The dictatorship of political parties in Mexico
The Mexican political system is set up to protect its many political parties over all else.
This piece was originally published on September 18, 2024. It is more relevant than ever so we’ve republished it without a paywall. We’ll be back with out all original coverage of Mexico next week. But first, a quick poll for our readers:
The Merchant of Silence is one of the best selling Mexican novels since the turn of the century. A work of historical fiction, it traces the life and times of Carlos Denegri, a real journalist who is said to have made his fortune by extorting money and favours from influential figures in Mexican politics by compiling files on their misdeeds and threatening to publish them. He, along with most of the other great journalistic names of the time, was a “soldier of the the PRI,” the party that held power for over 70 years by recruiting people from every walk of life—unions, industry, social movements—to maintain the network of influence that kept it in power.
Many believed that Denegri’s tactics were largely over after the PRI relinquished power and handed the presidency to its right-wing opponent, the PAN, at the end of the 20th century. Still more believed that the arrival of Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the presidency in 2018 on his third attempt marked the definitive end of institutionalised corruption.
A big reason for this belief was that the vehicle through which he ascended to power was new. Its very name—the National Regeneration Movement, or Morena as it is known—represented a break from the past, even as the movement evolved into an official political party in 2014.
In a country that does not allow re-election, Morena—not López Obrador, who says he will be retiring in two weeks—is meant to give continuity to this fresh start. Yet, earlier this month, as an opposition senator from the PAN stood shaking at the podium declaring that he would vote for Morena’s controversial judicial reform, against all the principles his party had campaigned for, it became clear that Denegri was back. Democratic norms, the veneer of anti-corruption, were shed for the good of the party.
Why are Mexican politicians like this?
Political parties were meant to usher in a new democratic age. They were given ever more power over the decades-long process away from single-party rule. But what Mexico got instead was a system for parties by parties; one that centralised power around electoral cartels at the expense of everyday voters. It is known in Mexico as partidocracia—a partyocracy.
To get a glimpse of it, look no further than the recently enacted judicial reform. On paper, it democratises the justice system by submitting judges and magistrates to popular vote. In practice, before any citizen gets to cast a ballot, a shortlist approved by the parties will be provided (whether in the form of the President or the Congress). A third of that shortlist will come from the Judicial branch, which is currently relatively isolated from party politics, but, after the first election in 2025, it too will most likely fall under its influence.
The corruptibility of Mexico’s political parties is not a part of the country’s national character. Nor is it that political parties are themselves inherently bad. It is instead a symptom of Mexican political history.
While the events of The Merchant of Silence are set in late 1960’s Mexico, by 1976, the PRI’s Denegri-style of government had been so effective that it had created a cooling effect on competitive elections. That year, José López Portillo had run as the PRI candidate unopposed after having excluded all other political alternatives. It was a colossal embarrassment that threatened to undermine the PRI’s democratic facade.
Consequently, an electoral reform was introduced in 1977. Known as LOPPE, it enshrined political parties into law; coaxing the opposition to rejoin the electoral fray even though it was clear elections would continue to be biassed towards the PRI. It wouldn’t be until 1986, according to José Woldenberg, one of Mexico’s most influential voices on truly democratic elections, that electoral reforms would stop just being face-saving measures for the PRI.
From then onward, there was slow progress towards democratisation in Mexico, but the elevation of political parties to Constitutional status in 1977 dictated what form Mexican democracy would take.
Government of the parties, by the parties, and for the parties
The empowerment of political parties was meant to kill the two birds with one stone: to prevent both the autocracy of a single individual and that of a single party. The effect has been the introduction of the third worst option: the monopolisation of political power by the party system itself.
It has been noted by political scientists for a while now that Mexican parties act as cartels. They negotiate the division of political power among themselves while making it difficult for others to enter the arena.
A 2012 attempt at introducing independent citizen candidates into the equation only helped to prove this point. The requisites for an individual to get on the ballot were byzantine and required a political machinery so sophisticated as to look a lot like a political party anyway—with the glaring exception that independent candidates didn’t get anywhere close to the public resources that parties did.
The lead up to the 2018 election that saw López Obrador win the presidency also proved how unfairly independents are treated. All national parties regardless of size got $143.2 million pesos each. Another 70% of the budget was then distributed on the basis of the proportion of votes each party got in the previous election. The party with the smallest number (the Labour Party) got another $93.6 million, while the party with the most (the PRI), got close to a billion pesos plus their initial $143.2 million.
Meanwhile, the sum total of funds given to the close to 50 independent candidates running for federal posts was just shy of $43 million pesos, even though just one of them—independent presidential candidate Jaime Rodríguez—got more votes than over half of the political parties on the ballot.
The system is so lopsided that one of the most famous cases of an independent political alternative went from promoting a citizen candidate to realising that the best way to gain traction in Mexico’s political system was to become a party. Futuro, as that local party was called, has now joined forces with Morena. Meanwhile, virtually no one ran as an independent in this year’s election.
Other well-meaning reforms have bolstered a party system, making candidates answerable to party bosses rather than to the electorate. Mexico has a system of proportional representation that reserves a certain number of seats on the basis of how many votes each party gets. Its supposed to help with issues seen in first past the post systems—in which elections, like those in the US, can go to candidates who lose the popular vote. But in Mexico, it gives parties the power to create a caste of politicians who will always get a seat even if their names never appeared on a ballot.
The system of partyocracy is ultimately fiendishly efficient: Parties get billions in taxpayer pesos which only they can access. They then use that money to mobilise enough Mexicans to vote on a ballot where the only option is a political party. And, even if a party bigwig loses an election or wasn’t even on the ballot, they need only be on a “proportional representation list”—drawn up by the parties themselves, of course—giving them access to 200 of the 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 32 of the 128 seats in the Senate.
The forthcoming electoral reform
It is very difficult to change this system, because those who benefit from it are the very people in a position to change it. Perhaps that is the reason why the debate surrounding the incoming administration’s proposed electoral reform has been somewhat stunted.
President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum has promised that her government will introduce a recall vote to oust the sitting president, a shakeup of Mexico’s independent electoral authority, an end senatorial re-election, and the abolition of proportional representation seats.
Many of these changes will prove to be just as controversial as the judicial reform, yet the headlines have focused on the clause proposing the end of proportional representation seats. It remains to be seen whether Morena’s smaller allies will be convinced to vote for a reform that would take away much of their power. Yet, if precedent is to be believed, one can trust that the government will make the necessary amendments in order to safeguard the privileges of the partyocracy. The rest of Mexico gets to look on in silence.