reasonable way to capture executive and legislative

strength.

2.4.3 Bargaining Under Authoritarianism

As has been mentioned previously, my theory argues that shifts in branch power

axis leverage relationships and in party power axis leverage relationships are correlated

with institutional evolutionary shifts. The process by which those leverage relationships

are transformed into evolutionary changes is bargaining.

The idea of formal powers as a bargaining tool between the executive and the

legislature is well-grounded, even under authoritarianism. Lawson argues that the entire

purpose of the Mexican political system under the PRI was to redistribute rents (Lawson,

2000, p. 269) – a behavior that Lust-Okar (2005) also identifies in her work on Jordan,

where she argues that legislators exchange real political power for redistribution rights.

The table below, drawn from Eisenstadt (2006), offers several instances where it has been

55

possible to observe bargaining in the Mexican system. In the table, Eisenstadt identifies

several elections where bargaining occurred. He identifies the benefit each side received

from bargaining over these contested elections, and the institution which had jurisdiction

over the bargain and which was subverted or utilized to make the bargain. These

institutions, even when behaving in an illegal fashion (for instance, illegally ratifying an

election) functioned as a commitment mechanism to ensure the president, PRI and PAN

all honored their bargains. Both the Electoral Court and Electoral College are described

in the constitution as legislative powers. The Electoral College was made up of senators

and deputies, and the legislature had oversight over the electoral court.

Table 2.2. Deals behind Prominent Concertacesión Agreements18

City or state election What the PRI allegedly

got

What the PAN

allegedly got

Formal institution said

to have been replaced

by informal

institutions

Presidential election

1988

PAN national support in

certifying Salinas as

president

Pledges from Salinas for

electoral reform;

predisposition to

recognize subnational

PAN victories

Electoral College’s

certification of

presidential elections

subverted by side deals

Guanajuato state

governor 1991

PAN support for

constitutional

agricultural and

economic reforms

Interim governor from

PAN, Carlos Medina

Electoral Court; PAN

officials recognized they

did not have legal

grounds, although they

filed cases to state

electoral court

Mérida, Yucatán mayor

1993

PAN 1994 presidential

candidate’s pledge to

keep running (after he

threatened to withdraw)

Sacrifice of PRI mayor-

elect in favor of PAN

candidate

Electoral college of the

Yucatán state

legislature, which

illegally granted victory

to number 2 finisher to

preserve social order.

18

From Eisenstadt, Todd. “Mexico’s Postelectoral Concertacesiones: The Rise and Demise of a

Substitutive Informal Institution.” In Helmke and Levitsky, Informal Institutions and Democracy.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2006. P. 236

56

Evidence of legislative bargaining is also highlighted in the work of Casar (2002),

who argues that in the early 1920s, certain constitutional changes like an amendment

shrinking the size of the legislature were part of a package of changes the executive

pushed, following legislative attempts to challenge the budget (a constitutional right). In

terms of interparty relations (a topic explored more in the theory section), there is also

evidence of the legislature itself (as opposed to its powers) being used as a bargaining

tool at the subnational level; Bruhn (1999) describes how the PRI decided to cede several

municipal governments in Michoacán to the PRD following the 1988 election, in order to

buy their continued participation in the national government.

Although we have evidence of bargaining in some cases, as demonstrated above,

it is impossible to show that bargaining occurred around every individual amendment –

many of the negotiations were presumably conducted in private and leave no written

record. However, the examples given above help to fill in the blanks about what the

bargainers hoped to receive. Theoretically, bargainers might hope to gain three things:

support for bills or constitutional changes, political or bureaucratic appointments, and

access to discretionary funds. My work focuses on explaining constitutional change, but

there is evidence that at times the regime used appointments to induce opposition

coordination as well. Appointments can take several forms – they may consist of

appointments to cabinet positions, or to different elected positions when the election

results can be overruled. Eisenstadt (2006) identifies this type of appointment as

bargaining currency in the 1991 Guanajuato gubernatorial election. He argues that the

PRI had won the election, but in order to buy PAN support for a series of constitutional

57

reforms, the president insisted that the election results be overturned and the PAN

candidate be pronounced the winner. Although there is no evidence that the regime

traded discretionary funds, the theoretical possibility remains. In this dissertation,

however, the ultimate goal of bargaining is taken to be constitutional amendments. The

justification for this narrow view of bargaining is purely functional: in-depth records of

the processes surrounding constitutional change are accessible to researchers, while

records of the decision-making process for appointments and use of discretionary funds

are not. As Eisenstadt’s work in Table 2.2 demonstrates, it is possible to find some

evidence of those links – but not consistently, which given the temporal variation in my

work is problematic.

The link between constitutional change and institutional evolution is that when

leverage relationships shift, new bargains can be struck, which results in amendments.

Essentially, one side’s capacity to induce change is increased – not in terms of sheer

number of votes, but in terms of the force that side’s approval or disapproval will have on

the other side. For instance, when an evolutionary moment results in the legislature

increasing its leverage over the executive, the legislature is in a stronger position to

bargain for amendments that give it more powers or responsibilities. The fact that

bargaining must still occur – that the outcome is not pre-ordained by the leverage shift,

but that the legislature’s side is strengthened – helps to explain why within a given

evolutionary period there can still be a minority of cases which go against the overall

pattern. Simply put, leverage shifts increase the strengthened actor’s chances of winning

bargaining attempts, but do not guarantee a victory – failure still occurs.

58

2.4.4 Leverage Relationships

There are three distinct actors in the leverage relationships I have outlined: the

executive, the ruling party in the legislature (this excludes the executive), and the

opposition party or parties in the legislature.19

The ruling party and opposition party can

be lumped together to form a fourth actor, the legislature as a whole.

In the case of Mexico, most scholars are primarily concerned with the relationship

between the executive and the opposition (for instance Casar 2002, Weldon 1997,

Peschard 1993, Woldenberg 1993). Formal legislative powers are seen as the outcome of

power struggles between the PRI and the PAN (Middlebrook, 2001). For instance, the

1988/89 reforms – which substantially increased legislative powers – came about because

the executive needed to buy continued PAN support following the fraudulent 1988

presidential elections. Furthermore, Lujambio (2001) makes an argument for the PAN’s

behavior from the 1930s through the 1980s as consistent with opposing the PRI and

bargaining for more power. These approaches are somewhat incomplete – by focusing

on a period where the PAN had already emerged as a powerful force, they neglect those

earlier periods in which bargaining occurred but the PAN was numerically

inconsequential. They also offer no theoretical grounds for variation in the levels and

outcomes of executive-opposition relations.

19

In terms of Mexico, “opposition” is most commonly understood to be the PAN. In earlier periods no

other party actually opposed the PRI, and in later periods with the development of the PRD, the PRI largely

refused to negotiate with the PRD, preferring to make bargains with the PAN.

59

The focus on executive-opposition relations arises partly from a misperception

about internal PRI unity. The depiction of the PRI as a wholly uniform force appears to

lead to a tendency within the literature to overlook the importance of president-ruling

party negotiations. This bias towards a perception of PRI uniformity is due to a tendency

to look only at outcomes: the PRI voted as a bloc on almost every bill for most of its

reign, leading many scholars to ignore underlying processes. However, the PRI was

deeply divided internally – factions split off throughout its history, notably in the 1940s,

1950s, and 1980s. Even when a split was not imminent, the different arms of the PRI

often struggled to work together (Lindau 1992, p. 219). In fact, some PRIistas focused

their entire political career away from the executive. One former legislator I interviewed

described much of his political career as serving as a go-between from the president to

various legislative factions, bargaining to attempt to obtain the president’s preferred

outcome (Interview 9/11). The existence and strength of factions that did not back the

president were so omnipresent that various legislators could make the go-between role a

focus. In order to prevent factionalization, internal bargaining was necessary.

Both the approaches above identify the executive developing relations with one

group and excluding the other. They are both forms of executive-legislative leverage

relations. Because most scholarship focuses on one or the other, scholars tend to miss the

overall picture of how executive-legislative relationships change over time. My theory

corrects this by looking at both levels of interaction, the parties and the branches.

Examining the shifting relations between the ruling party and the opposition party

highlights how changes occurred within both the PRI and the PAN, and how those

60

changes affected leverage relations between the parties. At the same time, the executive-

legislature angle is important to seeing how dynamics that affected those parties

manifested in the legislature as a whole, and how changes in executive needs and

capabilities shifted as well, altering branch power leverage relations.

2.5 Causal Links: Legitimacy

My theory offers an explanation of shifts in institutional evolutionary processes,

by way of changes in the balance of power between the executive and the legislature, and

between the ruling party and the opposition party. I argue (though do not test) that the

largest and most dramatic shifts are made possible by the regime response to legitimacy

crises. Chapter 3 lays out the role of legitimacy crises as a causal mechanism in much

greater detail; my intent here is just to introduce the topic.

Legitimacy is a key concern for many authoritarian regimes. Many scholars

(Brownlee 2007, Magaloni 2006, Magaloni and Lust-Okar 2010) argue that much of the

reason authoritarian rulers create political institutions is to enhance legitimacy. The

consequences for a regime that is perceived to be illegitimate may be wide-ranging:

everything from increasing protests, to removal of foreign aid, to regime demise either

through internal or external forces (Thompson and Kuntz 2006).

In the case of Mexico, legitimacy has two bases. The PRI claimed to be the

legitimate government on the grounds that it won multiparty elections with an

overwhelming majority, and on the grounds that its founders were active participants in

61

the revolution and designed the party to carry out the revolution’s promises.20

These

claims to legitimacy manifested in the legislature (Gonzalez-Casanova 1970,

Prud’homme 2001, Craig and Cornelius 1995). Magaloni (2006) in particular details

how the PRI’s recurring electoral supermajorities played two important roles in the

regime: they served both to signal to the opposition that it could not win, and to

demonstrate that the regime was the legitimate representation of the people’s will. This

need for legitimacy in Mexico under the PRI was a key component of institutional

relations. The ongoing desire to appear legitimate forced the PRI and the president to

engage in regular negotiation – within the ruling party, with the opposition, and between

the president and the legislature. At the same time, dramatic shifts in the legislature’s

form were brought about by crises of legitimacy – these were the relatively rare moments

of sudden institutional evolution, where the legislature emerged fundamentally different

from its previous state. These major external changes were the drivers for legislative

evolution: as was discussed in chapter 1, the five periods of legislative evolution

demonstrated by the Mexican Chamber of Deputies are each bracketed by a dramatic

external event. That event drove institutional behavior for the duration of the period.

Stepan provides an explanation for how challenges to legitimacy, if not

adequately dealt with, can threaten regime survival. In his analysis, unaddressed

challenges can cause a shift in allegiance when it appears that the regime can no longer

support itself:

20

Different authoritarian regimes claim different bases of legitimacy. These claims are discussed more in

chapter 3; in this section I only discuss legitimacy as manifested in dominant party regimes and specifically

in Mexico.

62

“With the fear that holds the regime together subsiding, the core group of

regime supporters will start to fragment as doubts arise concerning the wisdom

and expediency of authoritarian policies. Some core supporters will decide that the

perpetuation of authoritarianism is not in their interest, and will go over to

passive---or sometimes even active--opposition.” (Stepan, 1990, p. 43)

Because my theory is concerned not with the actual effects of legitimacy but with

the regime’s response to threatened legitimacy, I do not offer a way to determine whether

legitimacy has in fact been lost. Rather, I focus on explaining how certain major events

clearly challenged legitimacy, and demonstrating the regime’s response. Chapter 3 will

discuss how each major event is a legitimacy crisis; this section serves only to introduce

the theoretical underpinnings of legitimacy as a causal mechanism.

2.6 Conclusion

This chapter has laid out the bodies of literature which underpin the development

of a theory of legislative evolution. It also developed the theory in greater detail and

offered a brief introduction to the variables. The next chapter will examine the variables

in the context of my periodization of evolution in much greater detail as I lay out the

causal mechanism underlying institutional evolution: regime response to legitimacy

crises.

63

Chapter 3: Responses to Legitimacy Crises as The Causal Mechanism

3.1 Introduction

This dissertation aims to explain how legislatures evolve in dominant party

authoritarian systems. As laid out in the previous chapter, I argue that institutional

evolution in a dominant party system is a function of the struggle for leverage victories

between the ruling party and the primary opposition party or parties, and the struggle for

leverage victories between the legislature as a whole and the executive. Shifts in the

leverage relationships between these branches – from ruling party to opposition party, for

instance, or from executive to legislature – are caused by crises challenging the regime’s

legitimacy.

3.2 Theory Review

Chapter 2 introduced the theory and discussed it at length; this section will serve

as a brief refresher. This theory connects dynamics between the executive and legislative

branches and between the ruling party and the opposition party to the process of

institutional evolution as captured through the number and content of amendments to

constitutional powers governing the legislature.

64

In a dominant party system, institutions are initially (at the point of regime

founding) designed to benefit those in power – the executive, since the executive is at the

head of the power structure, and the ruling party. Those in power are satisfied with the

status quo; it is those out of power who, if given the opportunity, will push for substantial

change to the institutional structure. Thus, significant changes are more likely to come

from victorious efforts by the two habitual losers in the power struggles listed above: the

legislature, which is always secondary to the executive, and the opposition, which is

always secondary to the ruling party.21

Because the ruling party benefits from the system

as designed, it will prefer to maintain that system, so that (1a)When the ruling party has

leverage over the opposition party, institutional evolution will occur more slowly relative

to other periods. However, the opposition party is in a weaker position under the system

as initially designed; given the opportunity, the opposition will prefer to shift the system

to its benefit, so that (1b) When the opposition party has leverage over the ruling party,

institutional evolution will occur more rapidly relative to other periods.

Where the relationship between the ruling party and the opposition party drives

the pace of evolution, the relationship between the executive and the legislature drives the

content of evolution. In an authoritarian regime, the executive is the most powerful

player. In order to remain that way, he must remain unconstrained. Legislative powers,

however, can threaten executive independence when they give the legislature oversight.

That need to prevent legislative oversight implies that (2a) When the executive has

21

In chapter 2, I offer a definition of victory that reflects each actor’s ability to gain some concessions,

even from a position of weakness. Victory in this context does not mean winning elections; it means

gaining the ability to exert leverage. For a more thorough discussion of the term, see chapter 2; for a longer

overview, see chapter 5, section 1.

65

leverage over the legislature, changes are more likely to constrain legislative powers.

By the same token, though, the legislature’s drive to increase its own power means that

(2b) When the legislature has leverage over the executive, changes are more likely to

increase legislative powers.

Using an inductive approach laid out in chapter 4, I have posited five periods of

institutional evolution, divided by events that significantly altered the Mexican political

system. I then argued that each of these periods demonstrated a different rate of

constitutional change to those around it, which led me to use rate of change as a proxy for

institutional evolution.

Building on Thelen (2004) and Greif (2006), I argue that institutional evolution

can occur either as a sudden dramatic change or as a series of smaller more gradual

changes.22

The institution is never at perfect equilibrium – it is always evolving, to a

greater or lesser extent. However, my theory argues that major evolutionary moments

occur when those with less power overall make gains, whereas minor evolutionary

moments (which still may, over time, build to large evolutionary changes) occur as a

result of the changing needs of those already in power. In the case of Mexico,

institutional evolution breaks down into five periods. Those periods – 1929-1945, 1946-

1976, 1977-1986, 1987-1993, and 1994-2000 – represent varying stages of evolution.

The variation is in terms of how many changes occur as the institution evolves in each

period, as well as whether those changes increase legislative powers, making the

22

A complete discussion of evolution – what it is, and theories and arguments surrounding institutional

evolution – can be found in Chapter 2, section 2. In brief, evolution is understood as the process by which

the institution comes to fill a different role in political life – for instance, progressing from preserving

authoritarianism to promoting democracy, or from constraining the executive’s powers to freeing him from

constraint. Evolution is a process which may occur gradually or suddenly.

66

legislature a more independent entity, or constrain them, keeping the legislature under the

executive’s strong control. These periods vary along two axes, branch power and party

power:

Table 3.1. Explaining Variation in Institutional Evolutionary Patterns

Party power leverage axis

Branch power

leverage axis

Ruling party leverage

victories

Opposition party

leverage victories

Executive leverage

victories

Fewer changes

Constraining legislature

1929-1945, 1946-1976

More changes23

Constraining legislature

1977-1986, 1987-1993

Legislature leverage

victories

Fewer changes24

Increase legislative

power

More changes

Increase legislative

power

1994-2000

In testing my theory in chapters 4 and 5, I look for support not only for the hypotheses

laid out above, but for the dynamics within each period as identified in the table.

Underlying these dynamics, however, is the question of why such shifts occurred. The

purpose of this chapter is to explore the cause of those shifts; I argue they are brought

about by the regime’s response to legitimacy crises.

23

While it may appear contradictory to identify an outcome where there are more constitutional changes

but also more constraints on the legislature, the two can and do coexist. It is entirely possible – and

occurred – that many changes constrain legislative power, primarily by removing or limiting powers

previously granted to the legislature. 24

With respect to Mexico, there are no outcomes in this box. Relative to a theory of institutional evolution

under hegemonic regimes, however, the possibility (however slim) of this outcome remains. In theory,

there might be a dominant party authoritarian regime ruled entirely by committee; in practice, however, the

legislature is secondary to the executive.

67

3.3 The Causal Mechanism

As introduced in chapter 2, the causal mechanism underlying institutional

evolution is the regime response to a legitimacy crisis. The legitimacy crisis itself is an

exogenous shock, forcing an adjustment in the system to cope with the threat to regime

legitimacy. The path the regime selects to address the challenge serves as the causal

mechanism, forcing a recalculation of leverage relationships. Those recalculated

leverage relationships then allow the actors who benefitted from the change to pursue

their own agendas, and the promotion of those agendas in the form of constitutional

change results in institutional evolution.

Legitimacy is a particularly important – though not uncontested - aspect of rule,

playing a role in regime stability and durability . Although Przeworski (1986, 52)

notably maintains that transitions can occur without a loss of legitimacy, transition

appears more likely when legitimacy is lost than when it is not. The loss of legitimacy

may not result in immediate regime defeat, but it makes continued rule over time more

costly to maintain. Perhaps the clearest example of the costs associated with maintaining

power following a loss of legitimacy came from Mexico’s 1988 elections, discussed in

detail in section 3.4. In brief, when the PRI’s legitimacy was challenged by an apparently

fraudulent electoral outcome, the cost of maintaining rule in the instant was to accept

constitutional changes that set the stage for future defeat. Although the election itself

was the crisis that precipitated events, the period leading up to that election demonstrated

the erosion of legitimacy in the split of the Corriente Democrático faction from the rest of

the PRI. Booth and Seligson (2009, 7) among others contend that the erosion of

68

legitimacy increases the likelihood that citizens will look for a different regime type; and

I argue that the regime’s concern towards legitimacy erosion underpins institutional

evolution. As will be demonstrated shortly, regimes cannot rely on coercive or

clientelistic forces alone to maintain power and establish legitimacy in times of crisis.

Violence and vote-buying might resolve the immediate problem, but they cannot shore up

the regime’s damaged legitimacy in the eyes of citizens. To do that, the regime must

institutionalize a solution to the crisis, leading to institutional evolution.

Institutional evolution as a resolution to legitimacy crises is grounded in the

regime’s basis for claiming legitimate rule. For instance, in protectionist regimes the

military claims it has a responsibility to protect the people from government actions

against the interests of the state, and so must step in to protect the nation until it is safe to

return to civilian rule. The legitimacy of the regime then rests on the military’s role as

protector. We see this too in competitive authoritarian regimes, where the regime claims

victory in unfair elections as a justification for its continuation in power – the regime is

legitimate because the “majority” voted for it. Some regimes claim legitimacy as well on

a security basis, claiming legitimate rule on the grounds of protecting the state from

violence. Finally, we see this in regimes that came to power through revolution – “we

fought for the revolution, therefore we are the legitimate rulers of the state.” Legitimacy

is a valuable asset because it decreases the costs (both financial and reputational) of

maintaining power. Too, a government that can claim legitimacy can also deny the

opposition the chance to participate. While this is not an exhaustive list of sources of

69

legitimacy, it does serve to illustrate some of the ways in which authoritarian regimes

justify their hold on power.

Legitimacy is an important characteristic of any government system.25

In the case

of democracies, the source of legitimacy is in the regime type – majority-rule free and

fair elections imply that most citizens have opted into the system.26

Autocracies,

however, must look further afield for their sources of legitimacy – and because of that,

their hold onto claims of legitimacy may be more tenuous. When a regime’s legitimacy

is challenged, regime survival is placed in jeopardy (Burnell 2006). The regime will face

difficult choices: does it send the military into the streets? Does it pave the way for

regime change? In order to maintain itself in power, the regime must reaffirm its

legitimate right to rule.

Given the importance of convincing citizens who are not active party members of

the regime’s legitimacy, the basis of legitimacy matters. The grounds on which the

regime claim the right to rule must be protected from threat; when a challenge arises in

society that affects the regime’s claimed role relative to the bases of legitimacy, it must

be dealt with or risk destabilizing the regime. As the regime evolves, its primary grounds

for legitimacy may evolve as well (Burnell, 2006, p. 549). 27

Easton (1965) identified

two component pieces of legitimacy: diffuse support and specific support. Diffuse

25

For an excellent review of the literature on legitimacy (primarily democratic, though with some attention

to authoritarian legitimacy as well) see Booth and Seligson 2009, pp. 1-24. 26

This is not to say democratic legitimacy – or autocratic legitimacy – cannot be lost. Indeed, my argument

focuses on the government’s need to maintain that legitimacy in the face of challenges. While I focus on

autocracies, democracies must also address legitimacy crises; they simply use different mechanisms, such

as the vote of no confidence. 27

Kaufman (1985, 483) discusses growing legitimacy through economic development as a further

mechanism; however, he is concerned with the gradual increase of regime legitimacy, rather than

attempting to re-establish legitimacy following a crisis.

70

support consists of “attitudes toward the political community and toward the regime”

while specific support is “oriented toward the performance of political authorities.”

(Booth and Seligson 2009, 9). These more abstract aspects of legitimacy can be seen

concretely in the regime’s bases of legitimacy. The PRIista regime in Mexico claimed

two different bases of legitimacy – electoral legitimacy and revolutionary legitimacy.

Revolutionary legitimacy may be seen as an expression of diffuse support, while electoral

legitimacy reflects specific support. Electoral legitimacy, as Magaloni (2006) describes,

arose from repeated victory in elections at all levels of the state. Revolutionary

legitimacy was derived from the PRI’s participation in the 1913-1914 revolution – a form

of identification present even in the name of the party, the Institutional Revolutionary

Party. The PRI itself did not exist at the time of the revolution – as discussed in chapter 2

it formed gradually over the period 1917-1929 as the main parties were folded into one

umbrella party. However, the early leaders of the parties that became the PRI, as well as

of the PRI itself, were heroes of the revolution, and it was their legacy that allowed the

party to claim revolutionary legitimacy. The PRI’s overwhelming victories at the ballot

box reinforced the notion that the party was chosen by the people to rule, and thus could

claim a basis for legitimacy almost on par with democracy.28

The PRI enshrined its right

to rule in these two elements, and they were incredibly important to the party mythos. In

fact, in the 1970s when members of the PAN began to complain about the unfairness of

the system, the response from the PRI was that the PAN could set the political rules when

28

This is not to say that Mexico in this period was at all democratic; rather, my point is that the PRI used

the same basis for legitimacy that democratic regimes do, and with near equal effect – in fact, the electoral

victories were such resounding legitimization tools that some scholars classified Mexico under the PRI as a

democratic regime.

71

it had its own revolution (Interview with former legislator, 9/11) – a clear claim of

legitimacy based on participation in the revolution.

Of course, claiming certain areas as representing the regime’s legitimacy means

that crises affecting those areas are particularly problematic. Legitimacy crises, left

unaddressed, diminish the regime’s authority in the eyes of the population and can lead to

regime demise (Remmer, 1990, p. 64). A legitimacy crisis occurs when the basis on

which the regime claims its legitimacy is publicly challenged (so, in a fashion in which

more people than just the ruling elites are aware of the challenge). The public aspect is

important because the point of claiming legitimacy is to convince the ruled to accede to

the regime without relying entirely on the threat of force; essentially, this is an issue of

public perception. Issues that are entirely internal to the regime – pressures between

ruling party factions that don’t reach public notice – don’t result in a legitimacy crisis.

When the pressure between factions builds to the point that it becomes public, however,

as when a group splits from the main party, a legitimacy crisis can ensue. One crucial

point here is that the actors involved are aware that they are experiencing a legitimacy

crisis. A true legitimacy crisis is apparent as it is occurring, not just after the fact. This

does not guarantee that the regime will respond, or will respond appropriately, to the

crisis – but regime actors are aware of the crisis as a challenge to regime legitimacy. A

legitimacy crisis is a crisis facing the regime. Because in a dominant party system the

ruling party is the regime, a crisis for the party is a crisis for the regime.

In dominant party regimes, there are three basic options for responding to

legitimacy crises: enhancing the rule of law, clientelism, and violence. As I will

72

demonstrate in section 3.3, in the case of Mexico all responses to legitimacy crises had to

involve the rule of law, in the form of constitutional amendments. This was not the only

mechanism used – at various times the regime also used violence and clientelism – but it

was a necessary, and sometimes sufficient, condition of the response to crises.

Violence alone was never a sufficient response, due to both the public nature of

the legitimacy crisis and to regime ideology. As Knight (1999, 117-118) explains,

“Mexico’s official ideology was relatively progressive, enlightened,

inclusionary and reformist. This ideology, of course, is conveyed in the

country’s official ‘public transcript,’ tirelessly enunciated in speeches, the

press, and the electronic media… the gap between public transcript and

public policy cannot be allowed to yawn too wide for too long or the

former will lose all legitimacy, as it did, for example, in Eastern Europe.”

Knight argues that the public use of violence was not in line with the regime’s

self-image, “and, since it is at odds with the public transcript, it is not shouted from the

political rooftops, but officially denied, decried, evaded or overlooked.” (118). After the

PRI had consolidated control, using violence in response to a non-violent crisis did

nothing to enhance damaged legitimacy; on the contrary, it made the regime appear

unstable. The crucial aspect to that appearance is, again, the public nature of the crisis.

Legitimacy was only challenged when there was widespread knowledge of the crisis.

The regime often used violence secretly, but to maintain power, not to shore up

legitimacy. When faced with a situation where using violence was important to

maintaining control in the instant but being caught using violence would damage

legitimacy – specifically violence in response to non-violent acts – the regime kept its use

of violence secret to the greatest extent possible. This was the case with the 1968 student

massacres at Tlatelolco, when students gathered to march and non-violently protest

73

regime actions. However, soldiers disguised as civilians infiltrated the protest,

surrounded the protesters, and shot them. The government immediately moved to

conceal its use of violence, censoring news stories of the massacre and destroying all

photographs (Doyle 2003, 67). Additionally, by dressing the soldiers in civilian clothes

the regime distanced itself from military action. These approaches helped keep events

secret; while there were rumors of what had happened, the protest and aftermath were not

made public across Mexico, and cannot be considered an electoral or revolutionary

legitimacy crisis.

Violence, then, is a rarely-used tool of relegitimization, and must (in a dominant

party regime) be used publicly in order to respond to crises. A second common approach

to legitimacy crises, particularly electoral ones, is clientelism. In this case, clientelism

refers specifically to authoritarian clientelism, “where imbalanced bargaining relations

require the enduring political subordination of clients and are reinforced by the threat of

coercion.” (Fox 1994, 154) Like violence, though, clientelism is not a sufficient response

– and also like violence, it is sometimes not even an option.

