Upcoming Mexico Elections to Determine Future of NAFTA
Mexico’s upcoming presidential election on June 2 will determine if the NAFTA partner can balance democratic governance, while supporting strong central authority.
The two leading candidates represent starkly contrasting views for the future. There is consensus between Mexican politicians and the general public that the country needs a strong central authority that promotes national development and can maintain control over regional governments. They also agree that the country needs to end the drug war and find ways to take advantage of China’s economic decline. But the winner will be able to set the rules for the next couple of generations.
Mexico since the Spanish colonization has been challenged by a geography that features mountains, deserts, plateaus and peninsulas naturally segment the country. As a result, Mexico has power vacuums, economic disparities and popular support for local leaders that stand up to the federal authorities. This has resulted in separatist movements, parallel governments and violent revolutions. These internal challenges tend to peak during periods of insecurity, economic hardship and political uncertainty.
Mexican President Porfirio Diaz held power twice from 1876 to 1880 and from 1884 to 1911. He partnered with the American government to bring huge economic growth, modernization and strict suppression of personal freedoms. He was overthrown by members of the socialist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000. The PRI ruled by relying on clientelism, rotating party figureheads and iron-fisted control of the political leadership at both the national and state levels.
The implosion of the PRI’s monopoly power resulted in a reduction of executive authority and empowering other government institutions, especially the judiciary. This was hailed as a democratization initiative to expand political participation throughout Mexico and decentralize federal control.
The three key parties– the National Action Party, the PRI and the Morena party have each held the presidency since 2000. Over the past 25 years, the democratization process withered into political fragmentation, but the Mexico evolved into a dominant player. The question is, “How does a country that requires strong central control maintain democratic governance?”
Mexico has two choices, institutionalism that build powerful institutions and enforce existing norms, or constructivism that would build a strong public consensus around shared ideas and values to create new norms based on these ideals.
Opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez represents the institutionalist approach. She has called for professionalization of institutional structures, which would help make them the center of the country’s political system and the main source of power projection within Mexico. Some of her more hardline coalition members support modernizing the constitution to formally accept technocrat-run institutions. This would require tearing down the old power structure before installing a new one, drastically interfering with Mexico’s most powerful business leaders that benefit from crony capitalism.
The candidate of the ruling Morena party, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, has adopted a constructivist approach. She believes a strong national political party is the only way to connect the central government with regional and local governments and to gain the support of the people. Morena supports tearing down technocratic institutions in favor of prioritizing the central role of powerful political parties that can cut deals with diverse groups in exchange for election support.
Mexican’s will choose between returning to a governance model that worked in the past, or transitioning to a new one. Mexico’s powerful military and teachers’ unions will be competing against big business oligarch elites for the long-term future of the nation.