Content area
Full Text
Abstract: The Mexican transition to democracy has not been completed in terms of either the destitution of the authoritarian regime or the establishment of a democratic regime, a situation that explains the continuity of authoritarian practices and culture in public life. Not only did the Partido Revolucionario Institucional preserve impressive veto power over constitutional reforms and even small changes in matters of public policy, but also the other two main political parties (Partido Acción Nacional and Partido de la Revolución Democrática) had no alternative democratic projects and reproduced the clientelistic and particularistic political culture of the past; civil society was (and is) both socially and politically weak, and its popular sectors suffered important strategic defeats along the process. Not surprisingly, democratic innovations have been scarce, and the few interesting ones are at risk. The emergence of new social and political actors, as well as new public spaces, is urgent and necessary to counter the paradoxical combination of depoliticization of public life and overpoliticization of democratic institutions the country suffers nowadays, a situation that explains the current simultaneous crisis of representation and governability.
INTRODUCTION
Mexico is living through a time of political uncertainty. The democracy so recently achieved appears weak before the threat of organized crime, powerless before the political strength of the old union and peasant corporate organizations, unable to produce an efficient government, and captured by political parties that make instrumental use of democratic institutions for the sake of their own private interests. Mexico's democracy suffers from the structural political and legal stalemate created by both a constitution and a political system that stand in the way of processes conducive to the consolidation and strengthening of democracy. And if all of the foregoing were not sufficient cause for concern, the country seems condemned to suffer, as a consequence of both political paralysis and economic stagnation, the worsening of the social and political cleavages that have historically characterized its public life.
The problems of democratic institutional consolidation and the weakness of both civil society and the cultures and practices that could push democratic innovation in Mexico require an explanation that considers both the legal and institutional obstacles that democracy confronts and the cultural processes that allow old values, practices, and methods of politics to...