Clientelism can be used to ensure electoral victories, whether narrow or super-

majority, by providing financial incentives to voters. The PRI practiced both positive

clientelism – vote buying – and what Stokes (2005) calls perverse accountability, or

punishing voters that went against the regime (Magaloni et al 2001). According to

Greene (2001, 3) clientelistic exchanges “may take place through face-to-face

relationships as in traditional clientelism, or through institutionalized relationships

between constituency groups and party organizations, bureaucratic units, or congressional

74

delegates.” They are a way of connecting voters to politicians, for electoral returns.29

However, while clientelism can often effectively guard against electoral defeat, it cannot

alone serve as a response to a legitimacy crisis. This is because legitimacy crises under a

durable dominant party are generally (with the exception of 1994 in Mexico) not

situations where the regime is facing electoral defeat. Rather, they are situations where

the regime’s image as the sole legitimate representative of the people is challenged, often

by splits within the party. When factions of the ruling party publicly split with the

regime and form a new party, their background as previous party members – particularly

as potential presidential candidates – threaten the image of the designated candidate as

the only legitimate future ruler. In these situations, clientelism can be used to buy off

voters to the extent that splitting looks unprofitable to party members – but that does

nothing to repair the regime’s publicly tarnished image to voters. In the face of electoral

legitimacy challenges, clientelism can decentivize future splits, but it cannot rebuild

legitimacy.

Clientelism also cannot usually repair challenges to revolutionary legitimacy.

When what is challenged is the regime’s claim to its role in the revolution, vote-buying is

useless. With respect to Mexico, the only exception is if the challenge is to the regime’s

29

Greene distinguishes clientelism under authoritarian systems from its democratic cousin, distributive

politics, as follows: “Whereas classic distributive politics includes pork-barreling in favor of geographically

or sectorally defined constituencies, benefits are given to all members of the targeted constituency,

regardless of their support for the sponsoring politician. Clientelist modes of exchange include distribution

to specific constituencies, but with the added constraint that material advantages are directed to supporters

or would-be supporters exclusively, and with the explicit expectation of political support in return” (Greene

2001, 5). In short, the basic distinction between democratic redistribution and autocratic clientelism is that

even when the exchange utilizes politicians, the target audience varies – benefits to all as opposed to

benefits solely to supporters.

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promise to redistribute land.30

In that case, clientelism in the form of land grants can be

used to respond to revolutionary legitimacy crises.

Both violence and clientelism may be part of the regime’s response to a

legitimacy crisis, but neither is sufficient to actually rebuild legitimacy. In order to do

that – to publicly demonstrate its legitimacy – the regime must use the rule of law. As I

show in 3.3, in the case of Mexico every legitimacy crisis was met with constitutional

amendments – sometimes in conjunction with violence or clientelism, but sometimes not.

I argue that what moves an event from simply a major crisis to a legitimacy crisis

is the public aspect – that is, a public challenge to the bases of legitimacy. That public

aspect implies that any measure of regime legitimacy must be a measure of the public

perception of legitimacy. The best method for determining this is an opinion poll.

Actually conducting a public opinion poll to test legitimacy is a) well beyond the scope

of this dissertation, and b) impossible due to the long-term nature of the project. I cannot

show public opinion data of a legitimacy crisis in most cases; however, von Sauer (1992)

uses opinion polls to demonstrate the presence of a legitimacy crisis in the lead-up to the

1988 election. Von Sauer’s interpretation of the data relies on a high percentage of

respondents identifying the PRI as corrupt, or elections as fraudulent. While I cannot test

public opinion, I can demonstrate allegations of corruption and fraud around the

legitimacy crises I have identified.

The 1940 election which preceded Almazán’s rebellion was also noticeable

plagued by perceptions of fraud and corruption. The rebellion (the first legitimacy crisis

30

In non-Mexico cases, clientelism can only repair challenges to revolutionary legitimacy when the

challenge affects an area of life that can be purchased.

76

of the PRI’s reign) occurred when Almazán was passed over for the presidential

nomination. That decision resulted in what Zolov calls a “tainted election… which

should have gone to Almazán” (Zolov, 2001, p. 166). The legitimacy crisis was again

signaled by allegations of widespread fraud (Hernández, 1989, pág. 58), as von Sauer’s

data suggest should be the case.

The 1976 presidential election became a legitimacy crisis when López Portillo

was elected in an uncontested election – uncontested because the PAN could not agree on

a candidate. The reason the PAN could not agree was because there was a division

between the faction that wanted to focus on local elections and the faction that wanted to

focus on national elections. The core of this local versus national argument was a

widespread perception that the elections were fraudulent – that PAN members were

winning seats but being denied their victories (Lujambio 2001, p. 71). These concerns of

fraud were, surprisingly, relatively new and growing – in the 1960s the PAN actually had

a cordial relationship with the PRI, and while not all victories were recognized, many

were (Lujambio 2001, p. 69).

The 1988 legitimacy crisis was well-documented by von Sauer and others;

McCann and Dominguez (1998) claim that immediately prior to the 1994 legitimacy

crisis almost half the population anticipated electoral fraud. This is a decrease from the

1988 and 1991 levels, but the level of perceived corruption had actually risen from 1991

to 1994.31

McCann and Dominguez also identify widespread fraud in the 1994 Chiapas

31

There does not appear to be data on corruption for 1988.

77

gubernatorial election, which they posit further increased voters’ perceptions of

illegitimate behavior (ibid. 490).

If we accept von Sauer’s measurement of a legitimacy crisis through claims of

corruption and fraud, each of the events I have identified can be seen to be legitimacy

crises. This is not to say that allegations of corruption and fraud did not occur at other

points, but that these points represent particular spikes in the public perception of

corruption and fraud. With the 1976 and 1994 crises, we have evidence – anecdotal in

the former, data-based in the latter – that perceptions of corruption and fraud were higher

at those points than in surrounding years. There is no comparative data for 1988, but

McCann and Dominguez put the level of voters lacking faith in the government at 45% -

an impressively high level given that the likely fraudulent election had not yet been held.

I maintain that widespread reports of corruption and fraud are signs of a legitimacy crisis,

and that 1940, 1976, 1988, and 1994 all represented legitimacy crises.

Legitimacy crises play a distinct role in institutional evolution. Institutional

evolution has two phases, that of major shifts and that of minor changes, which occur

within periods of seismic shifts. The minor changes generally flow in the same basic

direction – towards a more open state, for instance, or a more closed one. The majority

of the small changes will move in the same direction, while a few may deviate from the

pattern. We can determine that the small change is part of the larger pattern primarily by

identifying defining events – the events which give rise to my periodization, discussed

below – and then examining each small change that occurs within the period between two

78

defining events. The majority of the changes will proceed towards some similar end –

greater executive powers, for instance.

While small changes generally (though as mentioned above, not exclusively)

follow the set path, the major shifts can cut a new path: an institution that had been

gradually progressing to greater political openness might go through a series of sudden

changes that produce a much more closed state, for instance. The value of my theory is

that it explains both major and minor shifts, something most institutional evolutionary

literature does not do (with the exception of Greif and Thelen).

While minor changes can be seen as the natural progression of a non-stagnant

institution – small changes that move mostly consistently in a given direction – major

shifts, which fundamentally alter the shape and function of the institution, are the result

of recalibrated power balances following legitimacy challenges. Each set of minor and

major events occurs within an evolutionary period. These periods are caused by seismic

shifts – huge, dramatic regime responses to severe legitimacy crises. The seismic shift –

the actions the regime takes when threatened by a legitimacy crisis – recalibrates the

balance between powers, sometimes significantly strengthening the existing winner and

sometimes making the erstwhile loser the new winner in the power relationships.

Seismic shifts are essentially responses to critical junctures. In the case of seismic shifts,

I argue that contrary to much of the institutional evolution literature options are very

rarely so circumscribed as to lead to charges of path dependency, though it does

occasionally occur, as I will discuss when I analyze the 1994 shift. The remainder of this

chapter is concerned with discussing and explaining seismic shifts.

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The chart below recaps the differences between minor shifts, major shifts, and

seismic shifts.

Chart 3.1. Categories of evolutionary shifts

Minor shifts Occur in response to winners’ changing needs

Within a given period, generally progress in the

same direction

Frequent events

Major shifts Occur in response to recalibration of winners

and losers

Within a given period generally progress in the

same direction

Relatively rare events

Seismic shifts Occur as a result of legitimacy crises; in

themselves recalibrate winners and losers

Define periods

Extremely rare events

The range of possible responses to a legitimacy crisis is defined by the nature of

the crisis. At the most basic level, the regime’s options are to respond to the crisis or not

to respond. As my dissertation demonstrates, there are times when the regime opts not to

respond or is unable to respond. While it is difficult to determine what precisely caused

internal regime decisions to be taken in a particular way, there are several possible

explanations for a no-response outcome. One is simple miscalculation; decision makers

recognize the legitimacy crisis but not the response that will resolve it in the regime’s

favor. Another possible explanation is that the decision makers are aware they are facing

a legitimacy crisis, but each of the possible responses appears to have greater drawbacks

than a lack of response. Fortunately, the motivation for choosing a non-response is far

less important than the fact of the non-response.

80

When choosing a positive (rather than no) response to a legitimacy crisis, decision

makers’ options are rather more open. Political reality will shape the options available to

the actors, but I contend that those options are not so firmly circumscribed as most path-

dependent theories assume, and that it is possible to reverse actions that earlier appeared

path dependent. This is because, as argued in chapter 2, decisions taken after critical

junctures are not impossible to reverse, merely very costly. However, when the risk of

non-reversal carries an even steeper cost – specifically regime demise – it is possible for

an evolutionary movement to reverse the institution’s path.

3.4 Legitimacy Crises in Mexican History

In the case of Mexico, we can see certain behaviors institutionalized in order to

stave off a legitimacy crisis. One of these preventive measures was the dedazo, or touch,

the process by which the sitting president named his successor. The dedazo was designed

to keep the presidential nomination process private and thereby avoid creating rifts within

the ruling party. Essentially, between 12 and 24 months before the end of a president’s

term he would name three people from the upper echelons of the party as possible

successors. Those three would then be subject to intense scrutiny by the president and his

closest advisers – but the potential candidates would not speak publicly about the

presidency, the nomination, or anything related. In fact, publicly commenting on any of

these areas was grounds for disqualification from the dedazo. By keeping the selection

process secret and making any public discussion of it taboo, the PRI elite prevented party

factionalization from becoming public fodder, and thus from elevating a party crisis (as

81

different factions backed different potential candidates) to a legitimacy crisis. When the

Corriente Democrático – a reformist faction of the PRI – publicly advocated for a

democratization of the nomination procedures in the lead-up to the 1988 elections, it was

seen as a violation of the rules of the dedazo. The ensuing shift from private party

deliberations to public-sector arguments over who was the legitimate representative of

the state elevated what might have otherwise been a clash between internal party factions

into a legitimacy crisis. When the candidate favored by the Corriente Democrático,

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, was not chosen for the presidency, rather than maintaining its

silence, the Corriente Democrático split off from the PRI to create its own party

(Langston, 2002, p. 77). This further exacerbated the PRI’s issues regarding legitimacy,

as Cárdenas himself – son of the great revolutionary hero and former president Lázaro

Cárdenas – could claim revolutionary legitimacy and proceed to seek electoral legitimacy

in the 1988 election.

The 1988 presidential election was one of four legitimacy crises that the regime

experienced between 1929 and 2000, separating the 71 years into five periods of

evolution. In chapter 1 I offered a brief overview of the political dynamics of each

period, and in chapter 4 I go into greater detail about how each period stands up to my

theory. The discussion of periodization in this chapter will focus on explaining the

legitimacy crises themselves.

The five periods of institutional evolution were 1929-1945, 1946-1976, 1977-

1986, 1987-1993, and 1994-2000. Each of these periods was brought about by the

regime’s response (or lack thereof) to a legitimacy crisis. In most cases, the legitimacy

82

crisis which occasioned the shifts challenged both revolutionary and electoral

legitimacy.32

My dissertation begins with 1929, the date when the party that eventually called

itself the PRI33

formed and took power. The first period, 1929-1946, was a time of

consolidation – the leaders of the new ruling party were working on co-opting other

parties under their umbrella, removing all opposition to the party’s rule. Predictably, this

cooptation met with some resistance. Smaller parties that were co-opted lost much of

their influence, and because the PNR/PRI was focused on absorbing as many groups as

possible rather than on strict ideological homogeny, disparate viewpoints from the co-

opted parties led to factionalization within the dominant party. The major vocalization of

that disparity came in the form of an armed rebellion. In 1940, party factionalization led

to a split in the nomination for the next president. The outgoing president, Lázaro

Cárdenas, nominated Manuel Avila Camacho as his successor in the dedazo. However, a

significant wing of the party backed retired general Juan Almazán as the next president.

When Avila Camacho was nominated instead, Almazán’s supporters split from the party

and began an armed rebellion against the regime. The rebellion was quickly put down,

but its evidently public nature moved the discord over the presidency from the realm of

private party business to a very public legitimacy crisis, as Almazán’s own role in the

party to that point and his rejection of the party challenged the party’s revolutionary

legitimacy (Meyer, 1972, p. 125).

32

1929 and 2000 are excluded from this conversation because they are not transition points so much as start

and end dates. 33

From 1929 until about 1939, the party was called the Partido Nacional Revolucionario. In 1939 it

became the Partido Revolucionario Mexicano, and in 1946 it changed its name to the PRI. However, it was

the same party at all points.

83

The regime’s response to Almazán’s rebellion and the attendant revolutionary

legitimacy crisis triggered the legislature’s evolution. Essentially, regime actors

concluded that the incentive for Almazán’s split was his ability to form a new party; had

he been unable to form a party that could compete at the national level, the fissure would

have remained internal to the party and the legitimacy crisis would not have emerged. As

a result, in 1946 the legislature amended the constitution to significantly curtail party

development and increased the cost of exiting from the party (Langston, 2002, p. 66). It

introduced a requirement of a minimum of 30,000 party members necessary for a party to

compete, and required that parties register at least a year in advance of the election,

preventing factions from splitting right before the election. The regime response helped

to shore up legitimacy by essentially removing legitimate sources of opposition. By

raising electoral barriers, the regime ensured a very limited pool of legitimate opponents,

reducing the claimants to the presidency to the PRI and the PAN, as the other two legal

parties did not run presidential candidates. Without legal opposition – and with barriers

to ruling party defection so high – the PRI’s legitimacy was enhanced as the only

possible electoral choice.

The difficulty of registering so many members essentially disallowed most parties

without actually making opposition to the regime illegal. This minimum threshold

fundamentally altered the legislature, moving it and the country more towards

authoritarianism. By deliberately setting a threshold that was difficult for any but a large

wealthy party to reach, the regime ensured that competition was strictly limited,

decreasing the potential sources of opposition. The high barrier to entry resulted in a

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system where only four parties were legal – the ruling party, the primary opposition party

PAN which was allowed to compete but frequently, according to party sources, denied its

victories (see for instance Beer 2003) and two smaller pseudo-opposition parties, the PPS

and the PARM, which were in reality supported by and working with the regime. This

effectively struck true opposition from the system for many years.

The regime’s response to the crisis had two pieces: an immediate stage, where the

violent rebellion was put down, and a longer-term stage, where legitimacy was restored.

The regime responded to the rebellion itself with use of force, then turned to the

constitution to shore up its damaged legitimacy. While violence was utilized as a

response to the crisis, it was insufficient to address the regime’s legitimacy; putting down

the Almazán supporters’ rebellion did not guarantee that the regime was the only

legitimate representative of revolutionary promises. In order to bring that about, it was

necessary to change the institutional rules so that the regime could credibly assure voters

and party members that future challenges of this nature were unlikely to arise.

The largest factor in shifting Almazán’s rebellion from a political problem to a

legitimacy crisis was the fact that prior to his rebellion he had in fact been under

consideration for the presidential nomination (Hernández 1989, p. 56). He traveled

Mexico making stump speeches to various groups, from businessmen to campesinos.

However, Almazán himself was a wealthy landowner supported by other wealthy

businessmen, and opposed the land grants that were so important to Cárdenas. Although

the promise of land grants dated to 1917, they were only narrowly executed prior to

Cárdenas’ presidency. Cárdenas came to power with the support of the campesinos, and

85

it was important to him to leave the regime in the hands of someone who would continue

that work (Langston 2002, p. 67). In short, he had increased the visibility of the regime’s

commitments laid out in Article 27, a fundamental piece of revolutionary legitimacy.

Almazán’s potential candidacy challenged that heightened importance, and his apparent

willingness to use violence against the regime (Hernández 57) in a public fashion

challenged electoral legitimacy.34

The very public nature of the rebellion, combined with

the rebellion being spurred on after Almazán had publicly competed for the presidential

nomination, created a situation that Mexico had not previously experienced under the

PRI: a legitimacy crisis.

The 1976/1977 transition point in many ways reversed the 1945/1946 actions, as

it opened the field up to greater electoral competition. This transition also arose out of a

presidential contest, though not within the party. In the lead-up to the 1976 election, the

PAN was suffering a significant identity crisis as the party’s two main factions tried to set

its future direction. The PAN had participated in local and national elections since the

1950s, and while they’d had some local level success their national-level success was

more limited, and they had no success whatsoever with presidential elections. Adding to

this difficulty was the fact that victories claimed by the PAN were often not honored by

the regime. For the most part the party had more success getting local-level elections –

municipal councils, for instance, and to some extent mayoralties – recognized by the

regime (Eisenstadt 2004, Beer 2003). As a result, one significant branch of the party

believed that the PAN should focus solely on local-level elections with only minimal

34

Interestingly, Almazán espoused violence before his supporters’ rebellion, but distanced himself from the

actual rebellion.

86

competition at the national level. The other branch believed the primary focus should

remain on national elections like the presidency and the Chamber of Deputies. When it

came time to nominate a PAN candidate for the 1976 election, these two competing

missions came to a head. The resulting clash over the future of the party meant that the

PAN missed the registration deadline to announce its presidential candidate – no

candidate was named. The effect of the 1946 amendment was such that neither of the

two other legal parties ran its own presidential candidate – both parties simply supported

the PRI candidate. Without a PAN candidate, there was no opposition to ‘challenge’ the

PRI, and its candidate, José López Portillo, won an uncontested election.

This uncontested election called into question the PRI’s electoral legitimacy

(Eisenstadt 2004, Doyle 2003). Winning an uncontested election did not make the party

appear to be the legitimate ruler of Mexico – rather, it made the PRI look authoritarian,

and as though the party only won because no alternative existed. The fact that everyone

in Mexico knew the PRI was not winning elections fairly did nothing to alleviate the

crisis; for the sake of the regime’s legitimacy, it was necessary to have some formal

opposition.

The unique event that made 1976 a legitimacy crisis was the total absence of

opposition to the PRI in a national-level election. The 1976 crisis was spurred on by PAN

factionalism. This was not the first time factionalism had caused the PAN to abandon

electoral gains – in 1956 a rift between two factions caused PANistas to refuse to take

their seats in the Chamber of Deputies. But in that scenario, opposition was to some

degree still present, in the form of PPS and PRM delegates. Since neither the PPS nor the

87

PRM ran presidential candidates, however, the absence of a PAN candidate let to the first

ever unopposed presidential election, and a legitimacy crisis (Lujambio 2001).

The regime’s response to this legitimacy crisis was to ensure that in the future

there would always be opposition to the PRI candidate. The minimum threshold for

electoral participation was removed; all parties could now compete at the national level

and field candidates for the presidency. Further, the major electoral system reforms

passed in 1977, switching from a pure majoritarian system to a mixed

majoritarian/proportional representation system, dramatically impacted legitimacy.

Introducing partial proportional representation helped to increase opposition presence in

government, as well as facilitating the introduction of primarily local-level parties to

national-level politics. At the same time, maintaining a number of seats through first-

past-the-post elections ensured continued PRI dominance. In essence, between the

reforms to party participation laws and the reforms to the electoral system, the regime

improved its legitimacy by allowing opposition participation but doing so in a way that

maintained the ruling party supermajority and the attendant electoral legitimacy. This

response caused an evolutionary shift towards an at least slightly more democratic system

Although no research has been done on internal party dynamics that would account for

this reversal from the 1946 amendment, it is possible that regime elites felt comfortable

removing the barrier to entry out of a belief that party discipline was so high that splits

would not occur. The 1946 barriers were put in place in order to prevent splits; but the

party in 1946 was also relatively newly-consolidated, whereas the party in 1977 was still

in what is known as the golden age of the PRI, when party discipline was extremely high.

88

Given that level of party discipline, combined with the PRI’s almost total control over

resources, decision makers may have believed that even allowing small parties to form

would not encourage splitting (and its inherent legitimacy crises). And indeed, it was

almost a decade before any faction did split off from the party – but when that occurred,

in 1986, the PRI’s grasp on power began significantly fading.

In this case, neither violence nor clientelism was a viable tool. The PAN had not

committed a violent act; the public legitimacy crisis was entirely non-violent, so the PRI

could not rely on violence to address the crisis even had it wanted to. Further, the crisis

was not about the PRI lacking votes, but about the PRI lacking opposition – so

clientelism was not a viable tool. Facing the 1976/77 legitimacy crisis, the regime’s only

recourse was to change the laws to rebuild legitimacy.

The legitimacy crisis that engendered the 1987/1988 institutional evolutionary

process stemmed from a challenge to both electoral and revolutionary legitimacy in the

lead-up to the 1988 election. The history here was described above, in the development

of the Corriente Democrático and its subsequent split from the PRI. In this instance, a

revolutionary legitimacy crisis paved the way for an electoral legitimacy crisis – while

there were two separate events, they were part of the same larger legitimacy crisis, and

the regime response was unitary. The impending revolutionary crisis was compounded

by the regime’s response to the 1982 foreign debt crisis, when it largely abandoned its

revolutionary ideals (Langston, 2002, p. 74). The crisis further challenged the regime’s

revolutionary legitimacy because of who precisely was splitting off from the PRI –

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of the legendary president Lázaro Cárdenas.

89

The elder Cárdenas’ revolutionary legitimacy was primarily a function of the

actions he took as president. One of the core revolutionary principles revolved around

land ownership, which will be discussed in much greater detail in chapter 5. Briefly, the

then-new regime promised to redistribute land to the peasants, a core group of

revolutionary supporters. Lázaro Cárdenas came to power backed by agricultural unions,

and was the first president to make land redistribution an absolute priority. He was also

responsible for redistributing more hectares of land than any other president. In many

ways, he embodied the revolutionary ideals – and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas was seen as his

father’s political heir. For the younger Cárdenas to so publicly break from the ruling

party, and form his own, was a very direct challenge to the regime’s revolutionary

legitimacy. This split was followed by the group (which eventually became the PRD)

forming a coalition party and putting forth Cuauhtémoc as their candidate in the 1988

presidential election – something that was possible because of the 1977 laws relaxing the

barriers to participation. The party that would become the PRD backed Cárdenas in

1988, and he may have actually won the presidential election – accounts are muddled, as

there were significant electoral anomalies including a power outage affecting electronic

tallying, and the eventual destruction of all paper ballots. Cárdenas’ possible victory

provoked a massive electoral legitimacy crisis for the regime, and its response was

problematic. In order to maintain itself in power, the PRI made a deal with the primary

opposition party, the PAN, that the PAN would not challenge the electoral outcome.

Without the PAN’s backing, the PRD did not have enough weight to actually unseat the

regime. In exchange for recognizing the PRI victory, the PAN demanded constitutional

90

amendments which created an independent electoral oversight body, thus diminishing the

regime’s future influence (Eisenstadt 2006).

The 1988 legitimacy crisis, then, came in two parts: first, a challenge to

revolutionary legitimacy in the form of Cárdenas’ departure from the party, and second, a

challenge to electoral legitimacy when the PRI was forced to steal the presidential

election to maintain power. These events occurred two years apart; why did the first

alone not provoke a regime response – and thus legislative evolution? Why was the

second event necessary to bring about evolution? Part of the answer is that by this point,

several generations removed from the revolution itself, revolutionary legitimacy was less

important to the party (and likely to the people) than it had been years ago.35

This is

visible from the dramatically declining importance of land reform, as well as the reduced

role of unions in political life. Given the diminished importance of revolutionary

legitimacy, the event that truly put the regime in crisis was the 1988 presidential election.

The prior event, the revolutionary legitimacy crisis, was necessary to provoke the

electoral legitimacy crisis and the regime response, but was not a sufficient condition to

provoke a regime response in and of itself. The regime response pushed the legislature

and the Mexican system as a whole towards much greater democracy, and essentially

made reversing that course into a firmly authoritarian state impossible.

While clientelism could buy votes, the regime’s ability to vote-buy was

diminished in the aftermath of the foreign debt crisis (Magaloni et al 2000, p. 5).

Additionally, clientelism through vote-buying is completed in advance of an election; the

35

For more on the decreasing importance of the revolution over time, see Langston 2002.

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regime’s legitimacy crisis culminated after the election, when the party was forced to

steal the presidency to remain in power. The only method available to make that

electoral theft appear legitimate was through buying off the opposition, using

constitutional amendments.36

The final legitimacy crisis the PRI faced was an electoral legitimacy crisis that

came to a head with the 1994 elections. In the 1994 elections, the PRI retained the

presidency but lost its supermajority in the Chamber of Deputies. The loss of the

supermajority for the first time since the PRI came to power was a massive blow to the

regime.37

The party had maintained itself in power through a long series of constitutional

amendments that allowed it to manipulate the political situation to its needs; losing the

supermajority meant the regime was no longer able to practice that constitutional

manipulation. The crisis itself, then, was the electoral defeat – for a regime that

legitimized its rule in part by maximizing its vote margin each election, to win by a much

smaller margin than ever before – and in fact, to lose a substantial number of seats –

suggested a popular rejection of the regime, and therefore of its legitimacy. As

demonstrated in the 1988 election, the party’s historical approach to such an event was

fraud. In this instance, however, previous events – specifically the PAN-negotiated

amendments following the 1988 election – prevented the regime from in any way

36

Dresser (1992, 12) includes one further mechanism for resolving the legitimacy crisis: “the incorporation

of social reformers into the ranks of the bureaucracy.” However, she herself admits this was one among

several strategies. Furthermore, the appointment of reformers actually goes hand in hand with the

constitutional changes, as a sign of liberalization and an effort to reform clunky, corrupt bureaucracies – an

aspect of the PAN’s platform. 37

For a discussion of the impact of the loss of the supermajority on the rate of institutional evolution, see

chapter 4. In essence, the PAN and the PRD were in strengthened bargaining positions. That, combined

with a further breakdown in party discipline as individual PRI legislators acted in their own interest and

sided with the opposition, resulted in a level of constitutional change that was high but not as high as the

previous period.

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manipulating the electoral outcome. The nonresponse to the crisis further advanced the

state towards democracy. The regime was unable to respond to the crisis, further

diminishing its legitimacy.

In the 1993/94 legitimacy crisis, again the only tool available to the regime was

rule of law. Public violence would not have been ideologically supported, and

clientelism was not viable because of earlier constitutional changes promoting electoral

transparency, and because the peso crisis left the regime financially unable to make

sufficient payoffs (Magaloni et al 2000, 28). The PRI had no way to counter the rising

power of the PAN and the PRD; its inability to adequately redress claims of illegitimacy

led to its 1997 congressional defeat and its 2000 presidential defeat.

The 1994 crisis was unique from the other legitimacy crises in several ways.

First, each of the other crises were true exogenous shocks – that is, they occurred with

only a little build-up and were not predictable. The 1994 crisis, however, was

foreseeable. The regime’s vote share had been declining for some time; in 1991 the PRI

held just 64% of Congressional seats (Lujambio 2001, p. 57). And the compromises

forced on the regime by the PAN in exchange for ratifying the contested 1988 election –

the creation of a truly independent elections tribunal – made it clear that the ruling party

would not be able to cheat its way to victory again. So, unlike Almazán’s rebellion, the

PAN’s failure to nominate a candidate, and the CD’s split from the ruling party, the

regime’s loss of the supermajority was a predictable legitimacy crisis. The other unique

aspect of the crisis was that there was no possible corrective action for the regime to take.

In 1940 and 1988 the regime attempted to mitigate the effects of the crisis through fraud

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– but thanks to the 1988 reforms, that was no longer an option. The inability to

relegitimize following the 1994 crisis may even be linked to the regime’s demise in 2000;

the inability to utilize historic methods like clientelism and fraud, coupled with the

increasing system-wide democratization, made the electoral arena a much fairer playing

field, which contributed to opposition success.

What all the legitimacy crises have in common is that they were previously

unprecedented events. While there were splits prior to Almazán, none had resulted in an

armed rebellion. While the PAN had suffered factionalism before, that factionalism had

never resulted in a failure to nominate a candidate. No split prior to the Corriente

Democrático had actually resulted in a group that threatened PRI hegemony; and up until

1994 the PRI had never yet lost the Congressional majority (though it came too close for

comfort in 1991). Each crisis was a unique, previously unexperienced event. There was

no built-in protocol for regime response, and so in each case the regime had to design a

response appropriate to the crisis; when no response was possible, regime demise was on

the horizon.

3.5 Conclusion

To sum up (see Table 3.2), the major shifts in institutional evolution experienced

by the PRI regime can each be traced to the regime’s response to a legitimacy crisis.

More generally, my theory predicts that all major evolutionary shifts in dominant party

regimes are due to regime responses to legitimacy crises. The nature of the crisis will

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vary based on the regime’s claims to legitimacy – in the case of Mexico, this was

electoral and revolutionary legitimacy.

Table 3.2. Summary of Legitimacy Crises

Year of crisis Legitimacy challenged

1946 Revolutionary

1977 Electoral

1987/8 Revolutionary and Electoral

1994 Electoral

Legitimacy’s role as the causal mechanism in the theory is linked to the regime’s

need to maintain power by means other than use of force; by claiming to be a legitimate

government the regime was able to decrease the costs associated with ruling as well as

justify any actions taken to prolong its time in office. In responding to legitimacy crises,

the regime caused major institutional evolutionary shifts to occur. However, legitimacy

only underlies the evolutionary shifts – it does not explain in which direction institutions

will evolve, or what causes evolutionary shifts on a more micro level within each period.

The following chapter tests the theory presented in chapter 2 in order to demonstrate

those micro causes of institutional evolution.

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Chapter 4: Testing the Theory: The Evolution of Legislative Powers

4.1 Introduction

The PRI ruled Mexico for 71 years. During that time, there were periods of

stability when the political system remained fairly stagnant, as in the 1940s and 1950s,

and periods of change where power switched from faction to faction rapidly and

challenges often arose both from within and without the regime, as in the late 1960s and

1970s. Why did the system evolve so differently at different times? I have argued that

the answer to that question - the source of variation in institutional evolution - is

changing relationships between different actors within the system.38

Using the legislature

as an example, I now turn to testing that argument, examining legislative evolution over

the lifetime of the regime. My analysis will show that both the mid-century stagnation

and the later rapid change, reflected in legislative evolution, arose due to changes in the

power relationships between two sets of actors: the executive versus the legislature, and

the ruling party versus the opposition party.

In chapter 2 I laid out the logic behind the theory and explained how shifts in the

rate of institutional evolution are a function of changing party power leverage

relationships, while shifts in the content of institutional evolution are a function of

38

I use ‘system’ to mean the entire political system, not just the regime. I am focused on the dynamics

within the regime – between the executive and legislature – and beyond it – between the ruling party and

the opposition party.

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changing branch leverage relationships. In chapter 3 I argued that the mechanism behind

these shifts was the regime’s response to a legitimacy crisis. In this chapter, I test the

link between leverage relationships and institutional evolution and find strong support for

my hypotheses regarding evolutionary speed. My initial tests of the hypotheses regarding

evolutionary content are equivocal, but a reconceptualization of the independent variable

demonstrates strong support for the theory.

I will begin in section 4.2 with a brief history of Mexico prior to 1929, in order to

explain how aspects of this dissertation such as the PRI’s use of revolutionary

participation as a legitimation technique developed. In section 4.3 I will offer a more in-

depth explanation of the periodization schema introduced in chapter 2, as well as an

overview of the historical dynamics of each period. From there I discuss my data sources

in section 4.4 before moving into an analysis of theory testing and results in section 4.5. I

conclude with the overall implications of the findings for my theory.

4.2 Mexican history: From the Revolution to 1929

While this dissertation is only concerned with institutional development from

1929 on, in order to understand the shape of the regime and the role of the institutions

and actors within the regime it is useful to begin by looking at where the PRI came from

prior to 1929. Many factors that profoundly affected the regime and evolution

throughout the lifetime of the PRI – the struggles over Article 27’s land ownership

provisions (the subject of the next chapter), the internal factionalism, and even the

genesis of the opposition parties – have their roots in the Mexican revolution of 1913-14

97

and its immediate aftermath. The role of peasants and workers under the regime, as well

as their right to own land, stems from their role in the revolution (a role that was a direct

response to the treatment of the poor and working classes under Porfirio Diaz’s

dictatorship, discussed below). The factionalism within the PRI has its roots in the

party’s early catch-all nature, and in the efforts to unify parties and revolutionaries with

two distinct personal bases: the faction under Álvaro Obregón, and that under Plutarco

Calles. The primary opposition party, PAN, arose in 1939 in large part because its

founders (former PRIistas) were frustrated with the regime’s focus on redistribution of

land over private property. In order to place the period of 1929-2000 in proper context –

including the details laid out above – some basic knowledge of pre-revolutionary and

revolutionary Mexico is necessary.

Mexico prior to the revolution was ruled by Porfirio Diaz. Diaz served as dictator

from 1876 to 1910, and elements of his rule directly contributed to the revolution itself.

Chief among these was the role of the lower classes – peasants and workers – under Diaz.

Like many states, Porfiriato Mexico concentrated power in the hands of a relative few. In

the case of Mexico, these few were often large landowners; peasants in particular had few

rights. By the turn of the century, the economic disparity, combined with a sense that

Diaz was “no longer the right and lawful ruler of Mexico” in part because of his refusal

to allow public input on his vice presidential candidate, (Anderson 112) led to large-scale

peasant support for a revolution. When Francisco Madero announced the revolution in

1910, the revolutionary leaders – Madero himself, as well as men like Emilio Zapata and

Pancho Villa – were able to bargain with the peasants, essentially promising them

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extended rights and much greater access to land in exchange for service in the

revolutionary armies (Hart 2010, 413). Facing a revolution, Diaz stepped down, but

almost immediately upon his forfeiture of power, the revolution began to devolve into a

series of internal wars between leaders in various parts of the country. While Diaz was

forced from power in 1910, infighting among the revolutionaries did not begin to resolve

until 1915, when the Sonoran rebel faction led by Alvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elias

Calles emerged triumphant (Hart 2010, 423). This eventually led to the constitutional

congress of 1916-1917, which enacted the Constitution of 1917 that is still in force today.

The dynamics of the revolution, particularly in terms of which groups supported it

and which were opposed (often because of their association with the Porfiriato), had

important repercussions throughout the life of the PRI regime. The Porifiato was backed

by wealthy landowners and by the church; many of the most significant post-

revolutionary changes targeted those two groups. The revolutionaries institutionalized

their promise to the peasantry through Article 27 of the constitution, which reorganized

land rights, although following through on the promise of Article 27 was not a regime

priority until the 1930s (Knight 1985, 23; for more detail, see my chapter 5). Likewise,

the 1917 constitution punished the Church, which had supported Diaz, by forbidding

religious organizations from owning property and allowing states to set draconian

restrictions on the priesthood.

One of the effects of the prohibitions on religion was the Cristero War. The

Cristero War, fought from 1926 to 1929, pitted the state against ardent Catholic

guerrillas. The war was enormously divisive; although religion was severely

99

circumscribed by the 1917 constitution, Mexico’s population was primarily Catholic, and

a substantial portion of the population was torn between supporting the state and

supporting the Church. It resolved, eventually, with the state definitively routing the

Catholic opposition and punishing the Church by dramatically tightening the reins and

enforcing legislation on religious activities (Wilkie 1966, 230). These prohibitions on

religion and religious personnel would remain in force for most of the life of the regime.

They were also partly responsible for the formation of the PAN – although not a

confessional party, it was a party supported by many Catholics, and its founders were

opposed to such regime actions as the banning of Church-sponsored schools.

In the time between the implementation of the revolutionary constitution of 1915

and the emergence of the PNR-cum-PRI in 1929, party politics in Mexico was in turmoil.

Under Porfirio Diaz, parties were virtual non-entities – actual power was concentrated in

the hands of the dictator, with some capabilities granted to the military so long as the

military leaders were cohorts of Diaz, and their power did not threaten his own.

Following the revolution, many small parties sprang up. These parties, however, were

highly personalistic and mostly represented niche groups; they broke apart quite

frequently, and no one group was able to form a really durable institution. That

instability was reflected in the tenure of the Mexican presidents; despite a constitutionally

mandated four year term (later amended to six years), many presidents served only

months or a year or two. They rarely left office of their own volition, and sometimes did

not survive the experience – Francisco Madero, the head of the revolution and the first

revolutionary president, was assassinated partway through his term. Many other

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prominent political figures – Emilio Zapata and Pancho Villa among them – were also

assassinated. The highly personalistic nature of politics threatened the existence of post-

revolutionary Mexico (Knight 1985, 15). It was in the shadow of these events, then, that

General Obregón began to consolidate various smaller parties into one larger party where

he was the leader but not the sole embodiment of the party. Obregón’s efforts, which had

the dual effect of stabilizing the political climate and concentrating power in his hands,

led to the formation of the PNR in 1929.

Obregón himself was highly charismatic. A decorated war hero (he lost his arm

in the revolution) he had been a supporter of Venustiano Carranza, the leader of the

revolution. When the two had a falling out prior to the 1920 presidential election,

Obregón ran for president by cobbling together a party out of various existing factions.

He led his new party to victory in 1920 and served as the first full-term Mexican

president. The party that Obregón founded in 1920 was not the PNR (which did not yet

exist); however, his party became one of the most powerful forces in early Mexican

politics. When he left office in 1924, the constitution forbade reelection to the

presidency. Obregón, however, was such a popular and powerful figure that his

supporters in the legislature amended the constitution to prevent direct reelection but

permit reelection after a term out of office, thus opening the door for his successful 1928

bid for the presidency. He never served that term; he was assassinated by a Catholic

fanatic in the midst of the Cristero war. His death allowed Plutarco Calles, who had

succeeded him as president in 1924, to consolidate his control over the party that

Obregón had built, combining it with several smaller groups to create the PNR and

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shifting the party into a more personalistic vehicle. Calles had been Obregón’s primary

challenger, representing a smaller faction of the party than that controlled by Obregón.

Following Obregón’s death, Calles wielded significant power over the Mexican

presidents39

until the election of Lázaro Cárdenas in 1934. This period of Calles’ control

came to be called the maximato, for his role as the jefe maximo or supreme chief.40

The commanding dynamics of the Mexican political scene prior to 1929, then,

were dissension and fragmentation, “its authority challenged by caudillo and Catholic

Church” (Knight 1985, 12). The revolution elevated the lower classes at the expense of

the upper classes, leading to increased class tension and fundamentally altering land

rights until the 1990s. The Cristero War, a response to the curtailed power of the Church,

led to major schisms between religious practitioners and priests on the one hand, and the

state on the other. This too remained an important dynamic of Mexican politics and

society until the 1990s. Finally, the existence of many small poorly institutionalized

parties was associated with political chaos, and efforts to end that chaos led to the rise of

the PRI which was the commanding dynamic of Mexican political life until 2000.

While all of these interests exerted pressure on the regime, the level of pressure

and the driving force behind it (peasants, Catholics, niche parties, etc.) varied over the

lifetime of the regime. As discussed in the previous chapter, major legitimacy crises

turned into opportunities for the opposition or the regime to exploit. These crises drove

39

At this time, presidential terms were four years long. Obregón’s assassination resulted in the

appointment of Emilio Portes Gil, who served from 1928-1930. He was succeeded by Pascual Ortiz Rubio,

elected in 1930 but resigned in 1932. Ortiz Rubio’s term was completed by Abelardo Rodriguez, who

served from 1932 until the instatement of Lázaro Cárdenas in 1934. 40

For more on the PRI’s early history, see Garrido’s El Partido de la Revolución Institucionalizada (medio

siglo de poder político en México).

102

the development of periods of institutional evolution. Those periods, in turn, contain

variation along both axes, and the variation characterizes the evolutionary shape of the

period. The following section discusses the dynamics of the periods as they pertain to my

theory.

4.3 Legislative Evolution: A Periodization

My theory deals with the interaction of branch-power leverage relationships

(executive versus legislature) and party-power leverage relationships (ruling party versus

opposition), leading to variation in periods of institutional evolution. This section is

intended to explore those variables in each period, explaining the historical dynamics of

each leverage relationship over time. I rely on the argument that there were five periods

of institutional evolution between 1929 and 2000, and that those five periods are

demarcated by seismic shifts that originated outside the legislature. Each period is

bracketed by a seismic shift, and demonstrates noticeably different evolutionary patterns

from the period around it. I derived the periods from the legitimacy crises, as laid out in

chapter 3. I argue that each time a legitimacy crisis occurred, the regime’s response

caused a shift in relationships along each axis. Because the legitimacy crisis threatened

regime survival (not necessarily in terms of votes, but in terms of public perception of the

regime’s right to rule), the regime had to respond strongly in order to both mitigate the

crisis and rebuild legitimacy. Often the only way to successfully address the challenge

was to strengthen the role of one side of each axis, increasing that side’s ability to exert

leverage over its counterpart, resulting in a shift in leverage relationships. After I derived

103

the periods exogenously by identifying the legitimacy crises, I tested the argument that

they each represented distinct periods of institutional evolution by calculating the rate of

evolution in the form of rate of constitutional changes for each period. The results are

five demonstrably different periods of institutional evolution, which vary both in terms of

evolutionary speed and in terms of content of evolution. In this section, I will discuss the

rate of constitutional change and what it tells us about each period, as well as providing

an overview of historical events in each period.

The rate of change (that is, the number of constitutional changes per period

divided by the number of years in the period) was calculated both over all constitutional

amendments to the legislative articles (the uncorrected rate), and over only those

amendments which were relevant to ruling party-opposition party relations as reflected in

the hypotheses (the corrected rate; see following section).41

Table 1 presents both of

these rates of changes. The two rates of change appear to be related – that is, the pattern

of constitutional change remains intact under either calculation. This suggests that the

excluded changes are non-random. Given that they are excluded solely because they deal

with other, non-legislative pieces of business, the non-random distribution is not a

problem – it simply indicates that the same patterns of legislative behavior exist across all

constitutional changes as across only those changes involving legislative powers. In

short, the high degree of correlation between the uncorrected and corrected rates of

changes actually confirms my argument for the existence of five distinct legislative

periods.

41

For more detail on using rate of change to proxy speed of evolution, see chapter 2.

104

While both the uncorrected and corrected rates are presented below to

demonstrate that excluding the irrelevant cases does not materially affect the theory, all

further discussion and analysis will utilize the corrected rate.

Table 4.1. Rate of Constitutional Change Over Time

Period Rate of Change

Uncorrected

Rate of Change

Corrected

1929-1945 1.63 .94

1946-1976 .9 .5

1977-1986 3.67 2.6

1987-1993 3.83 2.8

1994-2000 2.83 1.5

Average 1.77 1.1

Excluding the irrelevant changes produces a significant decrease in the rate of

change, but does not affect the overall pattern of changes – the second period consistently

has the fewest changes, the fourth period consistently exhibits the highest rate of change,

and the overall pattern demonstrates beginning in a period where the rate of change for

that period approaches the average over the lifetime of the institution (average

uncorrected rate of change: 1.77; average corrected rate of change: 1.1), to a period of

very few changes, to a period of much greater change, peaking in the following period,

and then decreasing again in the final period.

There are several noteworthy points in Table 4.1. First, the second period

demonstrates an extremely low rate of change, less than half the average. One

explanation for this finding is that the second period, at 30 years, is by far the longest of

the five periods, and such a long time horizon is likely to drive down the rate of change.

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However, the long duration with few changes reflects the political behavior of the time –

that is, the 30 years between 1946 and 1976 experienced very few changes because very

little political or opposition activity was concentrated in the legislature during this time.

Indeed, for the legislative articles there were no changes at all from 1951 until 1960, and

of the 126 amendments in my sample, only nine occurred in the 16 year period between

1950 and 1966. For comparison, in the nine years between 1977 and 1986 – the majority

of the subsequent period – there were 34 changes. Even between 1929 and 1938 – a nine

year segment of the period demonstrating the next-lowest rate of change – there were 14

changes. It is clear that, longer period of evolution aside, the dynamics underpinning

constitutional change in the second period were markedly different from either the first or

third periods. And indeed, the very low rate of change here reflects the state of Mexican

politics at the time – the executive had almost entirely consolidated his control over the

political system, and there was no significant opposition challenge to the ruling party’s

authority.

Another point has to do with the rate of change peaking in period 4 and

decreasing in the final period. If constitutional changes represent a process of

liberalization, it seems logical that the rate of change would get progressively higher over

time. As Mexico moved decisively toward democracy in the mid- to late-1990s, this line

of thought contends, the constitution should change more and more rapidly, away from

its authoritarian roots. However, I argue – and will demonstrate in the following section

– that in fact the real work of liberalization occurred in the fourth period. The fifth period

represented more a consolidation of the gains of the previous decade; while the

106

constitution still had to be modified to become a (more) democratic document, many of

the most important changes had already been made, leading to a somewhat lower rate of

change. The changes that took place in the fifth period were arguably about building on

the democratic foundations of the fourth period, rather than striking out in a totally

distinct direction. It was still appreciably different from the fourth period – as I

demonstrate below, the legislature did not become able to consistently exert leverage

over the executive until the fifth period, despite the gains of the fourth period – but the

changes that occurred spoke to an effort to deepen and consolidate an emerging

democracy. For instance, in the fourth period an amendment was passed to cap any given

party’s legislative seats at 350 of 500, regardless of the vote percentage won. This was

an effort to make a single party supermajority impossible. In the fifth period, that cap

was dropped to 300, making even an overwhelming majority impossible and thereby

forcing coalitions to form to amend the constitution. The cap was eventually dropped in

favor of mandating that seats taken perfectly correspond to vote percentage, following

democratic practices.

I contend that the high rates of change demonstrated in periods 3 and 4 reflect the

tumultuous state of Mexican politics in those years. The regime and opposition parties

were struggling for power; the institution had become unbalanced by the major crises I

outlined in chapter 3, and the result of that imbalance was quite a few constitutional

amendments as the actors sought to find a new equilibrium.

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Although Table 4.1 provides a useful overview to how the rate of change varied

over time, it does little to actually explain how institutional evolution varied by period.

To explain that, I turn to a discussion of each individual period.

Period 1. 1929-1945. Leverage relationship predicted winners: executive, ruling

party42

The first period can best be understood as a time of consolidation, as the regime

emerged and solidified its hold over political life. 1929 is the year in which the Partido

Nacional Revolucionario (PNR), which eventually became the Partido Revolucionario

Institucional (PRI), was formed, ushering in modern Mexican politics and marking the

start for this study. The ruling party in this period was not yet fully united; rather,

competing factions vied for power. In the 1920s, the struggle for within-party power

centered on the factions headed by Obregón and Calles, as discussed earlier in the

chapter. Following Obregón’s assassination, Calles seized control but factionalization

continued, as evidenced by the several splits from the party – the last of which was the

armed rebellion by General Almazán’s supporters.

Part of the party’s process of consolidation involved co-opting the opposition.

This had two effects: first, bringing the opposition into the PRI contributed to the internal

party struggles described above. Second, because of the PRI’s umbrella approach to co-

optation – its willingness to incorporate any opposition party regardless of platform – for

much of the first period there was very little external opposition. The PAN, the PRI’s

primary opposition for most of its history, did not form until 1939. In terms of leverage

42

This refers to which actor along each axis my theory predicts will have the advantage in the leverage

relationship; see chapter 3 table 1 for a summary.

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relationships, the strategy of co-optation plus the lack of external opposition tilted the

balance towards the ruling party.

The leverage relationship between the executive and the legislature was also

complicated by the process of consolidation. Through the later life of the regime, the

head of state was the functional (though not titular) head of the ruling party. In the first

period, however, the executive and the party chief had competing power loci; because of

this, Calles was able to leave office but maintain control over the regime as head of the

party. That kind of dominance did not end until 1935, under President Lázaro Cárdenas,

who exiled Calles and brought together the various PRI factions (Nacif 1997). The clash

between executive and party chief manifested in more independent action by the

legislature, as well as more instances of legislative punishment by the executive.

Period 1 was primarily a period of consolidation, one where the focus was on

bringing the PRI to dominance rather than on maintaining an existing dominance.

Because of that focus, although there was little in the way of formal opposition parties,

nor was there an effort to prevent the opposition from participating. The emphasis was

on using the sheer size and catch-all nature of the ruling party to co-opt parties wherever

possible. Until 1945, there was virtually no barrier to parties’ full participation43

in

national-level politics; although the PNR/PRI was emerging as the dominant party, the

field was wide open to opposition (Nacif 1997; Prud’homme 2001). As noted in chapter

3, the first period was brought to an end by the regime’s response to the 1941 armed

insurrection, which caused a legitimacy crisis.

43

By ‘full participation’ I mean that the parties were legally allowed the same freedoms as parties in a

democracy.

109

Period 2. 1946-1976. Leverage relationship predicted winners: executive, ruling

party

In 1946, the regime responded to the previously mentioned legitimacy crisis (an

exogenous shock, in the form of an armed rebellion in 1940) by passing a constitutional

amendment which significantly raised the barriers to national-level participation, so that

only four parties were able to compete: the PRI, the Partido Popular Socialista (PPS), the

Partido Autentico Revolucionario Mexicano (PARM), and the relatively new Partido

Accion Nacional (PAN). Notably, of these four parties, only the PAN functioned as a

true opposition – both the PPS and the PARM were technically formal opposition but in

practice supported PRI candidates for president and generally supported PRI-introduced

bills (Nacif 1997). The PAN alone actively opposed the PRI, running its own candidates

for president each election and winning some minor victories at the local level

(Middlebrook 2001).

The minimal amount of opposition – the PAN had formed only seven years earlier

and was not yet a major force – contributed to a very powerful party and president,

during what is usually called the Golden Age of the PRI. The president’s near-perfect

control of the country and the party in this period meant he did not generally need to

bargain with the legislature; this is reflected in an extremely low overall rate of change.

In this period, the party had complete control over the country, and the president had

complete control over the party. The barriers to political entry at the national level were

sufficient to generally convince dissatisfied priistas not to split off – the requirements for

opposition participation were so high that they could assume they would have greater

110

electoral success within the party than outside it.44

Concomitantly, the PRI’s ability to

manipulate elections – both through outright fraud and intimidation, in this period, as

well as through vote buying – kept the party solidly in control of political outcomes. The

predicted outcomes of the leverage relationships have the same winners in period 2 as in

period 1, but different orders of magnitude. The executive had leverage over the

legislature and the ruling party had leverage over the opposition party – but where these

leverage victories were weak in period 1, they were quite strong in period 2.

Period 3. 1977-1986. Leverage relationship predicted winners: executive, opposition

party

In 1976, internal dissent among members of the PAN led to the party failing to

nominate a candidate for president (Lujambio 2001). The PRI candidate, José López

Portillo, won unopposed, but the ensuing challenge to PRI legitimacy45

led to a major

overhaul of electoral law in 1977 – the beginning of the third period – that reopened the

electoral playing field to a number of opposition parties. Additionally, fractures were

emerging in the president’s control of the PRI. The early-to-mid-80s saw the growth of

significant internal opposition in the development of a contingent of the PRI called the

Corriente Democrático (CD). The new accessibility of national-level elections led the

CD to break off in 1986 and form its own party with several other small leftist parties,

44

The last of Mexico’s four legal parties in this period, the Partido Popular (later Partido Popular

Socialista) was formed by former union leader Vicente Toledano in 1948. Toledano had previously been

the founder and leader of the Confederacion de Trabajadores Mexicanos (CTM), the powerful labor union.

Toledano was legally a member of the PRI, as were all union members, but he was not a PRI legislator, and

in fact disagreed with the party’s post-Cárdenas direction, which resulted in him being removed from the

CTM and starting his own party. 45

The legitimacy crisis is detailed in chapter 3. In essence, the lack of opposition made the PRI appear not

to be the party of majority choice, but of default, which threatened its electoral legitimacy.

111

initially called the Frente Democrático Nacional (FDN) but later transformed into the

Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD). The presence of both internal and external

opposition meant bargaining once again began to be necessary to the regime, as visible in

the higher overall rate of change. The presence of opposition, however, did not lead to

the specter of electoral defeat; rather, as laid out in chapter 3, crises had undermined the

party’s legitimacy, forcing a reorganization in the leverage relationships such that the

opposition party was able to consistently exert leverage over the ruling party. Without

opposition support, the regime did not appear to legitimately represent the people, which

as laid out in the previous chapter was an important aspect of its strategy for maintaining

power.

The specific crisis that caused legitimacy problems to arise was the unopposed

election of José López Portillo. The crisis provoked by that election was a function of

two long-simmering divisions, one among factions in the ruling party and one in factions

in the opposition party. Within the PRI, the dwindling focus on the promises of the

revolution caused the emergence of significant opposition to the ruling clique. When that

sentiment was not addressed through the internal party mechanism of the presidential

nomination process, the result at the end of this period was a serious split, with a ruling

party faction breaking off to form an independent party.

While the division was growing within the PRI, the PAN was suffering its own

internal crisis. Within the PAN, the division between the local-focus faction and the

national-focus faction erupted at the end of the prior period with the failure to nominate a

presidential candidate. After the 1976 election the contingent that advocated

112

participation in national-level elections emerged victorious. This, combined with the

entrance of new groups to the party in the third period, helped alter public perceptions of

the PAN from merely a protest vote party to an actual alternative to the PRI

(Middelbrook 2001, 37). During this period the PAN was beginning to register local-

level victories, which gave it governing experience – something the PRI had insisted for

many years that the ruling party alone had. The governing experience caused a shift in

public perception which strengthened the PAN’s electoral and bargaining position,

particularly in light of the institutional shift that occurred from the regime’s response to

the 1976 legitimacy crisis. As a viable alternative to the PRI at the local level, the PAN

was able to pick up votes at the national level – not to the point of threatening PRI

hegemony, but to the point of focing the regime to acknowledge and negotiate with the

PAN in order to prevent PAN walkouts. Although the PAN could not defeat the PRI in a

national election, it could prevent the PRI from appearing to be democratic. Meanwhile,

the regime’s response to the electoral crisis – opening the system to more competition –

created incentives for disenchanted party members to break off, and with the formation of

Corriente Democrático and its split from the PRI, the party’s position as the only

legitimate representative of the revolution was challenged (for more detail, see chapter 3).

The third period was a time of extreme political turmoil in Mexico. Opening the

electoral field back up to opposition parties changed the composition of the legislature,

while the uncontested election of López Portillo further eroded the public perception of

PRI legitimacy. In the midst of this period Mexico’s oil production skyrocketed,

followed shortly by a severe recession (driven, at least according to Greene 2007 p. 91,

113

by spending from the oil boom that focused on non-infrastructure sources). The

recession, in turn, caused the president to nationalize the banks – and threw the banks’

former owners, traditionally PRI supporters, into the arms of the PAN. All of these

factors, combined in particular with the major PRI schism in 1986, yielded a period

where the PRI was forced to negotiate with the PAN on relatively equal footing,

particularly in the latter half of the period. The PAN was in its strongest position to that

point, far more able to exert leverage over the PRI. At the same time, the perceived

illegitimacy of López Portillo’s election and the economic crisis began to challenge the

executive’s control over the legislature. Although the executive was still able to win the

leverage relationship, he was not as powerful as he had been during the second period,

and as the third period wore on the executive continued to weaken vis-à-vis the

legislature.

Period 4. 1987-1993. Leverage relationship predicted winners: executive, opposition

party

The fourth period started in 1987, with a burgeoning legitimacy crisis driven by

the CD’s departure from the PRI. In 1988, the FDN’s presidential candidate,

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, allegedly won the election but was kept out of power by PRI

fraud. In order to maintain power the president was forced to negotiate heavily with the

PAN, exchanging constitutional amendments increasing electoral oversight for the PAN’s

agreement not to contest the PRI presidential victory (Eisenstadt 2006).46

This led to the

loss of the PRI super-majority and a record high level of constitutional changes, visible in

46

Eisenstadt (2006) supports this claim through a letter he uncovered laying out the deal. See also Lawson

(2000, p. 272-3), Lujambio (2001, 78-9).

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the overall rate of change. Among the concessions made to the PAN was the creation of

the independent electoral oversight organization, the IFE. The presence of IFE removed

electoral oversight from the Chamber of Deputies, which had previously been responsible

for determining electoral victories, and put that determination into the hands of an

unbiased group. In terms of the balance between the branches, the executive was

generally able to exert leverage over the legislature, but the legislature for the first time

was sometimes able to push back, and the executive occasionally had to make

concessions. At the same time, within the legislature the PAN was able to exert leverage

over the PRI, meaning that many more of the constitutional changes that occurred were in

the opposition’s interest. The executive’s new need for the legislature, coupled with the

PAN’s ability to force concessions, served to liberalize the still fairly authoritarian

legislature. The PAN espoused democracy, not least because democratization was the

only avenue for the opposition party to gain power; because of this, the amendments it

bargained for were largely aimed at decreasing PRI dominance and increasing

opportunities for democracy.

Period 5. 1994-2000. Leverage relationship predicted winners: legislature,

opposition party

The final period began in 1994, when the PRI almost lost the majority in the

Chamber of Deputies, again challenging the party’s legitimate right to rule. The party

became the congressional minority in 1997, and in 2000 lost the presidency to the PAN

candidate, Vicente Fox. The division between executive and legislative powers is

especially visible in the overall rate of change, which, though lower than the previous

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period, is still high, reflecting the need for bargaining. The PAN and the legislature are

the winners of their respective leverage relationships.47

By the 1994 presidential election,

the PRI was so weakened that it could hardly oppose the PAN, which had a sizeable

minority in the lower house. At the same time, the president was so curtailed that he

could not amend the constitution without legislative support – but the cost of that support

was substantial reductions to the regime’s ability to act unilaterally. Underlying both of

these power losses – the PRI’s and the executive’s – were the constitutional changes from

the previous period that made electoral manipulation significantly more difficult for the

hegemonic party. Period 4 had introduced and enforced those changes for the first time;

period 5 was to an extent a time of clean-up deepening the gains of the previous period.

Table 4.2 summarizes my theory’s predictions for leverage relationships victories

in each period. The following section addresses how these predictions will be tested.

Table 4.2. Summary: Predicted leverage relationship winners by period

Period Branch Power Predicted

Winner

Party Power Predicted

Winner

1929-1945 Executive Ruling Party

1946-1976 Executive Ruling Party

1977-1986 Executive Opposition Party

1987-1993 Executive Opposition Party

1994-2000 Legislature Opposition Party

47

One possibility here is that, with defeat on the horizon, the PRI deliberately attempted to weaken the

presidency in the final period. If so, this would significantly alter the implications of the evidence I rely on.

However, I contend this was not the PRI strategy, primarily because the PRI did not accept defeat until

after the election. Throughout Zedillo’s term, he made changes aimed at democratizing the PRI in order to

keep power, such as holding presidential primaries rather than utilizing the dedazo. Zedillo also surprised

many by recognizing Fox’s victory quickly (Falken 2005; Lawson 2000). This suggests that the party

hierarchy did not anticipate electoral defeat far enough in advance of the election to alter the legislative

strategy (though a democratic victory may have been anticipated).

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4.4 Data Sources and Coding Decisions

As laid out in chapter 2, my theory leads to two sets of hypotheses: one set

concerning the speed of evolution, and another set concerning its content. I argue that the

rate of evolution is linked to the victorious group on the party power leverage axis, so

that (1a) When the ruling party has leverage over the opposition party, institutional

evolution will occur more slowly relative to other periods and (1b) When the opposition

party has leverage over the ruling party, institutional evolution will occur more rapidly

relative to other periods. The content of evolution is associated with victory along the

branch power axis: (2a) When the executive has leverage over the legislature, changes

are more likely to constrain legislative powers and (2b) When the legislature has

leverage over the executive, changes are more likely to increase legislative powers. In

this section I will begin by discussing the location and type of data, and then move to a

discussion of coding decisions.

Testing the hypotheses involves identifying four variables: institutional evolution

rate and ruling party vs. opposition party dominance (Hypotheses 1a and 1b), and

executive vs. legislative dominance and legislative power increases vs. constraints

(Hypotheses 2a and 2b). All of these variables were drawn from the same data source,

the legislative record as manifested in the Diario Oficial. The Diario Oficial is the

Chamber of Deputies’ official record of all legislative proceedings, stemming back to

1857. This record includes a transcription of all Chamber meetings, as well as the text of

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almost all proposed Constitutional amendments.48

When an amendment is proposed to

the Chamber, it is introduced with a formal petition from the proposer – either the

president or a legislator – laying out the reasoning behind the proposed amendment,

along with proposed language for the resolution.49

The proposal is then turned over to the

relevant Congressional committee. During the period under analysis, this committee was

initially Puntos Constitucionales y Gobernación (Constitutional Points and Governance),

and then later simply Puntos Constitucionales.

The committee considers the proposal, initially determining whether amending

the article at all is necessary. If the amendment is deemed necessary, discussion in the

committee moves to the specific language of the change. The committee has the

authority to alter the language of the initial proposal. The committee produces a

proposed amendment, which is then returned to the full Chamber for debate and voting.

Once the amendment returns to the Chamber, it goes through two readings and then a

final reading and a vote. Until the mid-1990s, the vote was taken simply with a show of

hands indicating a yes or no vote – that is, no record was made of which specific

legislators voted for or against an amendment.

For the most part, the data in my dissertation are drawn from the initial

presentation of the amendment and the final version as read prior to the vote (I elaborate

on this below, in the discussion of individual variables). For some variables, the specific

48

In theory, it contains the text of all amendments. In practice, some initial readings – especially from the

1930s – are missing, although the final passed version is usually available. 49

According to article 71 of the Constitution, bills or laws (including constitutional amendments) can be

introduced by the president, members of the national legislature, or state legislatures. Most successful

amendments, particularly in the Golden Age, were proposed either by the president or by deputies from the

PRI.

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language of the amendment is the subject of analysis; for others, I am more concerned

with interpreting the amendment as a whole.

I have identified two axes of interest affecting institutional evolution. I argue that

the branch axis affects the content of evolution, while the party power axis affects the rate

of evolution.

The branch axis captures the leverage relationship between two branches of

government: the executive and the legislature. I am interested in two things: whether, for

each individual constitutional change, the executive is more able to exert leverage on the

legislature (that is, push the legislature to accept a modification that benefits the president

more) or vice versa; and whether, for all the cases in a given period, more cases

demonstrate executive or legislative leverage victories.

Branch axis leverage relationship (executive vs. legislature): In terms of

determining leverage relationships between branches, the analysis rests on the exact

language of the amendment and specifically whether that language changed between the

initial proposal and the final passage. The branch axis leverage variable captures which

branch was more able to exert pressure on the other. It is determined through identifying

whether or not a substantive (that is, not cosmetic) change was made to the amendment

between the initial proposal and the final version. This coding decision is based off of

the assumption that in dominant party regimes, since the system as set up favors the

executive, the executive’s interest is in maintaining the status quo. The legislature, on the

other hand, is weaker than the executive and is assumed to want to increase its power,

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thus it favors change. The executive’s preference for protecting the status quo,50

coupled

with the fact that constitutional changes in this period almost always originated with the

president or with a legislator acting on his behalf, suggest that an appropriate way of

capturing the executive’s leverage is through identifying cases where no change is made

to the proposed amendment. On the other hand, since the legislature rarely benefitted

from the initially proposed amendments, instances of substantive change to the

amendment between initial proposal and final passage serve as a reasonable measure of

legislative leverage. When the executive dominates the leverage relationship he is able to

protect the passage of legislation without making concessions to the legislature; when the

legislature dominates the leverage relationship, it is able to force concessions from the

executive in return for supporting an amendment.51

The fact that legislative dominance is

conditional on the executive – forcing a response from the executive, rather than acting

independently – is a reflection of the political dynamics of a dominant party system. In a

dominant party system, as in any authoritarian system, the executive is the most powerful

player52

and the entirety of the legislature’s power can be seen in whether the executive

needs its cooperation or not. A similar logic leads to the binary treatment of the variable

– since victory is defined in terms of presence or absence of bargaining, there can be no

50

One might also reasonably assume that the executive wants to increase his own power, rather than

maintain the status quo. This may be the case, but does not affect my analysis here in part because the

articles under consideration – 50 through 79 – govern legislative power, not executive power.

Nevertheless, spillover might be possible. I looked for any instance where differences in the final wording

strengthened executive power without also strengthening the legislature; none of my cases met this

criterion. 51

The assumption that all initial legislation favors the executive means that all change is viewed as a

concession. To verify this claim, I examined each change in wording, looking for evidence that any actor

other than the legislature benefitted. All changes between initial and final draft appeared to benefit the

legislature in some way. 52

A partial exception to this statement is the instance in which the federal executive is more of a

placeholder for the real power: for instance, the maximato in Mexico or, more broadly, Putin’s tenure as

prime minister in Russia. These occasions are rare in dominant party regimes.

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“balanced” category. However, while the variable is treated as binary quantitatively, it

exists on a continuum qualitatively – there may be times when more or fewer concessions

are made, or when a concession creates a major change or a minor one.

Because most modifications to the constitution throughout this period were

sponsored by the president, a law where the executive exerts greater leverage will have

no or only cosmetic changes between drafts. If no initial draft is available, as is

sometimes the case, the evidence is anecdotal and based on political patterns of the time

(so for example, the historical record demonstrates that Cárdenas was a very strong

president who likely dominated more than he conceded; his predecessor, Rodriguez, was

the opposite).

Coding here is straightforward: amendments where changes were other than

grammatical or evidently aimed at linguistic clarification are coded as a change, and

therefore as demonstrating legislative leverage. No or cosmetic changes, on the other

hand, are coded as executive leverage. These individual cases of executive and

legislative leverage aggregate over the period to determine an executive leverage victory

(when the majority of cases are coded as demonstrating executive leverage) or a

legislative leverage victory (when the majority of cases are coded as demonstrating

legislative leverage).

Party power axis leverage (ruling party vs. opposition party): Where the branch

axis is hypothesized to affect the content of institutionalization, the party power axis is

hypothesized to affect the rate of institutionalization. There are two actors on the party

power axis: the ruling party and the opposition party. As discussed in chapter 2, the

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opposition parties can all be treated as a single unit here because their primary goal is the

same: to unseat the ruling party. This analysis is not concerned with the secondary goal

of choosing a successor once the ruling party has been defeated. I am interested in

whether the ruling party is more able to exert leverage over the opposition party (by

promoting its agenda) in a given case53

, or vice versa. I am also interested in the number

of cases of ruling party vs. opposition party leverage in a given period. When the ruling

party exerts greater leverage, it is able to act on legislative issues without opposition

support; when the opposition party exerts greater leverage it can force concessions from

the ruling party.

The party power axis leverage relationship can be seen by examining the language

of the approved modification for support of each party’s platform; that is, determining

whether the amendment reflects aspects of the ruling party’s platform or the opposition

party’s platform. Coding for this variable is based off of applying knowledge of the

platform to the language of the amendment – an amendment that reflects elements of the

ruling party’s platform is coded as ruling party dominant, while an amendment that

reflects elements of the opposition party’s platform is coded as opposition party

dominant. While many details of each party’s platform changed over time, certain

overarching sentiments stayed the same: for instance, the PRI maintained an interest in

secular education and the PAN maintained interest in establishing private property rights

(Middlebrook 2001, 28; Principios de Doctrina 1985). This information is readily

available through secondary sources for a variety of topics; for those subjects which are

53

A case is a constitutional change. The relevant section of the constitution was amended 123 times

between 1929 and 2000, leaving me with 123 cases.

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not apparent in secondary sources (such as environmental regulation, the topic of one

amendment) predicted stances can be drawn from a broader knowledge of party

principles. If the amendment or pieces of it support the opposition platform and interests,

the leverage relationship for that case favors the opposition party. If not, or if only a very

minor piece of the modification supports the opposition, the leverage relationship for that

case favors the ruling party.

Finally, it should be noted that assessments of the party platform were generally

made from secondary sources rather than physical copies of the platforms. During my

fieldwork I was only able to find intermittent records of the actual platforms. This was

partly due to disorganized national and party archives, and partly due to the fact that party

congresses were not held regularly. However, many authors (for instance, Middlebrook,

Lujambio, and others) described party interests and goals, and I was able to make coding

decisions with that information.

One very important point relative to my dissertation is that I limit my formal

analysis to dynamics between the PRI and the PAN; I exclude all other opposition

parties. There are two primary reasons for this. First, throughout most of the period of

analysis there was no true opposition beyond the PAN – as was discussed briefly in the

previous chapter and in the history section here, from 1946 to 1977 the barrier to

participation was so high that only four parties were legal, and of those, two of them (the

PPS and the PARM) were essentially nothing more than PRI partners. Second, after

1977 no non-PAN opposition party was able to gain much traction until 1986 when the

Corriente Democrático became the PRD – but as mentioned earlier the PRI was explicitly

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unwilling to negotiate or interact with the PRD (interview with former PPS delegate,

9/2011). For these reasons, in the Mexican case party dynamics can be limited to an

analysis of interactions between the PRI and the PAN.54

Because of the qualitative nature of party power axis leverage relationships,

coding is somewhat complicated. It was not possible to simply create a list of key words

that triggered coding of ruling party leverage dominance, for instance. Rather, coding

decisions were made by comparing the language and intent (where possible to

determine)55

of the amendment to knowledge of party concerns. So for instance, the

1934 amendment to article 73, which gave the legislature the ability to create schools and

determine the content of public education, was coded as an instance of ruling party

leverage because of the power it gave in terms of indoctrination – something the PRI had

espoused at an adult level through its control of the unions (for instance, see Walker

1981). On the other hand, the 1977 amendment of article 73 instating referendums in the

Distrito Federal was coded as increasing opposition party leverage. In the 1970s the PRI

was still in control of the legislature; prior to 1977 all decisions regarding the DF were

made by federal legislative appointment. The introduction of referendums weakened

regime control of the DF, something very much in line with PAN interests.

Rate of Change: Beyond the two axes of leverage, this dissertation is also

concerned with institutional evolution, as captured by rates of constitutional change. The

54

Prior to the 1988 election, the PRI did not perceive the PRD as a threat. After the election, the PRI

refused to negotiate with the PRD (Eisenstadt 2006), centering all negotiations on the PAN. The PAN’s

bargaining power, as the only source able to convey legitimacy on the regime, allowed it to force the

regime into previously unthinkable compromises. 55

If no determination of intent could be made, the amendment was coded as unknown and the statistics

were included in the tables. If the amendment was determined not to reflect either party’s platform, it was

excluded from analysis.

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rate of constitutional change is defined as the average number of constitutional changes

per year in a given period. As discussed in section 4.3 above, I divide the overall analysis

into five periods based on major events that provoked institutional shifts. Within each of

those periods I calculate the rate of change.

Legislative constraints vs. increases: The final variable examined here is

legislative constraint versus legislative increases. This variable captures whether the

amendment increases or decreases legislative powers, independent of effects on executive

powers (amendments that do not produce a directional change in legislative powers are

excluded from analysis). In order to avoid autocorrelation concerns with the branch axis

measure, an executive increase in power was not counted as a legislative decrease unless

the power in question had previously been explicitly granted to the legislature. These

concerns actually arose infrequently, and as the analysis will show, there is no evidence

of autocorrelation. The variable is captured by examining the final wording of the

amendment compared with the previous version of the article, and determining its effect

on legislative powers. For instance, an amendment adding textiles to the list of industries

over which Congress has the exclusive ability to legislate increases legislative powers.

Not all changes are equivalent in terms of their effect on legislative power – the

amendment giving the legislature the ability to set taxes for a wide variety of

commodities (a very real power) has a far greater effect on legislative power than the

amendment which grants Congress the ability to accept the president’s resignation (a

more theoretical capability). This distinction – major vs. minor increases and decreases

to legislative powers (distinct from the major/minor changes to the institution overall, as

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mentioned above) – is made based on my knowledge of the legislature, and explained in

greater detail in section 4.5 when it becomes relevant.

4.5 Research Design and Findings

My intent in this chapter is to determine whether my hypotheses are adequately

supported by the data. I examine cases of institutional evolution under Mexico’s

authoritarian regime.56

In order to test the links between rate of institutional evolution

and party power axis, and between content of institutional evolution and branch axis

leverage relationships, I utilize the comparative method, the appropriate method because

of the intermediate number of cases and the temporal variation (Lijphart, 1971). The

comparative method allows me to statistically analyze an intermediate number of cases,

as I have too many cases for a case study, but not enough for a full statistical analysis.

Using the comparative method, I assume that many potential variables are in fact

extraneous to the analysis and can be ignored: for instance, I assume that despite

variation in leaders of the PRI, the PRI itself can be treated as a consistent actor

throughout the lifetime of the regime. Following Kaarbo and Beasley (1999), I decrease

variation on the independent variable by limiting cases to a specific country (Mexico) and

56

An alternate research design would be a comparison between instances of evolution and the absence of

evolution. However, this approach is not suitable here for two reasons. First, from a theoretical

perspective, I argue that evolution is ongoing – this is what makes it a disequilibrium process, as laid out in

chapter 2. The constitutional change, which I use to proxy evolution, is the ultimate output of the

evolutionary process, but the underlying system changes (large and small) occur constantly, not merely at

the point at which a constitutional change is registered. Second, from a functional perspective, using

constitutional changes as a proxy for evolution means it is not possible to capture the absence of evolution:

the Mexicans did not systematically record failed constitutional proposals. I cannot show any link between

the independent variables and a failure to evolve, but I can show a link between the variables and variation

in the details of evolution – its speed and its content.

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within that country a specific regime (the PRI). Within those constraints, however,

significant variation in the dependent variable is still possible: my approach varies over

time, resulting in 123 cases over 71 years.

This utilization of the comparative method borrows from Mill’s method of

difference but does not precisely follow Mill’s method as described by Lijphart (1971), in

that I do not compare the presence of an event to the absence of said event. However,

Mill’s method as understood by others (King, Keohane and Verba 1994, for instance) is

more broadly applicable and refers not merely to presence or absence of the dependent

variable, but variation on the dependent variable. My theory allows for variation on the

dependent variable – institutional evolution – in two forms: the speed with which

evolution occurs, and the content of evolutionary processes. My dissertation is designed

not to ask when evolution will occur as opposed to when it will not, but rather to ask how

evolution will vary when it does occur.

In terms of mechanics, I demonstrate correlation through testing with cross-

tabulation. I first search for correlation between rate of evolution and party power

leverage, and then examine the connection between content of evolution and branch

leverage.

My theory informs on two dimensions of institutional evolution: the rate of

evolution (faster or slower), and the direction of evolution (towards a more powerful

legislature, or towards a more constrained legislature). My tests reveal support for the

hypotheses speaking to rate of evolution, and the need for further research for the

hypotheses speaking to direction of evolution. I use the same basic approach for both

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sets of hypotheses – simple correlations, using binary variables – but while this is valid

for the first set of hypotheses, the results for the second set of hypotheses indicate that a

binary approach is not the most accurate or effective. I recode the variable to be

multinomial, and between the multinomial analysis and a qualitative analysis of the cases,

I am able to find stronger support for the argument.

The first set of hypotheses spoke to the rate of institutional evolution. To recap,

hypothesis 1a linked a ruling party leverage victory with lower than average rates of

evolution, while 1b argued that an opposition party leverage victory will be associated

with higher than average rates of evolution. I argued in chapter 2 that because the system

as initially designed favored the ruling party, when the ruling party was the victor in the

leverage relationship the period would display slower evolution – essentially, as

beneficiaries of the status quo, the ruling party would not seek change. On the other

hand, because the opposition party was in a poorer position in the initial system design,

the party would prefer change, so that when the opposition party was the victor in the

leverage relationship the institution would evolve more rapidly. The table below displays

the results for testing these two hypotheses.

Table 4.3. Party Power and Rate of Evolution By Period

Period (rate of

change)

Ruling party

favored cases

Opposition

favored cases

Unknown cases Total

1929-1945 (.94) 9 1 5 15

1946-1976 (.5) 7 3 2 12

1977-1986 (2.6) 5 13 5 23

1987-1993 (2.8) 4 10 3 17

1994-2000 (1.5) 0 7 2 9

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Table 4.3 displays, for each period, the number of cases in which the final form of

the amendment supports the ruling party’s platform, the number of cases in which the

final amendment supports the opposition party’s platform, and the number of cases in

which the amendment’s relevance to either platform is unknown or unclear. While the

unknown cases are included for the sake of transparency, it should be noted that even if

they were entirely coded, they would not affect the ultimate outcome in any of the cases.

There are too few for them to swing the balance within a period from a ruling party

leverage victory to an opposition party leverage victory, or vice versa.

The table shows that in periods 1 and 2, the ruling party had many more leverage

victories than did the opposition party – that is, in those periods the constitutional

changes more often favored the ruling party than the opposition party. In periods 3, 4,

and 5, however, the opposition party had more leverage victories than did the ruling

party. The findings are thus well-aligned with the theory, which predicts ruling party

victories in the first two periods followed by a tumultuous third period which eventually

leads to opposition party leverage victories from that point forward. An examination of

some of the cases further illustrates the point.

Period 1 displays the most ruling party leverage victories of any period; in fact,

ruling party victories decrease over the remainder of the periods. Periods 1 and 2 each

have approximately 60% ruling party victories; periods 3 and 4 have approximately 20%,

and period 5 has no ruling party victories. The decline that occurs with period 3 is

precipitous – not only does the PRI lose its status as the leverage victor, but it falls to

only benefiting in 1/5 of the cases. This decline is a function of the dynamics of the

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period: in period 2, the Golden Age of the PRI, the ruling party faced little to no serious

opposition. The PPS and the PARM, the two smallest opposition parties, did not function

as actual opposition – on all major issues, from presidential campaigns to constitutional

changes, the two parties sided with the PRI. This left the PAN as the voice of the

opposition, but because the PAN refused to accept federal funds, its resources were

limited, and its efforts to capture municipal victories cut into the resources available to it

at the federal level (Middlebrook 2001). However, with the introduction of proportional

representation in 1977, along with the elimination of the electoral participation threshold,

it became possible for more parties to form and participate and the PAN began to shift its

focus to national elections. The ruling party had introduced the 1977 reforms in order to

address the legitimacy crisis precipitated by the 1976 single candidate presidential

election; in order to actually appear legitimate, it had to engage with the opposition

parties so that opposition candidates could be assured for future elections.

Constitutional change was a convenient bargaining chip for the new level of

ruling party-opposition party engagement. For instance, the PAN had been advocating for

the introduction of proportional representation for some time – at least since the 1950s.

The creation of the party deputies in 1966 was a movement towards partial PR, but did

not meet the party’s goals (Middlebrook 2001, 32). However, the opposition’s newly

strengthened bargaining position in 1977 due to the PRI’s need to keep the opposition

participating facilitated the introduction of true PR, in the form of a mixed

majoritarian/proportional representation system. Opposition goals that had floundered in

earlier periods were thus resuscitated.

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At the same time, the ruling party was able to achieve some of its own ends – for

instance, by capping those proportional representation seats in such a way that the

supermajority could not be threatened. In the Senate during the third period, the ruling

party pushed through an amendment to article 73 which changed Senate representation

from two senators per state to four, with three elected by PR and one appointed to the

largest minority vote-getter. Because of the distribution of Senate districts, the PRI was

able to hold all the elected Senate seats until the 1990s (that is, three out of four in each

district), but by including the fourth seat for the minority party, it was also able to make a

show of bringing in the opposition. These kinds of dual purpose amendments –

benefitting the opposition, but without threatening the regime’s dominance – were

characteristic of the third period. The opposition leverage victories did not mean that the

opposition had supplanted the regime in terms of political power, but that it was in a

markedly stronger bargaining position than the ruling party.

Period 3 is the most interesting for the first hypothesis, as it is the point of

transition from primarily ruling party leverage victories to primarily opposition party

leverage victories. The examples above illustrate the dynamics of that period. The

remaining four periods are very straightforward: periods 1 and 2, with the formation of

the PRI followed by its total dominance over political life, both display far more ruling

party victories than opposition party victories. Periods 4 and 5, where the instability

stemming from the 1976 election and the 1982 financial crisis become much more

pronounced with the 1988 election and the 1994 loss of the supermajority, both display

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far more opposition victories than ruling party victories – and indeed, in period 5 the total

dismantling of the PRI system is reflected in the absence of any ruling party victories.

What Table 4.3 displays is a full confirmation of the link between the party power

leverage axis and the rate of institutional evolution. In periods 3, 4 and 5 the rate of

evolution is noticeably higher than the overall average, 1.1, and the opposition is the

leverage victor. In periods 1 and 2, however, when the ruling party is the leverage victor,

the rate of evolution is lower than average. This confirms that the party power axis

leverage victories are linked to rate of institutional evolution.

My theory also offers predictions regarding the content of those evolutionary

cases, but the testing there reveals a more complex picture. I hypothesize that in periods

when the executive is the branch axis leverage victor, constitutional changes will be more

likely to constrain legislative powers. In periods when the legislature is the branch axis

leverage victor, however, constitutional change should increase legislative powers. I

initially treated the legislative powers victory as binary – either the change increased

powers or constrained them. However, as my analysis below will demonstrate, a binary

coding is a significant oversimplification of the dynamics at play in the legislature, and a

multinomial coding scheme where changes are coded as either a major or minor increase

or constraint is far more useful for theory testing.

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Table 4.4. Branch Dominance and Legislative Power by Period

Branch Power Effect on Legislative Power

Increase Constrain

1929-1945 Executive-leverage cases 7 5

Legislature-leverage cases 4 3

1946-1976 Executive-leverage cases 7 2

Legislature-leverage cases 3 1

1977-1986 Executive-leverage cases 12 6

Legislature-leverage cases 3 0

1987-1993 Executive-leverage cases 4 3

Legislature-leverage cases 4 4

1994-2007 Executive-leverage cases 4 0

Legislature-leverage cases 5 3

Table 4.4 above presents the initial findings on these hypotheses. My theory

predicts that the largest number of cases for the first four periods should be in the

executive-leverage/constraining legislature cells, and for the fifth period the largest

number of cases should be in the legislature-leverage/increasing legislature cell. While

this is precisely the finding for the fifth period, for periods 1-4 the prediction does not

reflect the findings. In periods 1-3, the largest number of cases can be found in the

executive-leverage/increasing legislature box, and in period 4 all boxes other than the

predicted outcome are equal. Each period – including period 5, which follows the

predicted pattern – displays more instances of increases to legislative powers than of

constraints. In periods 2 and 3, more than half the total cases fall into the executive-

leverage/increasing legislature box (in period 1 it is 37%, and in period 4, 27%). I argue,

though, that the hypotheses are not wrong – rather, the measurement of the variables is

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wrong. Coding legislative power changes as binary assumes that all changes are of equal

magnitude – but this is clearly not the case. Some increases to legislative powers, such as

the amendment of article 73 from 1940 which determined that Congress had the right to

determine taxes over a number of areas, were far more significant changes than others,

such as the amendment of article 73 from 1971, which gave Congress the right to

legislate over environmental pollution. Treating these two increases to legislative powers

equally conflates the underlying theory. I have argued that the reason legislative powers

increase when the legislature exerts leverage is because the legislature is trying to

increase its own role as an institution and as a political force. I have also argued that the

executive may actually attempt to utilize the legislature not as a check on power but as a

bureaucratic apparatus, tasked with addressing the details of rule so that the president is

free to make bigger decisions. At the same time, the president wants to preserve his own

power by ensuring that the legislature does not become a threat. When the legislature is

the leverage victor, then, we may expect to see more changes overall – but when the

executive is the leverage victor, we may expect to see minor increases outpace major

ones, while major constraints outpace minor ones.

Table 4.5 below displays the results when the legislative powers variable is

recoded from a binary to a multinomial variable. The recoding was based on the text of

the amendment. Amendments that simply added a single area to the legislative purview –

for instance, the amendment that allowed the legislature to legislate over electricity and

nuclear power, as opposed to the previous ability to legislate only over electricity – were

coded as a minor increase. Amendments that made larger changes to the function and

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abilities of the legislature – for instance, the amendments that altered the electoral

system, or introduced party deputies57

on top of popularly elected deputies – were coded

as major increases.58

A similar approach was used in coding constraints. If the legislature lost a minor

ability – for instance, a shift from legislating the use of foreign currency to advising on

foreign currency, which created very little real-world change – it was coded as a minor

constraint. On the other hand, when the legislature lost the ability to control something

truly significant – such as when the power to legislate over education was removed from

the Chamber of Deputies – the case was coded as a major constraint.

57

The party deputies amendment stated that for much of the popular vote, the minority parties would be

granted an additional (non-elected) deputy chosen from the electoral lists. The minority parties would each

receive additional deputies for every 2.5% (then 2%, then 1.5%) of the national vote, up to 20 (then 25)

deputies. This was instituted by the regime, intended to appease the opposition without actually threatening

the ruling party – the system was designed so that as the minority parties began to receive more votes, they

would lose the party deputies, thereby actually decreasing their overall representation. 58

It should be noted that, as with the party deputies explained above, it is possible for a change to majorly

increase legislative powers without also increasing opposition powers relative to the ruling party.

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Table 4.5. Branch Power and Modified Legislative Power by Period

Branch Power

Effect on Legislative Power

Major

Increase

Minor

Increase

Major

Constraint

Minor

Constraint

1929-

1945

Executive-

leverage cases

1 6 3 2

Legislature-

leverage cases

2 1 3 1

1946-

1976

Executive-

leverage cases

1 6 0 2

Legislature-

leverage cases

0 3 0 1

1977-

1986

Executive-

leverage cases

6 6 4 1

Legislature-

leverage cases

1 1 0 0

1987-

1993

Executive-

leverage cases

1 3 2 1

Legislature-

leverage cases

1 3 3 1

1994-

2000

Executive-

leverage cases

1 3 0 1

Legislature-

leverage cases

1 4 1 2

With the recoding, the underlying dynamics in the theory are more visible. The

legislature is still the leverage victor in period 5, although of its five increases, only one is

a major increase. In periods 1-4, the executive is the leverage victor, and for each of

those cases there are more minor increases than major ones. In periods 1, 3 and 4, major

constraints outpace minor constraints; in period 2, minor constraints outpace major ones.

The theory explained constitutional changes as the outcome of bargaining efforts between

the legislature and the executive; I theorized that the executive might use constitutional

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changes to either punish or reward the legislature or to shift its function, while the

legislature would attempt to use those changes primarily to increase its own power. The

executive’s use of major constraints demonstrates that punishment function; they are

more frequent in periods where the legislature has some independence from the

executive, as with efforts to overturn the president’s budget in period 1. At the same

time, the presence of minor increases can be attributed to the president clarifying the role

of the legislature, building on its use as a bureaucratic apparatus.

One interesting finding here is that in period 5, despite the legislative victory,

there are still more minor increases than major ones (though there are also more minor

constraints than major ones). I contend that this finding actually substantiates the

theory’s argument that the legislature is interested in increasing its power in any way

possible, whereas the executive is only interested in ceding certain powers to the

legislature. As I have argued in chapter 2, minor changes can be valuable to the weaker

players because they create the opportunity to accumulate up to more significant changes.

Alone, the legislature’s newfound ability to legislate over mineral rights is insignificant;

in combination with subsequent powers to legislate over electricity and nuclear energy,

the abilities combine to grant the legislature authority over all natural resources – a

potentially valuable power. This has less immediate utility than, for instance, the ability

to control water rights, which allows the legislature to dole out good versus poor

farmland, but still may enhance the role of the legislature. So in period 5, for instance,

the legislature gained the ability to coordinate between all of the other powers on matters

of public security and to carry out laws affecting the regulation of the Auditor General.

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These are both indirect powers, serving as a point of communication for security

concerns rather than actually acting on public security concerns, and setting laws

affecting the Auditor General rather than appointing the Auditor General. However,

when taken with other similar powers they essentially serve to make the legislature the

conduit for important rules and information – a power that is on par with agenda-setting,

in that it allows the legislature to set the national discourse for important events.

There is one caveat to these findings: with so many cells and relatively few cases,

the number of cases in any given cell is often quite small. This suggests that looking at

absolute differences alone has limited utility – the difference between two cases in cell A

and one in cell B is not helpful without additional information regarding the content of

those cases. To that end, I will provide specific examples of the cases in question to help

illustrate the theory’s predictions.

In periods 1-4, I predict that the executive is the leverage relationship winner and

that the majority of cases will fall between minor increases and major constraints.

Overall in the first period there are seven minor increases – six under executive-leverage

moments – and six major constraints – three under executive-leverage moments. All of

the major constraints fall towards the beginning of the period; the latest one occurred in

1934. This is not a coincidence. As I have demonstrated, the first period was a time of

consolidation. After the emergence of the PNR-cum-PRI in 1929, the executive worked

to grow his control over both party and legislature. The existence of so many major

constraints in the first part of the period indicates the president’s attempts to stamp down

on legislative independence. For instance, the revision to article 59 presented in 1932

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removed the ability of senators and deputies to be immediately reelected. Prior to this

point, legislators could be directly reelected.59

Without direct reelection, legislators had

to depend on the executive-controlled party to be brought back into politics: they could

not build independent support bases. The amendment was sponsored by PNR deputies at

presidential behest; by guaranteeing legislators could not grow their own support, the

president strengthened the role of the party apparatus, with himself at the top.

By contrast, the minor increases are distributed throughout the period. Some

occur in 1929 or the early 1930s, while others occur in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

These changes are primarily aimed at streamlining the functioning of government – the

1929 amendment of article 73, for instance, set the boundaries between the states and the

federal government regarding labor law regulation. By setting certain areas of labor laws

(railroads, and other resources granted by federal concession) under the jurisdiction of the

federal legislature, the government ensured that issues which had federal impact would

have consistent treatment across the nation. This was a response to a bureaucratic need,

rather than a major change in the role of the legislature, and as a bureaucratic need it

could occur at any point during the period.

Two of the three major increases in the first period also occurred early on, and

appear to be part of the presidential carrot-and-stick approach to consolidating power.

59

The no direct reelection clause has gone through several permutations. In the original 1917 constitution,

the president could not be reelected at all, but deputies and senators could be immediately reelected. In the

mid-1920s legislative supporters of former President Obregón had the constitution amended to provide for

indirect presidential reelection, after a term out of office. Obregón was reelected thanks to the new

amendment, but was assassinated before he could begin his term. His successor, Plutarco Calles, had the

amendment removed and the no reelection rule reinstated. This had the effect of allowing Calles to remain

the power behind the throne once he left office – no other president could build up a significant apparatus

with only one term. However, Lázaro Cárdenas was able to come to power with the support of powerful

agrarian unions and send Calles into exile.

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The third major increase, however, is an anomaly. It occurred in 1940 – so, late in the

period – and made a very important change to legislative powers: among other

modifications, it granted the legislature the right to determine taxes over a range of

products, including but not limited to gasoline and alcohol. The timing coincides roughly

with the 1940 presidential election which spurred Almazán’s defection. The timing and

the nature of the change – formally conceding important taxation rights to the legislature

– suggest that this change was a reward to the legislators who had stayed loyal following

the Almazán issue. Those who had defected were punished; at best, their political careers

were over, but at worst they died as enemy soldiers. Those who had not defected,

however, were granted significant powers in the form of those tax rights.

Period 3 also follows the predicted pattern in terms of constraints – there are four

major constraints, against one minor one. However, minor increases do not outpace

major increases; rather, there are precisely as many minor as major increases. Again,

there is a temporal pattern in the outcomes: most of the major changes (four increases and

three constraints) occurred at the beginning of the period, as part of the 1977 reform

package. The minor increases are distributed throughout the period, with the first in 1977

and the last in 1986.

There are two important dynamics at play in this period: first, the even division

between major increases and minor ones, and second, the way all the major changes –

increases and constraints – are clustered around one point. These two dynamics highlight

the complexity of period 3. Period 3 was a time of back-and-forth between the legislature

and the executive. The response to the legitimacy crisis that started the period, with the

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change to opposition participation caused by the unopposed 1976 presidential election,

resulted in a legislature that was stronger than it had been: in order to ensure opposition,

the regime had to guarantee that opposition participation remained a possibility, which

inherently gave the opposition a stronger role. At the same time, that opposition

participation and the associated legislative power had to be managed in order not to

threaten the regime. One of the most prominent manifestations of this was the 1977

amendment of article 52, which introduced a mixed electoral system, with 300

majoritarian seats and 100 proportional representation seats in the Chamber of Deputies.

The PR system meant that states with stronger levels of opposition support were likely to

have opposition representation, which increased the level of opposition participation in

the legislature, and in so doing ensured that the legislature functioned more like an

institution of checks and balances and less like a rubber stamp for the executive. The

introduction of the PR system itself accounted for three of the major increases as the rules

of PR were laid out across different articles (52, 53 and 54). However, at the same time

as the legislature was gaining significantly from PR, it was losing substantial amounts of

self-regulation, and losing important areas of legislation. Article 73 had previously

turned government of the Distrito Federal over to the legislature; the legislature had the

ability to appoint a municipal tribunal and had appointment authority over the judges,

magistrates, and other political professionals of the capital. In 1977, however, legislative

authority was replaced by direct referendum, allowing the citizens to vote on their

government – a significant blow to the federal legislature. Similarly, the legislature

found its scope of self-government narrowed. The legislature previously decided all

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challenges to its members’ elections, including allegations of fraud. The amendment of

article 60 in 1977, however, maintained that the Chamber and the Senate had the right to

hear arguments, but challenges to those decisions – rather than remaining solely in the

hands of the houses – would be decided by the Supreme Court, which was appointed by

the president. Where article 52 increased the opportunities for opposition participation,

article 60 ensured that that participation could in no way threaten regime and executive

dominance by turning threats over to an executive-controlled entity. The changes that

occurred in period 3 fall into this broad pattern of increasing legislative powers in one

area while simultaneously constraining them in others, in order to bring in the opposition

but keep the regime strong.

Period 4 also displays the expected pattern, with minor increases outpacing major

ones (6 minor increases to 2 major) and major constraints outpacing minor ones (5 major

constraints to 2 minor). The majority of the minor increases occurred in 1993, but two

occurred earlier. The lack of pattern here is particularly interesting - based on the

legitimacy crisis stemming from the 1988 election, we would expect changes to cluster

around 1988/1989, but instead, the modifications that served to eventually dismantle PRI

authority were set in place in 1993.The fact that the changes occurred at the end of the

contested Salinas presidency rather than the beginning is striking, and points to the longer

bargaining horizon between the two main parties. In order to maintain the PRI in power,

the PAN agreed not to contest the 1988 election results, but it kept some insurance: the

actual ballots, which would have revealed if fraud took place, were not destroyed until

1991. And the changes – the guarantee that Eisenstadt (2004) among others identified as

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currency for the PAN’s 1988 support – went into effect even later, in 1993. This suggests

that Salinas essentially refused to sponsor the reforms until the PAN had clearly upheld

its end of the bargain throughout a presidential term.

The most interesting category for the analysis of period 4 is the major changes,

because the same changes that increased the opportunities for fair elections decreased

legislative power and independence. Among these, the amendment of article 60 in 1993

removed all congressional control of contestation over elections, a major constraint on

legislative powers since the legislature no longer had any role in determining election

outcomes, but also a major step towards democracy since the electoral evaluation role

was now filled by an independent entity. This points towards another important dynamic

of period 4: for the first time the constraints associated with cases of legislative leverage

victories outpace those associated with executive leverage victories. This is not a

coincidence: as the modification to article 60 highlights, the very changes that weakened

the legislature strengthen the opposition, and for the first time the legislature was

becoming a true battleground between the ruling party and the opposition party. The

ruling party’s margin of victory was narrowing; in fact, the PRI almost lost the 1991

legislative elections. The increasing power of the PAN meant that changes that were in

the PAN’s favor were sometimes against the legislature’s preferences, but in order to

unseat the PRI the PAN was promoting changes that constrained the legislature. The

other two major constraints that occurred when the legislature was the leverage winner

had the same dual role. The 1989 amendment to article 54 stated that no party could hold

more than 350 (out of 500) seats – the first ever cap on a party. This constrained

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legislative powers by creating an external and artificial cap on a purely internal matter,

but it also served PAN interests as the first step to eliminating the supermajority.

Likewise, the 1993 amendment of article 54 dismantled the Senate’s oversight of its own

elections, again hurting legislative powers but also promoting democracy and opposition

interests by dismantling the opportunities for PRI fraud. The major constraints occurring

under executive leverage, on the other hand, constrain the legislature but do not advance

the interests of either party. The 1986 amendment of article 74 removes the legislature’s

ability to decide criminal cases against its members, while the amendment of article 73 in

the same year removes any legislative influence on governance of the Distrito Federal

and instead cedes that governance to the president. The overarching pattern in period 4,

then, was a progressively more constrained legislature where many of the constraints

were really about setting the stage for the dismantling of the regime.

Periods 1, 3, 4, and 5 all follow the expected patterns, then. Period 2, however, is

somewhat different. While minor increases still outpace major increases, minor

constraints also outpace major ones – in fact, there are no major constraints in this period.

This period is an outlier, but it supports the general argument. The second period is the

golden age of the PRI, when the president was at his strongest. After the consolidating

efforts of the first period, the executive had control over the party and over the

legislature. This accounts for the nine cases of minor increase – the president was

enhancing the legislature’s bureaucratic function, utilizing it to legislate over games of

chance (article 73, 1947), the production and purchase of beer (article 73, 1948), seizures

of enemy vessels during war (article 73, 1965) and so forth. These were very minor

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changes, aimed primarily at refining the legislature’s role. The minor constraints were

truly minor: the 1974 amendment of article 74 changed the legislature’s ability to

approve judges named by the president in the Distrito Federal and the territories to only

the Distrito Federal, and the 1962 amendment of article 63 punished parties if their

delegates failed to take their elected seats. There were no major constraints in this

period, for the simple reason that they were not necessary – the executive’s control was

such that the legislature never tried to rebel. As the other four periods demonstrated,

major constraints serve a purpose. In periods 1 and 3 they were aimed at bringing the

legislature under the executive’s control; in periods 4 and 5 they helped to dismantle the

regime. In period 2, however, the legislature was firmly under the executive’s control,

and the regime was so strong that there was no opposition effort to challenge it. In short,

minor constraints in this period outpaced major constraints because there was no role for

major constraints to play.

Over all, Table 4.5 appears to challenge the predicted outcomes for the branch

axis hypotheses. And yet, once additional information is considered, the theoretical links

are in fact upheld.

4.6 Conclusion

This chapter tested the hypotheses introduced in chapter 2. The hypotheses were

designed to test two key concepts: first, that institutional evolution occurred at times

more rapidly and more slowly based on interactions between the parties, and second, that

the evolutionary process experienced periods of greater and lesser liberalization (in the

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form of legislative powers) due to interactions between the branches. The statistical

evidence alone was sufficient to substantiate the claims about the speed of evolution, but

not those regarding the content of evolution. However, recoding the legislative powers

variable to capture degree of change and analyzing the historical record support the

argument that the different periods of institutional evolution demonstrate different types

of power changes. There is one important challenge to the theory that remains

unaddressed, though: are the changes I have captured a function of shifting leverage

relationships, or could they be attributed to the fact that there are some issues of

importance to one party about which the other party simply does not care? If that is that

case, the observed behavior may be less about fluctuating leverage relationships and

more about the parties deciding not to fight over certain insignificant issues. To address

that concern, in the next chapter I look exclusively at the amendments to Article 27

governing land rights – an article that was amended only 16 times, and that was of

extreme importance to both parties.

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Chapter 5: Case Study: Tracking Legislative Evolution Through Land Reform

5.1. Introduction

When the PAN was formed in 1939, one of its core tenets was the importance of

private property – and one of its first acts was a proposal to overturn Mexico’s communal

land law, the ejido system (Ard 2003, 135). That proposal was resoundingly defeated.

The ejido system was an integral part of PRI legitimacy, upholding the promise of the

revolution – removing it was unthinkable.

Fifty three years later, President Salinas of the PRI proposed a complete overhaul

of the ejido system, making it possible for the first time for ejido holders to freely and

legally sell their land if they obtained the title. Salinas’ plan completely overturned the

land reform issue that had once been so central to the PRI’s party identification and

legitimation of rule. What happened between the PAN’s first land reform proposal and

the PRI’s final one to so utterly change the outcome? In this chapter, I demonstrate that

the evolution of Article 27 governing land ownership, like the constitutional section

covered in chapter 4, is a function of shifting leverage relationships between the

executive and the legislature, and the ruling party and opposition party, respectively.

The previous chapter tested my theory of institutional evolution against changes

to amendments governing legislative powers, using a sample size of 123. That chapter

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found strong support for the link between party power axis and speed of institutional

evolution, but weaker support for the link between the branch power axis and type of

evolutionary change. Although the testing results were mixed, the theory was

substantiated through a closer look at some of the cases. However, the number of cases

was too great to go in-depth on the dynamics of each individual amendment. In this

chapter, I address that gap by focusing on a small number of cases and examining each

one in the context of the political life of its time. I also demonstrate that the dynamics of

legislative evolution put forth in the theory are evident regardless of the area of the

constitution examined – that is, we see the same patterns even when we aren’t looking at

the section that designates legislative powers. This chapter tests the theory as it applies to

modifications to Article 27, the article governing land ownership under the 1917

constitution.

Article 27 makes two important methodological contributions to theory testing.

The first contribution speaks to legislative relations. The sample tested in chapter 4 –

articles 50-79 – are specifically those articles addressing legislative powers. They are the

easy case for testing the evolution of the legislature, in that since they delineate explicitly

what that role is, legislative changes will be particularly common. Article 27 is not an

explicit discussion of legislative powers, however; the effect of amendments on the

legislature is filtered through alterations to land ownership. This is the hard case: if the

relationship between actors along each axis is linked to variation in patterns of evolution

even when the ultimate outcome of amendments is not to the legislature but to land

reform, it suggests that those varying relationships affect every aspect of institutional life.

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The second methodological contribution of this chapter is that by focusing on

only one article, I control for an additional source of variation. The range of topics

covered in articles 50-79 present the opportunity for variation in actor preferences which

could confound the link between theory and testing outcome. A topic that is central to

the ruling party might be a topic that is unimportant to the opposition party, in which case

the opposition’s inaction may be less a function of an underlying leverage imbalance (as

my theory predicts), than a display of indifference. The same may be true of the

legislature-executive relationship. Across a range of topics, leverage struggles may be

conflated with ambivalence. By limiting my testing to one topic, particularly one – land

reform – that is known to be of central importance to all the political actors, I am able to

state that the patterns I have identified in institutional evolution are distinctly the function

of shifts in leverage relationships.

The chapter is laid out as follows: first, I briefly restate the theory. I then discuss

Article 27 in the context of institutional evolution – what makes it a good test case, why it

is important, and the adaptations necessary in testing a small sample. I then move to the

research design, laying out the methodology as well as the data sources, before discussing

the theory-testing and my findings. I conclude with a brief discussion of what the

findings in this chapter mean for my discussion of institutional evolution as a whole.

5.2. Brief restatement of the theory

As laid out in greater detail in chapter 2, my theory predicts that when the ruling

party is able to regularly exert leverage over the opposition party, institutional evolution

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will occur more slowly. The underlying idea is that the ruling party, having designed the

system, is the primary power beneficiary, and so prefers to maintain the status quo for the

most part. This is not to say there will be no change; rather, the changes ought to occur

relatively infrequently. It will still be necessary for the ruling party to permit institutional

evolution, but since the system already benefits the regime, those changes should not be

intended to benefit a different group or to change the overall function of the institution –

instead, they should be aimed at updating institutional capabilities to match modern

needs, for instance updating the government’s regulatory powers to match new

technology.

Because the system as designed benefits the ruling party, generally at the expense

of the opposition party, when the opposition is able to promote change it should push for

more alterations to institutional function, in order to maximize its gains and become

competitive with the ruling party as rapidly as possible. Thus when the opposition party

exerts leverage over the ruling party, institutional evolution should occur more rapidly.

The opposition will seek to maximize its opportunities for institutional growth so that it

achieves as much benefit from the institution as possible. This is because the regime’s

use of institutions to maintain itself in power decreases the opposition’s opportunities to

defeat it. In order to replace the ruling party, the opposition must alter the institution to

its own benefit.

Where the party power axis predicts relative rate of evolution, the branch power

axis predicts the content of evolutionary change: whether legislative powers are increased

or constrained. This derives from the nature of the power struggle between the executive

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and the legislature. In an authoritarian setting, the system privileges the executive. The

intent of the system is to maintain the regime – and the regime is directed by the

executive. But the constitution also provides for legislative powers, and those powers

sometimes infringe on executive independence. Furthermore, the regime’s overall

control of political life in no way mitigates other party members’ desire to increase their

power. Legislative powers as enshrined in the constitution become a battleground for

regime power struggles. When the executive exerts leverage over the legislature, changes

are more likely to constrain legislative powers, in order to preserve executive privilege

and prevent the legislature from functioning as a check on the executive. When the

legislature exerts leverage over the executive, though, changes are more likely to increase

legislative powers.

5.3. Article 27 in the context of institutional evolution

As discussed in chapter 2, because this theory addresses legislative evolution by

examining changes to the constitution, the theory should be equally applicable regardless

of which piece of the constitution is examined, so long as the dynamics between the

legislature and the executive can be teased out. The particular value of Article 27 for this

study is that it was modified a number of times, and given the importance of the article

itself to the regime as discussed below, the evidence demonstrates that the modifications

were given due consideration and for the most part were not merely corrections to

language.

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In order to use Article 27 as a sample of institutional evolution, two points must

be made regarding the theory and testing. First, because the last modification to Article

27 occurred in 1992, the fifth period of my theory – 1994-2000 – is inherently excluded.

This is the period my theory predicts will have a legislative leverage victory. Theory

testing on Article 27 necessarily excludes legislative victory, then. However, it is still

possible to observe variation on the branch power axis. As I argued in Chapter 4,

“executive victory” does not carry the same meaning across all periods. In some periods

– notably 1946-1976 – the executive has almost total control in the leverage relationship,

and the legislative powers are extremely constrained as a result. In others, the

executive’s leverage victory is not so complete, and the type of changes to legislative

powers fluctuates as a result. Although by dropping period 5 we do not expect to see a

period where changes to legislative powers are primarily major increases, we do still

expect to see variation in those powers.

The second point is that the smaller number of modifications overall (16), which

allows me to discuss the dynamics of each change, also precludes a discussion of

institutional evolution by rate of change and period. Instead, I examine major and minor

changes to the institutional structure, positing that they follow the same basic logic as the

argument for higher or lower rates of change.

Article 27, which delineated the rules for land ownership, played a particularly

important role in the PRI regime, as it formed much of the basis for legitimizing the

party’s extended rule (Freebairn 1987, p. 399). In fact, hardly any other article was as

important or as controversial, making Article 27 a particularly useful case to examine.

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Article 27 laid out the ejido system, by which peasants could receive land from the

government. The system was unusual: although the applicant would be granted the

ability to farm the land, he could not own it outright. The land still belonged to the state,

which could repossess it if the farmer or his immediate family was not working the land.

A secondary system existed to grant actual ownership, so that the farmer could not be

dispossessed, but this was granted infrequently and only under certain circumstances

which were not addressed in Article 27. However, the article did list significant

restrictions on land grants: neither large corporations nor religious institutions or those

officially associated with them (ministers, etc.) were permitted to own land.

Additionally, fairly stringent restrictions on granted land were laid out – the government

controlled all buried natural resources, as well as any waterway that passed through

adjoining ejidos, and so forth. Taken all together, the provisions of Article 27 created a

system officially designed to benefit the poor, but with so many loopholes and

bureaucratic pitfalls that the system could actually be used to the detriment of the

peasantry.

Article 27 was purported to guarantee land to the peasants, but the actual use was

far more complex. The constitution included loopholes that the regime exploited to its

own benefit, to control agrarian reform. Where the regime could grant lands (or potential

lands) to peasants to buy their support, it could also remove those lands – either to punish

wayward citizens or to reallocate property to important supporters. This was done

through a process known as alienation.

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Alienation could take three forms: expropriation, exchange, and the creation of an

ejido urban zone. Expropriation was the forced sale of ejido lands, while exchange

involved trading ejido land for private land. Creating an urban zone, meanwhile,

involved turning part of an existing ejido into housing for the ejidatarios. Expropriation

and exchange were favored by businesses and the wealthy because they conveyed

immediate ownership and were largely used against existing ejidatarios. The urban zone,

however, took at least four years and was primarily utilized by the poor as a way to

change the designated function of the area. Theoretically all ejido lands were subject to

all three approaches, and the government would deal with all efforts of alienation equally.

Functionally, however, the wealthy and corporations were much more able to take

advantage of the system, and the state was far more likely to ignore illegal actions

undertaken by important PRI supporters than by average farmers and workers (Varley,

1985). In short, the poor – those Article 27 was designed to benefit – were most

vulnerable to land seizure.

In terms of the political importance of Article 27, the legitimacy of the state, laid

out in chapter 3, rested on two claims: resounding electoral victories and the party’s

participation in the 1913-1914 revolution (Ard 2003; Benjamin 2010, 568). Much of the

justification for the revolution itself centered on the injustice of the majority of the land

being held by the wealthy few. In the aftermath of the revolution, the new regime

committed itself to preventing such an injustice from reoccurring, and institutionalized

that promise primarily through Article 27. A significant base of support for the regime

during the revolution came from the peasants; Article 27 was both their reward for

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supporting the regime, and a way to keep them under control and prevent them from

functioning as a threat to the new government (Walsh Sanderson, 1984, p. 45). But while

the promise of land ownership – and the existence of Article 27 – was a crucial piece of

PRI propaganda, actually granting land was another issue entirely. Over time,

particularly after the 1940s, the PRI transitioned from actually supporting land

redistribution to working to maintain the principle while abandoning the practice:

“Each new administration continued to repeat the rhetoric of the past,

asserting the government’s commitment to land reform as a ‘major goal’

of the Mexican Revolution. At the same time, each of these

administrations pursued specific policies which, logically enough,

reflected the interests of the dominant bourgeoisie. Taken as a whole,

these policies undercut peasant gains… and slowed the process of land

reform until the trend culminated in the 1980s… with a virtual

abandonment of the agrarista commitment” (Thiesenhausen 1996, p. 38,

quoting Hellman 1983).

Ejidos and other communal properties made up a non-trivial amount of the

available land in Mexico, which helps explain why – despite the regime’s constitutional

promise – amending Article 27 was such a contested issue. Regime efforts to promote

business interests clashed with redistribution efforts, sparking heated debates over the

amendment. The table below, from Randall (1996, p. 6), lays out the breakdown of

proportion of land held communally and privately by type, as of 1988.

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Table 5.1. Land Use and Tenure by General Type, 1988

General Type Percentage

Livestock grazing 57.6

Private Property (32.6)

Ejidos (25.0)

Agriculture 12.6

Private (3.2)

Ejidos (9.4)

Forestry 12.3

Private (4.7)

Ejidos (7.6)

Federal government 6.2

Urban real estate 2.2

Other uses 9.4

Ejidos made up approximately 45% of available land in Mexico. Walsh Sanderson

(1984, 139) addresses how much of the land granted to ejidos was eventually

expropriated; this ranges from ½ of 1% through much of the country, up to 32.1% around

Mexico City. Both land grants and expropriation noticeably affected land distribution

and politics throughout Mexico.

The importance of Article 27 to state legitimacy was twofold. First, as described

above, Article 27 itself was an important element in legitimizing the PRI’s reign.

Additionally, however, and as will be shown in the discussion of specific amendments in

section 5.6, major changes in particular were the result of challenges to the state’s

legitimacy (Walsh Sanderson 1984, 71-2). When the legislature’s role relative to land

reform experienced major shifts in terms of how the legislature related to the sectors

represented in Article 27, particularly the agrarian sector, it was because of challenges to

state legitimacy. The resolution of those challenges altered the underlying political

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power relationships, which in turn affected the ability of different actors – and the sectors

and groups that supported each faction – to attempt reforms to Article 27.

That collision between regime ideology and leaders’ actual preferences, as well as

between regime and opposition ideology – the PAN was firmly opposed to Article 27

(Middlebrook 2001, 8) – is crucial to understanding how and why Article 27 was

modified but not removed throughout the lifetime of the PRI.

5.4 A brief history of Article 27

Article 27 played a vital ideological role in the PRI regime. Since the colonial

period, power in Mexico generally followed land ownership – and land ownership was

biased towards a relatively small elite. Originating with the encomienda system during

the colonial period, the Mexican system of land ownership guaranteed that most of the

land would be in the hands of a few wealthy owners. This meant that the majority of the

population essentially worked as hired labor, either working on the land owners’

plantations or renting a small patch of land from the owner. During the revolution of

1913/1914, these poor farmers and hired labor formed an important source of support for

the revolutionaries, and part of the motivation for the revolution was to redress the

inequitable land distribution (Katz, 1996). When the new constitution was designed in

1915, Article 27 was intended to fulfill the revolutionaries’ promise to the laborers, by

making land ownership more accessible (Freebairn 1987, 399). Since the PRI cast itself

as the party of the revolution, preserving at least the appearance of accessible land

ownership was vital to forming the regime’s ideology, allowing it to legitimize itself as

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the authentic representatives of the Mexican people. This was done primarily through the

creation of the ejido system, essentially a series of communal land grants for which

members were each granted a small parcel of the land to farm, the rest of the land –

forests, mountains, and rivers, for instance – held in common among all the members of

the ejido (Assies 2008, 42). The ejido system was first laid out in Article 27, although

the in-depth explication of its details was the responsibility of an entirely new

bureaucracy.60

That bureaucracy was responsible for determining who had the right to be

granted an ejido, who would lose their ejido, how long both processes would take, and

what happened to the land that was already in someone else’s possession.

The system was fairly complex; land held as an ejido could not be disposed of as

private property, despite being owned by an individual or family for generations. Article

27 gave the central government the ability to grant ejidos to individuals, as well as the

ability to strip that ownership. Ejido owners could not individually sell their land –

rather, if one ejido member wished to sell his land to another, he had to go to the ejido’s

governing council where the sale could be voted on by all members. In addition to

restrictions on sales, there were significant restrictions on the size of private property. An

individual or family could only possess the title to so many hectares of land (the exact

amount varied based on terrain and the purpose for which the land was granted); if the

member somehow ended up with more than the constitutionally-mandated amount of

60

Article 27 also provided for land tenure in the form of agrarian communities and small private property

holdings. These land types were governed by the same rules in general, but due to the complexity in setting

they up, they were used much less frequently than ejidos (Nuitjen, 2003). Because of the subsequent focus

in Article 27 on ejidos, I limit my discussion to land tenure as it pertains to ejidos. Ejidos are also not to be

confused with tierras comunales, the communal lands held by indigenous groups and dating from the

conquista. The rules governing tierras comunales vary from those governing ejidos, and the lands are not

covered by Article 27.

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land, the remainder was subject to seizure and auction. The land could also only be used

for certain purposes – farming or animal husbandry, primarily.61

The original language of Article 27 also stripped most large landowners of their

land, making void all earlier sales, so that the land could be broken up into smaller

parcels for the ejidos. Creating an ejido, however, was no easy task. The potential

members had to apply for membership and then wait for a committee that originated at

the state level and traveled up the bureaucratic ladder to the federal executive to approve

them for membership and grant them land. In some cases, this process took more than

ten years. The incredibly slow bureaucratic process was one way in which the ruling

party maintained control over both land distribution and rural inhabitants (Castillo 2004,

35). By promising to distribute land at no cost, the PRI bought rural support for the party

for many years; however, by delaying the actual granting of that land, the PRI maintained

its monopoly on distribution and in many cases eased the burden on the large land

owners, as well as providing itself with the votes of peasants waiting to recieve land

(Kelly 1994, 555).

The manipulation of Article 27 varied to an extent with individual presidents.

The constitution went into effect in 1917, but for almost 20 years very little land was

actually granted (Assies 2008, p. 41). This changed dramatically in 1934 with Lázaro

Cárdenas, who came to power with the support of the rural sectors of the party and made

land distribution a central facet of his time in office. (Thiesenhausen, 1996, p. 36)

Cárdenas’ regime was the high water mark for land grants to the ejidos; no other

61

All discussion of the specific contents of constitutional articles and amendments is taken from my

translation of the Mexican Constitution.

159

presidency would compare to the number of land grants he made (Castillo 2004, 35).

The post-Cárdenas presidents maintained the promise of land grants – and indeed the

land grants themselves – but emphasized the ejido process less, at least internally. This

was partly because the PRI was attempting to attract more business interests; setting up

larger farms under the federal aegis was more profitable than attempting to create federal

institutions to manage many smaller farms. Additionally, starting in about the 1940s the

party hierarchy began to incorporate more and more technocrats, who were more focused

on the development of industry than on the growth of small farms (Benjamin 2010, 439).

The technocrats, in fact, were partially responsible for the push towards larger

farms that began in the 1960s and 1970s. While the levels of land grants never again

approached that under Cárdenas, the party did not begin to actively turn away from the

promise of land ownership and reform until the 1980s. Spurred on in part by the

economic crisis, the PRI and its presidents began to see the ejido system as too costly to

the nation as a whole, particularly when it became apparent that large farms could

produce cheaper agricultural products for export more efficiently than could small farms

(Assies 2008, 59). In 1992, this turn away from reform was completed with an almost

total rewrite of Article 27 that generally dismantled the ejido system62

and facilitated a

more traditional private property system throughout Mexico.63

62

The reform did not abolish ejidos, but the government ceased granting new ones and the reform made it

possible for ejidatarios to sell their land for the first time. 63

The regime’s efforts to not actually distribute land do not appear to be a deliberate effort to increase the

number of workers available for industry (see for instance Barrington Moore on enclosure); rather, it was

an attempt to make more land available for industrial use – the increasing availability of workers was a side

effect, rather than a cause.

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5.5 Accommodating the theory to the facts: the challenge of a small n

In order to test my theory of institutional evolution on Article 27, one

modification to the hypotheses is necessary, primarily because of the relatively small

number of cases. Recalling chapter 2, the theory draws from arguments like Thelen

(2004) and Greif (2006) that institutional evolution can occur both gradually and

suddenly – that many small changes may be made over time, while fewer large changes

will occur at critical junctures. In my application of these theories to my hypotheses, I

translate that concept to hypothesize that there will be fewer changes when the regime is

the leverage victor and more changes when the opposition is the leverage victor. I tested

this by examining the rate of change over time; however, the concept of measuring rate of

change does not translate to a setting with at best 16 cases, and in practice fewer once the

irrelevant cases are excluded.

My prediction differs somewhat from Thelen in particular, in that while we both

predict there will be periods of major and minor change, I expect that in periods of minor

change we will see fewer changes per year, while in periods of major change we will see

more changes per year. This is less a direct contradiction and more a focus on a different

aspect – where she examines change over the entire lifetime of the institution, I look at

change within proscribed periods. Overall, my theory agrees with hers – there should be

more minor changes than major ones. On a micro level, however, my predictions differ.

This is largely because of my decision to treat a package of amendments as multiple

amendments, rather than as just one. Each article that changes in the constitution was

counted as one, but major changes in particular often amend multiple articles, explicitly

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because they are changing major parts of the institution – something that may be

impacted by various articles. So one major change may contain five or more actual

amendments, each of which I code as one change, which increases the overall number of

major changes.

The major/minor distinction captures the same spirit as the rate of change

argument. Both are drawn from the theory’s argument that the ruling party’s interest is

primarily in preserving the status quo, while the opposition party prefers change. In

chapter 4 I demonstrated the ruling party’s maintenance of the status quo through lower

rates of constitutional change, essentially preserving the system. I showed that when the

opposition had the opportunity to exert leverage, there were relatively more changes. In

the same vein, when the ruling party is the leverage winner, I expect it to oppose

evolution by primarily espousing minor constitutional changes – essentially dramatically

limiting new institutional directions. The opposition, however, should promote evolution

by pushing for major constitutional changes so that the institution’s function is more

likely to be altered.

This major/minor distinction still speaks to the rate at which institutions evolve,

but rather than focusing on how fast amendments occur, it looks at how dramatically each

amendment alters institutional function. This is a more appropriate methodological

approach for a small-n sample where the number of cases for each period is so low as to

prohibit drawing any conclusions. This shift in the hypotheses necessitates a

corresponding shift in the methodology for testing, calling for a more qualitative

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approach. I discuss this and other coding decisions broadly in section 5.7 and, specific to

each case, in section 5.8.

The second set of hypotheses, regarding the nature of the changes, remains

unaltered, positing that When the executive has leverage over the legislature, changes are

more likely to constrain legislative powers, and When the legislature has leverage over

the executive, changes are more likely to increase legislative powers. A smaller number

of cases in no way impacts what types of changes are made, only evaluations of their

frequency.

Chapter 4 argued that a binary coding of effect on legislative powers masked the

effects the theory predicted, and so a multinomial coding scheme was necessary. This

chapter, however, relies on a binary rather than multinomial coding. The validity of this

coding decision rests in my point, stated earlier, that such a small number of cases

invalidates the discussion of periods. The multinomial coding relied on relative gains –

predicting more minor constraints than major ones in an executive leverage victory

period, for instance. In this sample, though, the largest number of cases in a period is

eight. Six of those are relevant to the hypothesis; three are constraints and three are

increases. One constraint is major; the other two are minor, as are all three increases.

And this period is overrepresented; others have only two cases, with no variation in the

degree of constraint. With so few cases, the multinomial coding does not add any

information. Rather, we can look at the overall increases and decreases which when

paired with the more detailed information available for a small, high-profile sample of

cases (laid out in section 5.6) is sufficient to test the hypothesis.

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5.6 The amendments in the historical context: 1933-1992

In order to understand manifestations of evolution, it is helpful to begin with a

glimpse of political life in general. This section will explain every amendment to Article

27, discussing the changes by period.64

After explaining what each amendment changed,

I offer a brief overview on party dynamics and branch dynamics per period. Explicit

discussion of how each amendment affected branch axis leverage relationships and party

power axis leverage relationships is reserved for section 5.8, rather than being located

here – this section is intended only to provide a historical overview.

Between the first amendment to Article 27 in 1933 and the last one in 1992, the

article was modified 16 times. While the modification count is substantially lower than

some of the articles governing legislative powers – for instance, Article 73 was modified

more than 40 times in almost the same period – the average rate of modification for

Article 27 is still approximately one amendment every four years, and only a few of those

amendments were purely cosmetic.

The first period, 1929-1945, contained four reforms to Article 27. The first

amendment, from 1933, represents a major overhaul of the articles as written in the 1917

constitution. Interestingly, although this overhaul introduced several significant changes

into the article, and although it coincided with Lázaro Cárdenas’ rise as the candidate for

president of Mexico (the amendment was introduced in 1933 and passed in 1934, shortly

64

Although I cannot test the hypotheses by period due to the small sample size, I maintain discussion of

periods for the case study in order to best reflect the theory and maximize comparability with the previous

chapter.

164

before he took office) there is no record that the extent of these changes was at executive

request; in fact, the observations in the Diario Oficial note that “In the executive’s

Initiative the reform of the article is not contemplated.” Given the rules governing the

introduction of constitutional amendments, the lack of executive sponsorship implies that

the impetus for the reform was located in the legislature. The idea that the legislature

might challenge executive preferences is unusual in a dominant party system, and hints at

the complexities of the branch axis leverage relationships. Benjamin (2010, 461) argues

that the reform arose not out of executive desire but out of pressure from a growing

faction of the PNR which had aligned itself behind Cárdenas. This was a significant

break from previous administrations. The executive’s preference in this instance, as

embodied by the orders of the Jefe Máximo Calles,65

were to terminate the ejido system,

not expand it. While it would have been impossible to amend the constitution without the

president’s support, the fact that he was pressured into the action highlights his inability

to completely control the leverage relationship in this period.

Among other things, this first modification extended the government’s control

over resource allocation. Mineral rights, which had not previously been discussed in the

constitution, were given to the regime. Further, where the original version refused the

government the ability to allocate forests and rivers, this amendment removed that

refusal, tacitly granting the regime those rights. It also allowed the government to punish

ejido members who did not maintain their land – the government was able to lower the

65

Plutarco Elias Calles was the president of Mexico between 1924 and 1928. Both prior to and after his

presidency he was also the president of the PNR, the official party. His iron grip over the party and

subsequent Mexican presidents led to his being called the Jefe Máximo, essentially supreme leader. He

maintained this control until Cardenas exiled him to the United States in 1936.

165

land’s value if it was auctioned off (previously the constitution only allowed the

government to increase the land’s value based on improvements made by the owner).

This modification also removed all previous rulings on land grants and land distribution

that occurred between 1856 and 1915, essentially allowing the regime to cut all ties to the

prior dictatorships. In conjunction with removing previous governments’ decisions on

land ownership, it diminished private farmers’ ability to control their own land, declaring

null any decisions between two land holders in which there was any dispute and giving

the government the authority to re-issue those decisions.

The remaining three first-period amendments were of far less consequence than

that initial amendment. The second amendment also represented a significant change,

though not on the scope of the first – it expanded the executive’s authority to include

settling disputes between land holders, essentially giving the executive total authority

over the ejido assignment process. The third amendment represented an increase in

governmental powers, as it was granted increased rights over minerals and gasses. The

fourth amendment aimed to clarify various aspects of state possession of water sources.

The dynamics of the first period between the executive and the legislature, as

captured through the amendments, show a struggle to achieve leverage victories. One of

the most important changes in the first amendment is that it formally granted ultimate

control over the entire land redistribution process to the executive. The process moves

from the state level to a committee, then on to the executive – the legislature had no

authority in making these decisions. However, the presidential powers may be balanced

by certain other powers granted to the legislature. While the federal legislature had no

166

sway over the granting of new ejido lands, it did play an important role in breaking up

existing ejidos and auctioning off any land the tenant held in excess of the constitutional

allotment. By giving substantial powers both to the president and to the legislature, this

amendment is an excellent example of the type of legislative-executive negotiations

which characterized the period: the president was more powerful, but because he was still

consolidating his control over the legislature, he was forced to make some concessions to

it as well.

The first period was a complex one from the perspective of party history. The

PNR (later PRI) was still consolidating; it was not until the Cárdenas presidency (1934-

40) that the president became more powerful than the party leader. That power struggle,

along with a fundamental disagreement over the future of the party between supporting

the rural sector and supporting industrialization (Benjamin 2010, 448), was reflected in

internal factionalization. However, the ruling party faced little organized opposition in

this period – the existing opposition parties were small and weak, and many were

incorporated into the catch-all ruling party.

The party that would come to truly oppose the regime, the PAN, was not present

for most of the first period – it was not founded until 1939. The PAN was founded

particularly as a reaction to the PNR’s more socialist tenets (Middlebrook 2001, 12),

especially its land reform efforts. The party’s ideology with respect to these fundamental

167

issues was fairly consistent throughout the reign of the PNR/PRI,66

and heavily drawn

from its founder, Manuel Gomez Morin (Ard 2003).

The second period, 1946-1976, saw nine reforms. Interestingly, the distribution

of number of reforms of Article 27 in this period does not follow the distribution of

reforms in the constitution as a whole. The rate of change in period 2, as laid out in

chapter 4, was actually the lowest rate in the lifetime of the regime. By contrast, period 2

holds the most changes of any period to Article 27. However, as will be explained

below, these changes were generally linked less to large-scale institutional evolution and

more to the aims of the Golden Age of the PRI: strengthening the president’s position

vis-à-vis party and legislature.

The fifth reform, from 1946, increased land owners’ rights relative to the central

government. It set a minimum area for small property, expanded and redefined the

maximum limits of the same, and granted land owners who have or may get the title to

their land the right of legal defense against alienation – something earlier versions of the

articles had explicitly denied them. The amendment was an anomaly for the period, the

only one that weakened the central government. Other than the legal defense clause,

though, the amendment offered only small increases in the rights of farmers. Even that

improvement was minor – it guaranteed representation, not the quality or quantity of that

representation and not any promise that having representation would improve the

farmer’s change of keeping his land.

66

This consistency extended to party ideology on economic and social matters, but importantly, not to

practical aspects like electoral participation. In fact, whether or not to participate in elections was a major

issue within the party and caused a substantial schism in the 1970s that resulted in the PAN’s failure to

nominate a presidential candidate for the 1976 election.

168

The next amendment, from 1947, followed the basic pattern for the period

identified in the previous chapter by strengthening the executive’s leverage over the

legislature. The amendment gave the Secretary of Relations the ability to approve sales

of land to foreign governments for embassies (the previous version had not allowed any

foreign entity to own land in Mexico; presumably, embassies were permitted at the

tolerance of the Mexican government, although no explicit mention is made in the

constitution). The Secretary of Relations was a cabinet member; as such, he was

appointed by – and served at the discretion of – the president. This essentially became

another way for the president to maintain control over land rights. The seventh reform,

from 1959, also enabled a stronger executive – it increased his control over natural

resources, granting him the sole ability to make concessions on minerals, gases, and

hydro carbides, as well as expanding the territory in which these resources could be

sought. This ability to distribute resource concessions was an important tool for the

president, as it gave him ultimate control over a very powerful set of favors he could

grant to corporations and supporters.

While almost all of these changes, both in number and in scope, strengthened the

executive at the expense of the legislature, a few offered minor reforms that increased

legislative powers. Reform #8, from 1960, granted the state the exclusive right to

legislate on electricity and electric concessions – a power also present in Article 73. (The

ninth reform is purely technical and has no impact.) The tenth reform addressed

Mexico’s entrance into the nuclear age, granting the state the sole right to use and

regulate nuclear power. Like reform #8, this modification – which in the language of

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Article 27 only addressed the state, not a particular branch of government – had a

counterpart in Article 73, where the regulatory power was granted to the legislature.

These three reforms reflect my argument from the previous chapter that in this period

constitutional amendments were primarily an effort by the executive to make the

legislature a more effective bureaucracy. Reform #11, proposed in 1975 and published in

1976, was more specific to Article 27, increasing the state’s control over the populace

and reflecting an impression that the government knew what its people needed better than

the people themselves did. The state was granted authority not just over rural

development and territorial distribution, but even “to order human needs” – to tell others

what they needed. The final reform in this period, reform #12, reflected the

government’s growing concern with economic development, particularly in light of the

1973 recession and the failure of Mexican agriculture to produce sufficient goods. This

reform extended the state’s coastal jurisdiction to 200 nautical miles, in which area an

exclusive economic zone was to be created and regulated by the state.

The second period in particular saw the rise of the technocrats within the PRI, and

a marked shift away from pro-ejido policies (Benjamin 2008, 470). The PRI presidents

in this period had some of the lowest land grant rates in party history, despite the absence

of a corresponding drop in requests for land (Assies 2008, 45). This shift was caused in

part by the failure of Mexican farms to produce sufficiently, leading the state to import

much of its food from the U.S. (Kelly 1994, 554). However, because of the importance

of land reform within regime mythology, the party continued to support the word –

though not the spirit – of Article 27.

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The PAN, meanwhile, was emerging as an important opposition voice, pushing

for large-scale change (Ard 2003, 84) and forcing the PRI to recognize the PAN as an

incipient threat, not to electoral victory but to the PRI’s total dominance of politics. This

was particularly the case in the 1960s under PAN president Adolfo Christlieb, who used

his strong working and personal relationship with Mexican president Diaz Ordaz to get

the president to pressure local PRIistas into acknowledging many of the PAN’s local-

level victories, something local ruling party leaders tried to avoid (Ard 2003). However,

the PAN’s ability to achieve these sorts of gains diminished significantly after Diaz

Ordaz left office, though its efforts to do so did not.

The third period, 1977-1986, contains just two reforms. Reform 13 added two

fragments to the article. The first increased the rights of ejidatarios by improving their

access to the justice system, though the state maintained control of deciding the form of

that justice. The second fragment laid out in greater detail the kinds of assistance the

state was responsible for providing to the ejidos, in the name of increasing development.

The fourteenth reform was substantially less ambitious, putting ecological concerns under

the powers and responsibilities of the state.

Both the PRI and the PAN experienced a shift to the right in this period. As

described in Chapter 3, the 1982 economic crisis caused many PRI supporters in the

business sector to shift their support to the PAN; in response, the PRI became more

pronounced in its technocratic approaches. The party was losing interest in its once-vital

rural base, as its attention shifted to dealing with economic and political crises like the

growth of the Corriente Democrático. Meanwhile, the PAN shifted from an ideology

171

oriented towards social justice to one oriented towards neoliberalism (Middlebrook 2001,

16) and also began to redevelop its Catholic roots (Ard 2003, 136-137). The party had

never been either confessional or formally Christian Democratic – in fact, the Christian

Democratic contingent had been ejected from the party in the prior period – but its

founders and many of its supporters were Catholic, and that Catholicism became more

prominent during this period.

The fourth period, 1987-1993, also contained two changes. These changes were

of extreme importance and also mark the final modifications to Article 27 – no

modifications were made in the fifth period. Both reforms stem from 1991 (published in

1992, and therefore generally referred to as the 1992 reforms), and represented a

complete overhaul of Article 27. Among other details, they removed restrictions on

religious and charitable organizations owning land, dissolved much of the ejido

bureaucracy, gave ejido members the ability to make sales without outside authority, and

created a state-run system for the ejidos to facilitate their transition to true private

property should the ejidatarios desire it.67

Additionally, and crucially, they granted

corporations the right to own land – something these organizations had been denied since

the revolution. In short, the final two amendments completely altered both the form and

function of the article. These changes marked the end of the regime’s use of Article 27 as

a means to control the peasants. Land grants had been one of the tools available to ensure

that peasants supported the regime, but creating a bureaucratic circus where applications

for ejidos could be left undecided for years allowed the regime to go through the motions

67

It is worth noting that while the amendments set up the titling procedure, the actual process of titling

lands to allow private sale has generally been extremely slow, due to the usual level of Mexican

bureaucratic red tape.

172

of rewarding supporters without actually ceding any land. The ability to sell land

signified a shift from small farms as properties loaned by the state, to true private

property. It also formally allowed the formation of large farms – suddenly, wealthy

individuals or companies could buy multiple ejidos and combine them into one large

farm. These amendments created a land ownerships system that was almost diametrically

opposed to the one originally designed.

This period marked the PRI’s formal abandonment of land reform as a tool to

justify its regime. In fact, President Salinas actually set out to alter the party’s ideology:

“Salinas, therefore, sought to abandon the official ‘revolutionary

nationalism’ ideology by creating a new ideology for the party, called

‘social liberalism.’ This new ideology was to bring market capitalism and

social welfare together and to distinguish Salinas’ approach from the

much-maligned neoliberalism. The new paradigm would justify his

abandonment of revolutionary icons like the anticlerical articles of the

Constitution, economic protectionism, and the preservation of communal

land in Article 27.” (Ard 2003, 133)

This period saw significant factionalization within the ruling party, particularly

with regards to the Article 27 reforms. The party essentially divided internally into

campesinistas and “modernizing technocrats,” (Cornelius and Myhre 1998, 4-5) with the

technocrats eventually emerging on top and helping to shape the future of the party.

Meanwhile, the PRI-PAN relationship was evolving. The PAN had always been firmly

opposed to Article 27 and was ideologically in favor of the modifications. The changes

within the PRI allowed the PRI and the PAN to actually work together regarding the

reforms (Ard 2003, 135). The PAN was in a stronger bargaining position at this point

due to the heavily contested 1988 elections and the PRI’s need for PAN support to ratify

the ruling party’s victory.

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5.7 Research Design

The research design employed in this chapter echoes the research design from

chapter 4, though altered to fit the small sample size. I use Article 27 as a plausibility

probe for my theory; the extremely high importance the regime placed on land reform

implies that changes should be seriously considered by all actors, rather than casually

made. The connection between Article 27 and revolutionary legitimacy also means

modifications had to be screened for any potential impact on regime legitimacy,

furthering the level of debate regarding amendments. I test the hypotheses by looking for

a simple correlation between the X values (executive-legislative leverage in hypotheses

2a and 2b; ruling party-opposition party leverage in hypotheses 1a and 1b) and the Y

values (constraints vs. increases in legislative power for hypotheses 2a and 2b; major vs.

minor institutional shifts in hypotheses 1a and 1b). Because of the small sample size,

however, the correlations alone may present insufficient evidence to demonstrate the

theory’s accuracy. Therefore for each hypothesis I include a commentary on why these

changes were made; the case information in conjunction with the predicted correlations is

viewed as sufficient to support the hypotheses.

Because of the small number of cases, and the fairly complex coding decisions,

my analysis of the findings includes an in-depth discussion of the coding for each

decision. The following section offers broad strokes for coding decisions, and the section

after that discusses individual decisions in greater depth.

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5.7.1 Coding decisions and data sources

The hypotheses yield four variables for which coding decisions must be made:

executive-legislative leverage victories, increasing/constraining legislative powers, ruling

party-opposition party leverage victories, and major/minor institutional changes. These

variables were explained in detail in chapter 4; the discussion below offers only a brief

restatement.

Executive leverage victory means the executive is strong enough to act on

legislation without compensating the legislature in any way. This can be seen by

examining the wording of an amendment between initial and final draft. Because most

modifications throughout the constitution are sponsored by the president – and in the case

of Article 27, all of them are - an executive-dominant law will have no or only cosmetic

changes between drafts. Unlike the amendments in chapter 4, every amendment to

Article 27 was available in both initial and final forms.

Legislative leverage victories are visible when the executive must buy off the

legislature/ the legislature is able to insert its own preferences and requests into the law-

making process. This can be seen by again comparing initial and final drafts; if actual

changes occur, the legislature is able to exert leverage.

One additional piece of data is used to proxy strong executive leverage

capabilities: the length of time between the amendment’s presentation and its publication

in the Diario Oficial. Every amendment in this sample was introduced by the executive,68

68

This may lead to concerns about a lack of variation. However, executive-introduced legislation was the

overwhelming standard throughout the PRI’s reign (Casar 2002). This is in keeping with the political

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which I interpret to mean that the initial version of every amendment had executive

support. Additionally, the executive was responsible for authorizing the publication of

successful amendments in the Diario Oficial. The middle phase – debate and passage of

the amendment – was dependent on Congress. When the entire process happened in just

a few months, it suggests that Congress was essentially just signing off on what the

executive proposed – a sign of strong executive leverage. However, when the process

was much slower, there is reason to suspect that other dynamics, likely including

legislative-executive bargaining, were in play – a sign of weaker executive leverage. In

order to capture this dynamic conservatively and avoid Type I errors, I code “slower

process” as those cases that ran a year or more from start to finish. One year is used

because it incorporates both the annual meetings of Congress, suggesting significant foot-

dragging by the legislature when a law is not addressed in that time. This measure is only

used to differentiate between instances of strong and weak leverage (that is,

overwhelming executive leverage capabilities as opposed to cases where concessions

might be expected from the executive), not to determine whether the executive or the

legislature is the leverage victor.

When the ruling party is the leverage victor, it is able to act on legislative issues

without opposition support; when the opposition party exerts leverage it is able to force

concessions from the ruling party. This can be seen by examining the language of the

approved modification for support of the opposition platform. Coding for this variable is

based off of applying knowledge of each party’s platform to the language of the

dynamics of a dominant party regime. For this reason, my analysis ignores the introduction of the bill or

law and explores variation only after that point – variation which clearly exists, as this chapter will show.

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amendment – an amendment that reflects elements of the ruling party’s platform is coded

as demonstrating ruling party leverage, while an amendment that reflects elements of the

opposition party’s platform is coded as demonstrating opposition party leverage.

Since in the context of a small-n sample, rate of constitutional change is not a

valid indicator of institutional evolution, institutional evolution here will be captured by

major versus minor changes. Major changes are those that significantly reshape the

institution; minor changes do not. Following Kaufman Purcell (1973), it is argued that

major changes are more likely to be proposed close to the end of the year (the legislative

session ends in December) in order to minimize debate. Minor changes will generally

occur earlier in the year. This variable will also be substantiated with anecdotal evidence

about the significance and magnitude of the change.69

Increases to and constraints on legislative powers refer to whether the amendment

represents an expansion or contraction of legislative powers, compared to the previous

iteration. This variable is best observed by examining the final language of the

modification as compared to the language of the preceding version.

The primary data source for all coding decisions is the Diario Oficial, and its

record of amendments to the constitution. I draw from both the amendment as originally

proposed to the legislature and the version that was eventually passed by the legislature.

I do not include amendments that were proposed and rejected; from a theoretical

perspective, the failure to create a change in the constitution does not cause institutional

69

In the discussion of coding decisions, I primarily offer the historical evidence for coding an amendment

major or minor. Kaufman Purcell’s argument is substantiated, however – five of the six major changes

were introduced in December, compared with only three of the ten minor changes.

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evolution since the institution then just maintains its previous state. From a practical

perspective, the large time span of the theory as well as the Mexican record-keeping

system (which generally excluded records of unsuccessful amendments from the Diario

Oficial) make compiling that data very difficult.

5.8 Findings

In this section, I will summarize the statistical findings and discuss coding

decisions in-depth. The table below provides an overview of coding and hypothesis

outcomes for each case.

[Table 5.2 here]

Because of the small sample size and the qualitative coding decisions, it is worth

discussing each case in detail. The preliminary data analysis strongly supports three of

the four hypotheses advanced earlier in the chapter and weakly supports the fourth one

regarding executive leverage victories.

Given the extremely small sample size (n=16), the data were tested using a simple

cross-tabs approach. The statistical findings cannot stand alone, however; in addition to

the small sample size overall, many of the cases that initially appear to be outliers can be

explained with historical evidence, necessitating an in-depth discussion of all findings as

seen in the previous section. Furthermore, some of the cases to test each set of

hypotheses were not actually relevant to the hypothesis, and thus were excluded from

analysis. For the first two hypotheses there were three irrelevant cases, for an n of 13.

For the second two hypotheses there were four irrelevant cases, for an n of 12.

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The first two hypotheses, (1a) and (1b) regarding party power axis leverage

relationships, were strongly supported by the data. In ten cases the ruling party was

dominant. Of those, seven (70%) were associated with minor constitutional changes and

three (30%) were associated with major changes. In an additional three relevant cases the

opposition exerted leverage over the ruling party. All of those cases were correctly

predicted to occur with major changes. The table below offers an overview of the

findings.

Table 5.3. Party power axis leverage findings

Major vs. minor changes

Party power leverage

victor

Major change Minor change

Ruling party 3 7

Opposition party 3 0

In these hypotheses, directionality matters – that is, I expect opposition leverage to lead

to major changes, but not necessarily the other way around. Directionality matters

particularly because of the mechanism for the institutional shift: a legitimacy crisis. The

regime’s efforts to change Article 27 were consistently reactionary (Walsh Sanderson

1984, 71-72) rather than preemptive. When a legitimacy crisis occurred, the regime

examined the interests of those who threatened its legitimacy and then reacted by making

a change. Major changes sometimes occurred without opposition leverage because the

threat to the regime’s legitimacy was not connected to the external opposition – it

originated from within the party. However, the dominant party nature of the system – the

fact that the regime was de facto in a position of power – suggests that any incidence of

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opposition leverage occurred because of a legitimacy crisis, so that any time the

opposition exerted leverage, that leverage was associated with a major institutional shift.

Table 5.4. Coding decisions for Hypotheses 1a and 1b

Amendment Date Party power

leverage winner

Major/minor change

1 1933/1934 Ruling party Major

2 1936/1937 Ruling party Major

3 1938/1940 Ruling party Minor

4 1943/1945 Ruling party Minor

5 1946/1947 Ruling party Major

7 1959/1960 Ruling party Minor

8 1960/1960 Ruling party Minor

10 1974/1975 Ruling party Minor

11 1975/1976 Ruling party Minor

12 1975/1976 Ruling party Minor

13 1982/1983 Opposition party Major

15 1991/1992 Opposition party Major

16 1991/1992 Opposition party Major

Table 5.4 above lays out all coding decisions for hypotheses (1a) and (1b). For

these hypotheses, concerning the relationship between the party power axis and major or

minor constitutional changes, three cases were excluded from analysis as unrelated to the

hypotheses being tested: amendment #6 (1947/1948),70

amendment #9 (1974/1975), and

amendment #14 (1987). Amendment #6 granted the federal executive the ability to grant

land to foreign nations for embassies; amendment #9 dropped the word “territories” from

all areas of the article that previously referred to “states and territories”; and amendment

#14 put under the government’s purview the ability to make decisions to protect the

environment. These cases were excluded because nothing in their content suggested any

70

The dates given are of initial presentation to the legislature, when the amendment was first suggested,

and publication in the Diario Oficial, when it passed into law.

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sort of variation between the ruling party and the opposition party. In the three cases

given above, neither party’s platform was reflected in the amendment.

Six of the remaining 13 cases were coded as major institutional changes – that is,

amendments that significantly altered/reshaped the institution. Amendments 1

(1933/1934), 2 (1936/1937), 5 (1946/1947), 13 (1982/1983), 15 (1991/1992) and 16

(1991/1992) were all major institutional shifts. These six modifications are the major

changes made to article 27, reflecting major shifts in the legislature itself. The remaining

modifications are all coded as minor in that, while they may mark significant changes to

the article, the constitution and the legislature, they do not change the shape of the overall

institution. The historical evidence for coding major shifts will be addressed below, as I

discuss the coding decisions for the party power axis. As a robustness check, it is worth

noting that all but one of the cases coded as major shifts followed Kaufman Purcell’s

(1973) intuition of being introduced late in the legislative session – here, December. The

one case that was not introduced in December was introduced in November.

Beginning with hypothesis 1b, Amendments 13, 15 and 16 were all coded as

opposition party leverage victories. Amendment 13 increased the legal controls around

ejido formation and made economic development a tenet of the role of the state. In doing

so, it reflected the PAN’s platform, especially in terms of encouraging economic

development in the rural areas. The PAN of this time was characterized by neopanismo:

“The neopanismo movement was characterized by a return to pro-business

considerations, more forceful government criticism, and more aggressive

political activism. But as a rule the neopanistas were not antagonistic to

the party’s traditions or fundamental doctrine. Neopanistas, even those

closely associated with the Monterrey business community, backed the

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PAN’s traditional doctrine of state supervisions of the economy to provide

shelter against the ravages of ‘savage’ capitalism.” (Ard 2003, 100)

Traditionally, rural lands had been protected by the PRI, and the economic growth

of the countryside was supported less through actual development and more through

state-sponsored subsidies. These subsidies worked against the PAN’s interest in a more

open market and in developing the area. By shifting the focus from subsidies to actual

development, as the modification did, the amendment was more reflective of the PAN’s

public goals than of those of the PRI. Amendment 13 also represents a major shift, in a

similar direction to amendment 5 but still changing the shape of the institution. Where

amendment 5 granted farmers some legal rights, amendment 13 shifted the focus of the

state from protecting its own rights and administering land decisions to actively

protecting the interests of farmers. This included such provisions as decreeing the state

responsible for improving agricultural infrastructure (something previously dependent on

ejidatarios). Amendment 13 occurred during the economic crisis, when the regime’s

legitimacy was challenged as a result of its inability to avoid the crisis. The timing is not

coincidental; Castillo (2004, 66-67) describes the amendment explicitly as a response to

the crisis.

Amendments 15 and 16 also directly reflect the PAN platform. Amendment 15

(1991/1992) represented the single greatest change in the history of Article 27. This

amendment completely changed ownership of the ejidos. Rather than the ejidos being

essentially property of the state granted to ejidatarios to farm, and theirs so long as they

maintained the land, this amendment gave ejidatarios the ability to buy and sell land

independently, and allowed ejido ownership to be treated more like typical property

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ownership once the ejido titling process was completed. It also, crucially, granted

businesses and commercial industries the ability to buy land – something that had been

explicitly denied them since 1917. The amendment represented a massive shift from the

promise of the revolution, moving from forbidding larger-scale land ownership to tacitly

encouraging it (while still formally banning latifundios) by granting more land to private

industry – something for which the PAN had advocated for quite some time, as it created

more space for private industry. In terms of major institutional evolutionary shifts, this

amendment showcased the end of the revolutionary regime – a definite shift away from

the PRI’s justification of its power as the party of the revolution and towards a more

“business as usual” approach to politics. In the spirit of that transition, amendment 16

(1991/1992 also) marked a final, vital transition away from revolutionary ideals by

granting religious institutions the right to own land. The final reform is also a direct

reflection on the PAN’s Catholic heritage and represented the culmination of reforms the

party had been pursuing at least since 1987 (Ard 2003, 136-137). I contend that these

almost-concurrent changes were, again, a response to a legitimacy crisis: in this case, the

crisis arising out of the 1988 presidential election and the regime’s near-loss of the

legislature in 1991. Faced with the possibility of regime demise, the PRI scrabbled to

maintain control, attempting to satisfy key groups of supporters that were threatening to

depart (Appendini 1998, 29).

The remaining ten relevant cases all demonstrate ruling-party leverage. Of these,

three are major changes and seven are minor changes, generally reflecting what the

theory predicts. Amendments 5 (1946/1947) and 7 (1959/1960) both demonstrate a

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strengthening of landholders’ rights that reflects the PRI’s platform as the party of the

revolution and the party of the poor, against the wealthy. Amendment 5 is also a major

institutional shift in terms of the rights of ejidatarios. Previously, the legislature had

generally been set up to lay out the powers of the branches of government; although there

was a section on rights of citizens, it contained mostly generic lofty ideals rather than

enforcement capabilities (for instance, “All Mexicans by birth are entitled to

citizenship”). Amendment 5 marked an important change in the approach to rights, by

granting ejidatarios the right of amparo, or the ability to challenge the government’s

decisions (in this case, the decision to expropriate land) as unconstitutional71

. Prior to

this amendment, ejidatarios had no legal recourse should the state decide to expropriate

their land (Walsh Sanderson 1984, 46). Thus, granting them the ability to challenge the

decision – and to do so by having it declared unconstitutional – marks a significant shift

in how the legislature related to voters. This change can again be traced to a legitimacy

crisis, in this case overcoming the Almazán rebellion. The regime struggled to maintain

its public image as the party of the revolution while simultaneously cutting or decreasing

many of the peasants’ gains from the Cárdenas era without inviting further opposition

(Walsh Sanderson 1984, 57). In this case as well as for the two remaining major

changes, the attempt to cut responsibilities to farmers arose from struggles within the

party regarding the balance between economic development and peasant support (Grindle

1986). Amendment 7 is a minor change, as it does not alter the direction of the

institution.

71

For a discussion of amparo, see Lutz (1996).

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Amendments 3 (1938/1940), 4 (1943/1945), 8 (1960), 10 (1974/1975) and 12

(1975/1976) all deal with relatively small expansions to the state’s powers. Amendment

3 allows the state to legislate over petroleum in all its forms. Amendment 4 grants the

state the ability to distribute water rights, while 8 is concerned with legislating electricity

and 10 with legislating nuclear power. These all reflect the PRI’s platform in terms of

granting more powers to the state – in the case of these modifications, at the expense of

private industry. Amendment 12, meanwhile, establishes an exclusive economic zone

under the state’s purview – and in doing so, further increases the area under state control,

reflecting PRI goals. They are also all minor changes.

The changes made in amendments 1 (1933/1934) and 2 (1936/1937) also display

ruling party leverage. The first amendment substantially rewrote Article 27, eliminating

all references to the prior regime as well as removing most of the earlier rules governing

sales and alienation of communal land. It also added ten new fragments to the article,

revising the rules of sale and expropriation and setting up the legal system as it related to

land ownership. The 1917 version of the article was largely aspirational; it was, as has

been previously mentioned, a significant part of the regime’s justification for its rule.

The 1933/1934 amendment moved the article – and the legislature for which it was a

vehicle – from an aspirational approach to a more practical, concrete one. This was an

important indicator of the legislature’s ability to govern as a representative body.

Amendment 2 represents a major institutional shift in terms of how it grants large

amounts of power to the executive that had previously been unassigned – which

essentially meant that the legislature could no longer utilize those powers. The

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amendment rewrites fragment VII in such a way as to essentially grant the federal

executive sole power over the assignment of communal land. This reflects the trend

within Mexican politics at the time towards greater consolidation of power in the

executive at the expense of the legislature. 1936/1937 was the height of the Cárdenas

sexenio, the period in which he successfully exiled former party boss Calles and unified

the disparate factions of the PRI into the rough shape of the party it remained for the next

60+ years. Despite the absence of a sole unified opposition party and a weakened

legislature in this period, both changes represent a strengthening of core PRI values,

including the attribution of greater powers to the state.

Finally, amendment 11 (1975/1976) represents a very paternalistic view of the

state-society relationship. It essentially allows the state to make decisions about citizens’

needs, without consulting the citizens themselves. This paternalism is very reflective of

the PRI’s platform, basically conferring on the party the ability to legislate every measure

of public life – a tendency reflected in the PRI’s involuntary incorporation of workers

into the party. Workers in the industries represented by the major party branches were

required to become union members, and then automatically enrolled as party members

(Goldin 1989).

The testing confirms the association between the dependent and independent

variables for the first pair of hypotheses, and the explanation above explains the coding

decisions and details the content of each amendment. But why did these changes

happen? What is the overarching link between the individual amendments and the

patterns of institutional evolution? In the case of the first two hypotheses, the changes

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happened because of a struggle to determine the relationship between the ruling party and

the state. When the ruling party exerted leverage, constitutional changes were primarily

minor because they were aimed at clarifying the role of the legislature and fixing the

party and the state as functionally indistinguishable. When the opposition party exerted

leverage, however, the changes were exclusively major because they were aimed at a

major political overhaul: extricating the ruling party from the state.

For the hypothesized link between ruling party leverage and minor constitutional

changes, there are three cases that challenge the hypothesis. The three major changes that

occur under ruling party leverage contrary to prediction are about setting ejidatarios’

rights. As laid out above, the first two changes, from 1933 and 1936, significantly

circumscribe those rights. The intent appears to be to facilitate regime consolidation. In

the first 20 years of the constitution (from about 1915 to 1935), very few land grants were

actually made, and until Cárdenas’ presidency, party leaders were more interested in

using Article 27 to maintain the appearance of concession to peasants than in actually

making concessions. I have detailed 1929-1945 as a period of consolidation, where the

party was consolidating its control over the people and the executive was consolidating

his control over the party. Both the first two changes are about consolidating control of

the ejido properties in the hands of the central government, and reflect the general theme

of consolidation throughout the period. The third change, from 1946, falls very slightly

outside of the period of consolidation – it is the very beginning of the second period - but

is still demonstrating consolidation. It very slightly increases ejidatarios’ rights, but

ensures that that increase (access to the judicial system) is still overseen by the state.

187

These three changes, which seem to challenge the hypothesis, are actually reflective of

the ruling party using its monolithic presence in the legislature to promote the

consolidation of the state. The nature of that consolidation is such that it binds rank-and-

file voters to the party: in order to win and retain ejidos in a system so dominated by the

party and the party’s bureaucracy, prospective ejidatarios were forced to maintain a

positive relationship with the party.

The outliers, then, are about consolidating the role of the party with respect to the

state. The confirming cases are less about establishing the regime’s control than about

clarifying the role of the legislature, and through it, further linking the party and the state.

The cases are almost entirely located in the second period (the exceptions are two cases

in the latter half of the first period). The second period was when the party was at its

absolute strongest; the changes in this period pertained to using a party-dominated

legislature to intertwine the party and the state. Increasing governmental control over a

variety of resources when the party controlled the legislature meant that any businesses

interested in a variety of lucrative areas – oil drilling, mining, etc. – would have to build

and sustain a positive relationship with the party. At the same time, the increasing

restrictions on what land was held by ejidatarios (for instance, no mineral rights, limited

water rights, etc.) tied into the party’s central role in assigning and administering ejidos

and meant that ejidatarios were also increasingly beholden to the party. Both the

confirming cases and the outliers were caused by efforts to inextricably link the ruling

party and the state.

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For the hypothesized link between opposition party leverage and major

constitutional changes, there are three cases. They are all in the fourth period (1982,

1991, and 1991), when the opposition had emerged as a vital force in politics. The

emergence of the opposition had a great deal to do with why these changes occurred. As

the PAN was becoming more prominent, winning more seats at both the local and

national levels of government, there was a shift in political values that favored the

opposition’s goals. As explained earlier, the 1982 economic crisis caused a shift to the

right both for the PAN and for the PRI. That shift to the right meant, among other things,

the recognition that the ejidos were not generally profitable and that profitability was

more important than the promise of the revolution. This too fit with the continuing

prominence of the technocrats in the PRI. The ejidos were largely unprofitable, and in

many cases a dramatic workforce shortage caused by emigration to the U.S. meant that

the land was actually going unworked (Stephen, 1993). These factors means that from a

fiscal perspective, cutting government expenditures on the ejidos and allowing the

formation of more profitable large farms (which had the benefit of generating revenue for

the state) was a logical solution. This also fit well with something that had been one of

the PAN’s central tenets from formation: that private property should be encouraged, not

restricted (Principios de Doctrina 1985, 18). The 1991/92 reforms were aimed at

facilitating an increase in private property. Not coincidentally, making these reforms –

particularly increasing opportunities to turn ejidos into private property – involved

transforming the state’s approach to the economy from total control into somewhat more

hands-off, which also reduced the regime’s influence.

189

Hypotheses 2a and 2b address the connection between the branch power axis and

the effect on legislative powers. Specifically, I hypothesize that (2a) When the executive

exerts leverage over the legislature, changes are more likely to constrain legislative

powers and (2b) When the legislature exerts leverage over the executive, changes are

more likely to increase legislative powers.

Table 5.5 presents the findings for these hypotheses.

Table 5.5. Branch axis leverage findings

Effect on legislative power

Branch leverage

victor

Increases legislative

powers

Constrains legislative

powers

Executive 4 5

Legislature 2 1

Overall, both hypotheses find support. (2a) is supported by the data (though as

detailed below, the cases which do not follow the predicted pattern suggest that the

hypothesis is only weakly supported): of the nine cases in which the executive exerted

leverage, five of them (55%) constrained the legislature and four (45%) increased

legislative powers. (2b) is also supported, in that two (67%) of the three relevant cases of

legislative leverage were associated with increases in legislative power. The one (33%)

case that does not support the hypothesis, however, merits further discussion.

Legislative leverage is coded simply as whether there are substantive changes

between the proposed amendment and the final amendment. The justification for this

coding for the dissertation as a whole is the assumption that the executive sponsors the

vast majority of proposed amendments72

and so begins the amendment process with the

72

As previously mentioned, the executive sponsored the majority of amendments to all areas of the

constitution (n~500). Specific to Article 27, he sponsored all of them (n=16).

190

field already tilted in his favor; thus, any substantive changes made are expected to be to

the detriment of the executive and the benefit of the legislature. In two of the three cases

of legislative dominance, this pattern holds true. However, in the seventh amendment to

Article 27 (1959/1960), while the structural conditions for coding the amendment as one

of legislative leverage are met – substantive changes are made – the content does not

support the coding. As laid out below, the changes made between the preliminary

amendment draft and the final amendment draft uniformly strengthen the executive, at

the expense of the legislature. For instance, an addition to the text between drafts grants

the president the ability to grant concessions on natural resources and to determine what

the nation’s needs are in terms of resource reserves, as well as to surpass those needs.

Legislative leverage was defined as the legislature’s ability to insert its own preferences

into an amendment, essentially forcing the executive to buy it off. The changes made in

this amendment work against that process. If this case were coded to accurately reflect

the amendment, it would be counted as an additional case of executive leverage where

the legislature is constrained, bringing the total number of cases there to six (60%) out of

ten and presenting further evidence for hypothesis (2a), as reflected in the table below.

Table 5.6. Recoded branch axis leverage findings

Effect on legislative power

Branch leverage

victor

Increases legislative

powers

Constrains legislative

powers

Executive 4 6

Legislature 2 0

The period which the theory predicts as a legislative leverage relationship victory

is not represented in this sample, because no changes were made after 1992 and that final

191

period does not begin until 1994. However, the findings support the theory that 1929-45

and 1988-93 represented executive leverage victories, but not uncomplicated ones: both

periods displayed enough legislative gains to suggest a power struggle between the

branches. The long time horizon for movement from presentation to declaration in the

early years suggests a behind-the-scenes process between the executive and the

legislature, while the fact that several modifications from the later period show

substantial changes between the draft and the final product supports the argument that the

legislature was gaining power and was able to force concessions to a much greater extent

than had historically been the case.

Of the 16 cases in these hypotheses, four – amendments 3 (1938/1940), 5

(1946/1947), 9 (1974), and 16 (1991/1992) - were excluded from analysis as irrelevant to

the hypotheses. All four cases were excluded as irrelevant to the question of whether

legislative powers are increased or constrained. It should be noted that this does not

mean the modifications themselves were irrelevant; on the contrary, amendments 5 and

16 both represented major institutional shifts as discussed above. However, these shifts

did not affect legislative powers, and so are excluded. The table below delineates all

coding decisions for the second set of hypotheses, in order to encapsulate the findings.

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Table 5.7. Coding decisions for hypotheses 2a and 2b

Amendment Date Branch leverage

victor

Increase/constrain

legislative power

1 1933/1934 Executive Constrain

2 1936/1937 Executive Constrain

4 1943/1945 Executive Constrain

6 1947/1947 Executive Constrain

7 1959/1960 Legislature Constrain

8 1960/1960 Executive Increase

10 1974/1975 Executive Increase

11 1975/1976 Executive Constrain

12 1975/1976 Executive Increase

13 1982/1983 Legislature Increase

14 1991/1992 Executive Increase

15 1991/1992 Legislature Increase

Of the remaining 12 cases, nine were coded executive leverage victories and three

were coded legislature leverage victories. Five of the executive-leverage cases

constrained legislative powers, while the remaining four increased legislative powers.

Although those five cases represent support for hypothesis 2a, the four cases that do not

follow the predicted pattern merit special attention. Amendments 8 (1960), 10

(1974/1975), 12 (1975/1976) and 14 (1987) are all executive-leverage victories and

legislative-power increasing, opposite to the theory’s prediction. Amendments 8 and 10

are somewhat unusual relative to the other cases, in that they do not explicitly mention

the legislature at any point; rather, as discussed above, amendment 8 grants the state the

exclusive right to legislate on electricity and amendment 10 grants the state the exclusive

right to legislate on nuclear power. Neither discusses the role of the legislature

specifically; however, amendments to Article 73 pass that ability to legislate exclusively

to the legislature, which results in the amendments to Article 27 being coded as an

increase to legislative powers. It should be noted, however, that these are particularly

minor increases; they may be less about increasing the overall power of the legislature at

193

the expense of the executive than about the executive delegating some level of authority.

Additionally, the quick turnaround from presentation to decree for both amendments

suggests a strong executive in terms of the leverage relationship, which indicates that

there is no hidden bargaining, nor do the amendments appear to be contested by the

legislature. If the passage of these amendments were contested and required legislative-

executive bargaining, we would expect a drawn-out process from presentation to decree;

however, both amendments went through the process in two to three months, including

the Christmas recess. Amendment 14 falls under a similar explanation, in that no

mention of the legislature itself is made in the amendment (which decrees that the state

will attempt to protect the environment); however, changes to other areas of the

Constitution grant that power to the legislature (Varela Olivas unpublished, fn 5). This is

the case for amendment 12 as well.

While the 55% of cases correctly predicted in terms of executive leverage-

constrained legislature linkages does somewhat support hypothesis 2a, the support is

weak at best. One possible explanation for the weak support is a coding issue – for

instance, the amendments that do not directly mention the legislature might arguably

need to be excluded from analysis.73

However, a more likely explanation is that the

legislature serves multiple purposes. In chapter 2 I discussed arguments within the

literature on authoritarian legislatures that explain the legislature both as an

administrative unit, helping the executive to distribute governing responsibilities, and as a

73

While I accept this as a possible explanation, I do not agree with it – I contend that even an indirect

impact on legislative powers is sufficient to merit inclusion.

194

way to co-opt and institutionalize the opposition. These four cases appear to be examples

of the legislature functioning primarily as a bureaucracy.

Of the amendments that support hypothesis 2a (amendments 1, 2, 4, 6, and 11),

amendments 2, 4, and 6 merit special discussion. All follow the coding rule – no or only

cosmetic changes between the initial proposal and the final decree – but they demonstrate

a second dynamic indicative of a more complex relationship between the executive and

the legislature, in the form of the amount of time necessary to move from proposal to

decree. All three had relatively long time horizons (about a year or more) to complete the

legislative process. One of the key dynamics many scholars identify when discussing

legislative-executive relations in Mexico is the executive’s ability to force bills through

the legislature (Weldon 2002; Casar 2002). And it is true that these three amendments

passed, and passed in the language that the original presenter – the executive – preferred.

However, when the legislature is simply a vehicle for the executive, as opposed to any

sort of check on his power, we would expect that amendments would be approved fairly

quickly – as was in fact the case with amendments 1 and 11, which moved through the

entire process in one and three months respectively. A failure to move through the

process quickly suggests deliberate foot-dragging on the part of the legislature. One of

the legislature’s principal capabilities – one of the few areas over which the executive has

no direct influence – is in how long it takes to process a piece of legislation. The fairly

long time horizons exhibited by amendments 2, 4 and 6 suggest some sort of protracted

negotiations between the legislature and the executive. Since there is no evidence of

negotiation in the language of these amendments themselves, it is plausible that the

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executive was forced to make concessions to the legislature in some other area. For

instance, amendment 4 coincided with the timeframe in which the modifications to

parties’ participation would have been discussed (this is the 1946 law creating thresholds

for parties to participate in national politics); while no direct evidence of an exchange

exists, it is plausible that the legislature delayed amending Article 27 in exchange for

some sort of concessions to the 1946 law. This evidence of a power struggle between the

executive and the legislature reflects my periodization premise from chapter 2, in which I

argued that during the first period – 1929-1945 – the executive was still working to

consolidate his control over the legislature and the party. Amendments 2 and 4 fall

within the first period, and amendment 6 is at the very beginning of the second period,

1947.

Hypothesis 2b is supported by amendments 13 and 15; amendment 7, which is

coded as legislature-leverage, demonstrates a constraint on legislative powers.

Amendment 7 appears to be the outlier here, but arguably this is simply a question of

more qualitative evidence being needed to support the coding measures. While

amendment 7 does demonstrate real and significant changes between the proposal and the

decree, those changes are uniformly ones that strengthen the role of the executive. As

such, this suggests not a demonstration of legislative leverage but in fact continued

executive leverage – which is in line with the finding that the modification constrains

legislative powers. Amendments 13 and 15 both represent increases in legislative powers

– both explicitly or implicitly grant powers to the legislature, and amendment 15 also

removes powers from the executive.

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Where the changes in the first set of hypotheses spoke to the struggle to determine

the relationship of the ruling party to the state, the changes affecting this second set of

hypotheses can be attributed to the struggle to determine the appropriate role of the

legislature.

When the executive exerted leverage, increases occurred because he used the

legislature as a bureaucracy and needed to update that bureaucracy. Constraints,

however, were about containing power in his hands. When the legislature exerted

leverage, the sole constraint was again due to the legislature’s role as a bureaucracy:

rather than acting as a power-maximizer, it was facilitating law-making. When increases

occurred, however, they were efforts to alter the role of the legislature, and to help

improve Mexico’s economic status.

In terms of the relationship between the executive and constraints to legislative

powers, all four outliers are really a function of the executive using the legislature as a

bureaucracy, as identified in chapter 4. The outliers involve the legislature gaining the

ability to legislate over electricity, nuclear power, and environmental issues, and setting

up an exclusive economic zone. These broadly fit with the picture of the executive using

the legislature as a bureaucracy, increasing its sphere of influence in order to decrease his

workload on specific but generally trivial areas. The first three amendments were raised

in 1960, 1974 and 1975. In this period, the legislature was quite weak and confronted

with an immensely powerful executive, as laid out in chapters 2 and 4. The amendments

from this period are not significant changes in existing legislative capabilities; rather,

they represent slight modifications in keeping with technology and political trends.

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Of the five cases that confirm the hypothesis, most stem from the first period, which

reflects the executive’s need to bring the legislature under his control in this timeframe.

However, the later amendments – the 1947 amendment allowing the executive’s minister

to sell land to foreign powers in particular – point to the executive constraining the

legislature in order to add important powers to his own parcel. The legislature previously

had the final say over foreign land sales; with this amendment, that authority passed to

the executive. In making his appointee the only one able to sell land to foreigners

(primarily for embassies and other governmental buildings), the executive situated

himself as the ultimate arbiter of land rights in Mexico. Throughout much of the first

period, the changes enacted under the ruling party were aimed at bringing the people

under the party’s control; the executive’s role after that, particularly evident in the 1947

reform, was to bring the party under his control. This is reflected in other amendments to

article 27 which reorganize the ejido-assignment structure, flipping from a system where

a federal legislative committee was the ultimate authority to one where a committee out

of the president’s office was the ultimate land distribution authority.

In terms of the link between legislative leverage victories and increasing

legislative powers, one case is an outlier and two cases support the hypothesis. The

challenging case here, where the legislature constrains itself, stems from 1959 and gives

the executive authority over natural resources. This outlier, however, is less a challenge

to the theory than evidence of executive authority – this was the middle of the second

period, when the legislature was essentially a bureaucratic arm for the president. The

change here increases presidential powers, which fits that approach. The president had

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an incentive to keep control of natural resources in his own hands, rather than ceding

such an important area to the legislature: resource rights can be extremely lucrative. By

maintaining executive control, the president was able to limit legislative abilities to raise

funds, which would have increased the ability of legislators to act independently. In this

way, the disconfirming case actually confirms the theory, as laid out in chapter 4 and

reiterated above: the only instance in which the legislature behaved unexpectedly is one

in which it was essentially controlled by the executive.

Both the confirming cases represent important changes to article 27, and both

grant further powers to the legislature while simultaneously diminishing the regime’s

powers. These cases were a reflection of the opposition’s increasing role in the state.

Amendment 15 in particular gave oversight capabilities back to the legislature, building a

group that would help to facilitate ejido titling in order to permit sales when the

ejidatarios wanted them. Again, the efforts to modernize ejidos and ejido laws were due

to the need to help rebuild Mexico’s waning economy as laid out above.

5.9. Conclusion

My theory speaks particularly to how and why institutional evolution varies. This

chapter offered a glimpse of institutional evolution using an in-depth analysis of

amendments to one specific article, demonstrating both that the theory explains an actual

changing pattern of behavior between actors rather than simply ambivalence, and that

putting the modifications in the historical context plays an important role in supporting

the theory.

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Institutional evolution, as Thelen and Greif both argue, may occur in sudden,

sharp changes or in smaller, gradual ones. Article 27 demonstrates how those sudden

changes – what I term major institutional shifts – are a reaction to changing political

dynamics brought about by regime responses to legitimacy crises, while the minor shifts

are more reflective of the slowly shifting dynamics of political relations over time.

This chapter also highlighted the potentially complicated relationship between

branch axis leverage and legislative power. Together with chapter 4, this chapter

highlights the importance of an in-depth understanding of the cases. Chapter 5 has built

on the previous chapter’s foundations to offer more compelling support for the branch

axis-legislative power relationship laid out in the second set of hypotheses.

Overall, the modifications to Article 27 provide valuable confirmation both of the

hypotheses derived from the theory, and of the theory itself. With that testing

confirmation, I turn to some concluding remarks.

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Table 5.2. Coding and Hypothesis Findings by Case

Amend-ment #

Presentation date

Period

Executive vs. legislative dominance

Increases vs. constrains legislative power

Ruling party vs. Opposition party dominance

Major vs. minor change

Hypothesis 1a findings

Hypothesis 1b

Hypothesis 2a findings

Hypothesis 2b findings

1 12/13/1933

1 Executive Constrains Ruling party Major Disconfirms 1a Confirms 2a

2 12/23/1936

1 Executive Constrains Ruling party Major Disconfirms 1a Confirms 2a

3 12/22/1938

1 Executive N/A Ruling party Minor Confirms 1a N/A N/A

4 9/29/1943

1 Executive Constrains Ruling party Minor Confirms 1a Confirms 2a

5 12/5/1946

2 Executive N/A Ruling party Major Disconfirms 1a N/A N/A

6 12/17/1947

2 Executive Constrains N/A Minor N/A N/A Confirms 2a

7 10/6/1959

2 Legislative Constrains Ruling party Minor Confirms 1a Disconfirms 2b

8 11/1/1960

2 Executive Increases Ruling party Minor Confirms 1a Disconfirms 2a

9 9/3/1974

2 Executive N/A N/A Minor N/A N/A N/A N/A

10 12/5/1974

2 Executive Increases Ruling party Minor Confirms 1a Disconfirms 2a

11 11/14/1975

2 Executive Constrains Ruling party Minor Confirms 1a Confirms 2a

12 11/19/1975

2 Executive Increases Ruling party Minor Confirms 1a Disconfirms 2a

13 12/7/1982

3 Legislative Increases Opposition party

Major Confirms 1b Confirms 2b

14 4/22/1987

3 Executive Increases N/A Minor N/A N/A Disconfirms 2a

15 11/7/1991

4 Legislative Increases Opposition party

Major Confirms 1b Confirms 2b

16 12/10/1991

4 Executive N/A Opposition party

Major Confirms 1b

N/A N/A

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Chapter 6: Conclusion

6.1 Existing arguments revisited

My dissertation is intended to answer the question, “how and why do legislatures

evolve under dominant party authoritarian regimes?” Although no work has focused

specifically on legislative evolution in dominant party systems, the topic of institutional

evolution is well-represented in the literature. There are two common approaches to the

question of how institutions evolve, or what the process looks like: the gradual approach

and the sudden, or critical junctures, approach.

The gradual approach put forth by scholars like Shepsle (1986; 1989) maintains

that institutional evolution is entirely or almost entirely a gradual process, occurring in

small changes over an extended time period. This approach, however, is unable to

account for moments of sudden dramatic change, when the system shifts materially in a

very short time. In the case of Mexico, the massive shift in the form and function of the

legislature that occurred with the 1977 electoral system reform cannot be explained solely

by looking at incremental changes. While many small changes occurred in the lead-up to

the election law modification, those changes – to areas like the government’s control over

waterways – could neither explain nor predict the sudden massive institutional shift that

occurred in 1977. That shift makes sense, however, as a reaction to the extraordinary

event of the uncontested 1976 presidential election.

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Theorists such as Krasner (1984) and Mahoney (2001) who support the sudden

model challenge the gradual approach by arguing that institutional evolution occurs in

large bursts when the institution hits a critical juncture, and that between critical junctures

the institution is essentially at equilibrium. The problem with this approach is that it fails

to account for the many small changes that occur between critical junctures. Those small

changes can contribute to the change of circumstance that leads to the critical juncture –

without acknowledging their role, we are left to wonder at how the paths available to

move beyond the critical juncture emerge. For instance, in Mexico small changes could

aggregate to affect the possibilities available at the next critical juncture. The Chamber

of Deputies controlled taxation over a range of commodities; increasing the list of

commodities led to increased revenue as well as increased areas of political

responsibility. That, in turn, along with an array of other small evolutionary steps,

contributed to the ability of legislative party members to increase their powers and

capabilities and sometimes emerge to challenge the executive.

In short, neither the gradual nor the critical junctures argument sufficiently

explains the entirety of the evolutionary process. Each leaves some important aspect of

the evolutionary process unclear. I address this failing by offering a hybrid approach, in

line with the mixed approach (combining gradual and sudden change) espoused by

Thelen (2004) and by Greif and Laitin (2004), but with an added element addressing the

causal mechanism of institutional evolution. My theory argues that legislative evolution

can occur both suddenly and gradually, where sudden changes represent larger leaps

forward in the evolutionary process and gradual changes are more incremental, of little

203

importance individually but eventually piling up to make significant evolutionary

progress. I argued that the mechanism by which these changes are able to occur is the

regime’s response to a legitimacy crisis, which alters the underlying leverage balance

between the branch axis actors and between the party power axis actors.

In an authoritarian context in particular, the study of institutional and specifically

legislative evolution has been fairly uncommon, except as it pertains to regime transition.

And yet, understanding the process before any sort of transition is under way is also

valuable. By focusing only on transition, we risk missing those evolutionary processes

that don’t appear to lead to democracy, as when a regime reinforces its authoritarianism

rather than liberalizing. We also run the risk of understanding evolution solely as the

process of becoming democratic, as the older generation of transition and consolidation

theorists like O’Donnell (1986) did. I resolve this challenge by removing the assumption

that evolution is a linear process. I take the view that evolution is not the process of

becoming democratic but simply the process of becoming something different – of an

institution filling a distinct role from its previous incarnation. This approach reduces the

risk of assuming that only movements toward democratization are representative of

evolution. By focusing on that shift in function, rather than on approaching democracy,

my theory highlights the changing relationships that underscore institutional power and

capabilities. Focusing on those relationships, in turn, helps me to shed light on the two

different forms of institutional evolution: sudden change and gradual change. Contrary to

many theorists, but in keeping with Thelen (2004) and with Greif and Laitin (2004), I

204

show that both occur, and that both play a role in responding to – as well as shaping – the

process of institutional change.

6.2 Summary of the findings

My theory of institutional evolution argues that evolutionary movements, both

large and small, are the function of changing leverage relationships and are caused by the

regime response to a legitimacy crisis. When a legitimacy crisis occurs, the regime

response suddenly and dramatically alters the power alignments within the institution.

Major changes follow these new power alignments and allow actors to use newly-

strengthened bargaining positions to enact constitutional amendments that fundamentally

alter the institution. Minor changes follow the new power alignments and the evolved

institution, building on prior changes but not in themselves causing fundamental

institutional shifts.

Within this framework, my theory identified two axes of actors: the branch power

axis, and the party power axis. When each of those axes experiences a shift in the overall

power balance, the actors in the axis must reconfigure their relationship. For the branch

power axis, these actors are the executive and the legislature; for the party power axis,

they are the ruling party and the opposition party. The power balance for each axis –

what I call the leverage relationship – exists along a continuum. In terms of branch

power, this means that in an individual case either the executive exerts leverage over the

legislature, or the legislature exerts leverage over the executive. Over a given period of

time these cases of leverage aggregate, to determine whether in that period the executive

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or the legislature (or, for the party power axis, the ruling party or the opposition party)

more often exerts leverage.

The two actor axes affect different aspects of the evolutionary process. I argue

that the shifting leverage relationship between the parties affects how rapidly moments of

institutional evolution occur, while that between the branches affects the directionality of

those evolutionary moments – specifically whether they constrain or increase legislative

capabilities.

My theory argues that over the lifetime of Mexico’s dominant party regime –

1929-2000 – the regime response to legitimacy crises caused shifts in both axes’ leverage

relationships, leading to increased bargaining capabilities for the historically weaker

group on each axis. However, the weaker group’s shift to a stronger position did not

occur in tandem along the two axes. Through an inductive process of careful study, I

identified four legitimacy crises the regime experienced, dividing the time of dominant

party rule into five periods. Each period had a winner and loser along each axis, but the

former loser on the party power axis became more powerful well before the former loser

on the branch power axis did so.

I have stated that the leverage relationships on each axis affected different aspects

of the evolutionary process. That led me to two sets of hypotheses. Building on the logic

that dominant party regimes generally design institutions to their own benefit, I

hypothesize that (1a) When the ruling party has leverage over the opposition party,

institutional evolution will occur more slowly relative to other periods. Since the system

as designed benefits the ruling party, however, the opposition party prefers change,

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leading to the hypothesis that (1b) When the opposition party has leverage over the ruling

party, institutional evolution will occur more rapidly relative to other periods. At the

same time, the fact that authoritarian systems favor the executive and generally attempt to

limit checks on his power leads me to hypothesize that (2a) When the executive has

leverage over the legislature, changes are more likely to constrain legislative powers.

The legislature’s presumed desire to improve its own standing leads to the hypothesis that

(2b) When the legislature has leverage over the executive, changes are more likely to

increase legislative powers.

I tested these hypotheses against two data sets: first, the set of all changes to the

legislative powers (articles 50-79) and second, the set of all changes to Article 27. By

employing the comparative method to the larger sample, I was able to demonstrate that a

link between my independent and dependent variables did in fact exist. Through the test

on the smaller sample, which involved a much more indepth analysis of each individual

change on a small sample size, I showed that the constitutional changes which

represented evolution were clearly the result of shifting leverage relationships, as

opposed to a spurious correlation based off of one actor valuing the amendment and the

other actor having no opinion on the issue.

I thoroughly confirmed the link between the party power axis and speed and

degree of evolution, my hypotheses 1a and 1b. Chapter 4 showed that rate of

constitutional change – my proxy for institutional evolution – was higher in those periods

where the opposition party was victorious in its leverage relationship, and lower when the

ruling party was victorious. This finding was thoroughly confirmed in chapter 5, where

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the small n precluded capturing change by period, and institutional evolution was instead

captured by major and minor changes to the constitution. In that scenario, major changes

were correlated with instances of opposition leverage victory, and minor changes with

instances of ruling party leverage victory.

The link between the branch power axis and the type of evolutionary movement

proved more complex. When analyzed in a large-n setting, hypotheses 2a and 2b were

not initially confirmed. The data showed that increases to legislative powers always

outpaced decreases, essentially suggesting that the legislature was the leverage winner

throughout the life of the regime – an illogical finding for an authoritarian system

controlled by the executive. However, I argued that this was less a theoretical failure and

more a coding issue. By recoding the legislative powers to reflect degrees of change

(major increase, minor increase, major constraint, minor constraint) I was able to show

that the theoretical link between an increasingly powerful legislature and evolutionary

moments materially strengthening that legislature was valid. In legislative-victory

periods the legislative powers experienced more major increases than in executive-

victory periods, implying that when the legislature was able to exert pressure on the

executive, it did so in such a fashion as to challenge overall executive power and

materially strengthen its own position. When the executive was the leverage-victor,

however, there were more minor increases in legislative powers. This suggested that

those changes were primarily a function of the executive attempting to use the legislature

as a bureaucratic tool to manage work, rather than as an organization for manifesting

political power and providing checks on government.

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The one challenge to these conclusions is that, while Article 27 proves the link

overall, it cannot do so by period. The number of cases is so small that a period-by-

period analysis is not possible. In fact, there are no cases from period 5, making total

verification of the hypotheses impossible. However, the strong correlations demonstrated

between branch axis leverage victory and degree of change to legislative powers does

support the argument that over all, there is a link between the branch with the ability to

exert leverage and the type of change that branch pursues. Coupled with the unanimous

support for hypotheses 1a and 1b, I conclude that Mexico under the PRI experienced five

distinct periods of institutional evolution which varied in terms of the ability of different

branches to exert leverage, and in terms of the ability of the parties to exert leverage. In

periods when the ruling party was more able to exert leverage, the legislature evolved at a

slower rate. When this was coupled with an executive able to exert leverage over the

legislature, the general trend of institutional evolution was essentially to increase the

legislature’s ability to expedite the executive’s orders. When ruling party leverage was

coupled with legislative leverage, we would expect to see a legislature that gradually

became more independent of the president; however, this scenario never actually

occurred.

In periods where the opposition party was more able to exert leverage, the

legislature evolved at a more rapid rate. Coupled with executive leverage, this resulted in

a legislature which quickly picked up a number of minor capabilities but was not

particularly able to function as a check on the executive or expand its significant powers.

Coupled with legislative leverage, however, the result was a period where the legislature

209

emerged forcefully as a powerful institution capable of constraining the executive and

putting in place laws to prevent the reemergence of an authoritarian regime in Mexico.

Taken all together, my theory paints a picture of a state that began with a

moderate rate of evolution, where the types of changes suggest an effort partly to

determine the function of the institution but more to expand it to fit governing needs.

This transitions into a period with a very low rate of evolution, where the changes are

almost entirely aimed at expanding legislative responsibilities to fit the executive’s

governing needs. Next is a period with a high rate of evolution, where there is a struggle

between groups – an effort on one part to alter the function of the legislature and on the

other part to control the legislature. This leads into a period of record high rate of

evolution, coupled with a continuing struggle over the future of the legislature and the

regime as a whole. Finally, evolution slows down some, and the legislature’s role is

entirely revamped. Essentially, the path of institutional evolution traces Mexico’s move

from an emerging authoritarian state, to a thoroughly authoritarian one, to a struggling

autocracy with emerging democratic elements, to a strengthening of those democratic

elements, into a democracy.

6.3 Unanswered questions

This dissertation serves as a first step towards tracing the process of legislative

evolution in dominant party authoritarian regimes, and demonstrating the connection

between evolutionary periods and regime legitimacy crises. However, there are several

questions that should be answered in future work.

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First, the nature of branch power’s effect on legislative capabilities remains

uncertain. From a testing perspective, the putative link between shifting branch axis

leverage relationships and the type of change to legislative powers must be explored in

greater detail. One obvious step is to look for more detail on every relevant constitutional

amendment – something that was possible with regards to Article 27 but not to the rest of

the sample. When I was in Mexico, I was able to find more information on some of the

amendments by examining party newspapers in the PAN’s national archives. Due to time

constraints I was not able to do a complete archive search; greater access to the PAN

archives would likely improve the hypotheses’ testability. The PRI archives were not

accessible to the public, but the Hemeroteca Nacional – the newspapers archives – would

have all the major Mexican archives for the period in question. A systematic search of

these sources might shed light on whether the issue facing my hypotheses was, as I have

argued, a simple information/coding failure or whether the theory and hypotheses are

simply wrong.

A second question is whether the pattern I have identified in legislative evolution

also pertains to other institutions, in which case it represents a potentially valuable

addition to the field, or whether it speaks only to the legislature – making it, while

interesting, far less broadly useful. I have argued that the theory advanced here of

shifting leverage relationships is representative of institutions as a whole, but that the

application of that theory – the identification of the two axes of actors – is specific to

legislatures. This claim needs to be tested. The high-stakes nature of sanctioned

opposition involvement in dominant party politics (the potential specter of electoral

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defeat) suggests another high stakes institution would be the most valuable arena to test

the theory. Accordingly, a future iteration of this project might involve testing the theory

on elections. As repeated events with formal opposition involvement, they represent a

highly critical political institution. The challenge here would be identifying bargaining

behavior. In theory, electoral outcomes cannot be bargained over between actors. In

practice, as Mexico demonstrated, this may not be the case – the regime can decide to

hand over disputed elections (as it did at the local level for many years) to buy continued

opposition participation. But this is not how the system is supposed to work; in fact, it is

blatant fraud, and as such records of bargains will not be accessible.

There are also some types of institutions that the theory inherently excludes. For

instance, a theory of institutional evolution that is heavily dependent on opposition

contestation will not be able to explain judicial evolution – because those positions are

appointed rather than elected, there is no potential threat to electoral victory, and the

opposition lacks a way to capitalize on legitimacy crises.

The most important unanswered question, though, is whether Mexico is unique or

whether the theory applies to a broader universe of dominant party authoritarian regimes.

If my argument is correct, other regimes should follow the basic pattern I have identified

– legitimacy crisis, shifting power relationships, large and small evolutionary moments,

legitimacy crisis. Therefore, further research must test the theory on non-Mexican cases.

One possibility is pre-1995 South Africa. If one accepts South Africa at that point as an

authoritarian regime rather than an extremely limited democracy, it shares many

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dynamics with Mexico. Both cases had regular executive turnover and an active

legislature. Both also had a primary opposition party, and both were long-lasting.

A second possible comparative case is modern Singapore. With a dominant party

system that stretches back to the 1960s, Singapore offers a particularly interesting case in

that the regime is still in control today. It does not have much executive turnover – there

have been three prime ministers since independence – but it does have an active

legislature with growing opposition representation, and the constitution appears to play

an important role in political life. Singapore also offers a chance to develop the

predictive aspect of the theory. If researchers could determine the bases of regime

legitimacy, it would be possible to identify past legitimacy crises and the government’s

response, and possibly build an understanding of domestic politics that would allow for

the identification of future legitimacy crises when they emerged. This would give the

opportunity for on the ground theory testing. One challenge to expanding to include

either of these cases is that they are in entirely different regions, with very different

histories. Latin America has a long history of dictators and elected autocrats; the

expectation that political institutions may be used to maintain power is typical. South

Africa in particular lacks that history of dictators. Singapore’s political history more

closely reflects Mexico’s, but it is of much more limited duration – where Mexico

achieved independence in 1821, and proceeded to experience various dictatorships and

monarchies until the civil war and the rise of the PRI in 1929. Singapore, however, has

only been an independent nation since 1959, and the same party has been in power since

then. It lacks the political turmoil of Mexico, and as such may utilize institutions

213

differently. However, both the cases identified above would be valuable to test, as much

because of their differences from Mexico as in spite of them. If the same pattern of

evolution exists in regimes with significantly different histories from the Mexican story,

it suggests that the underlying leverage dynamics and legitimacy crises are actually

pieces of a broader pattern that may explain a variety of cases.

6.4 Conclusions

When the PRI lost control of the presidency in 2000, the Mexican legislature did

not stop evolving. On the contrary, it simply continued in a different vein. The changes

that have occurred since then – the massive judicial overhauls, the creation of further

internal checks and balances – all speak to the ongoing process of legislative evolution in

Mexico. And yet, none of those changes could have occurred – the PRI could not have

lost power and then won it again, in a democratic setting – without the evolutionary paths

carved by both the regime and the institution in earlier periods. This dissertation has

shown that institutional evolution occurs even in the least likely places – dominant party

regimes where the ruling party’s electoral control has not been challenged. While

significant questions remain to be answered, I have begun to explore the link between the

executive and the legislature, and between ruling parties and opposition parties, in a way

that sheds light on evolution and on how those relationships can shift even while the

surface elected majority remains stable. If future research demonstrates the theory is

viable across a broader universe of cases, so much the better; but even if the applicable

214

universe is limited to Mexico, we have an improved understanding of the power

dynamics that underlie the regime, and the legitimacy crises that drove them.

215

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Appendix

Appendix A: Executive-Legislative Bargaining in Democracies

The idea of laws and constitutions as the outcome of a bargaining process

between the legislature and the executive is well-represented within democratic literature.

At the sub-national level, Buckley (2005) demonstrates how various versions of the New

York state constitution were used to move the state from a strong legislative system to a

strong executive system, particularly with respect to powers over the budget. Cameron

and McCarty (2004) develop several models of veto bargaining centering on the president

vetoing legislative actions. Brown (2000) also highlights the use of constitutional powers

as a bargaining tool in transitioning Russia. Cox and Morgenstern’s (2002) piece on

legislative-executive bargaining in democratic Latin America provides a look at how

even strong executives may be driven to bargaining relationships. Helmke (2010)

pursues a related line of questioning covering democratic Latin American regimes from

1985-2008. Her analysis focuses on the nexus of inter-branch crises; she identifies what

she terms ‘crisis bargaining’ between the branches, dependent on a branch’s ability to

threaten another branch’s survival.

The democratic literature is useful in providing an initial introduction to

bargaining between the executive and the legislature. However, this literature is

223

fundamentally different from the authoritarian literature in that it assumes that the

executive and the legislature are roughly equal players. One actor may have slightly

greater power than the other, particularly on certain issues like the budget – but the idea

of blocking the other actor is legitimate for both branches. In authoritarian systems, the

executive is generally far more powerful, and given that the legislature’s role is generally

constrained, it is less acceptable for the legislature to veto. While these sources are

important to the study of executive-legislative bargaining, they have limited applicability

in an authoritarian setting.