Democracy is, like many other things in life, an acquired art that evolves and transforms itself over time. England, perhaps the first democratic nation in the modern sense of the term, began to be constructed with the Magna Carta in 1215. After centuries of piecemeal advance, democracy suddenly burgeoned from the end of WWII.
The most common explanation for the transformations that occurred along the past seventy years, especially in southern Europe and Latin America, was that they took place under the rubric of the so-called “modernization theory.” The concept continued evolving and changing throughout decades, but its guiding principle was that economic growth generates political pressures and those latter can only be contained through the constitution of mechanisms of political participation. Under this conception, the governments -hard and soft, modern or tyrannical, civilian or military- ended up ceding control because they had no other choice. That is, it was the weakness of their structures that led to the building of democratic systems of government.
Dan Slater and Joseph Wong* argue that the process of democratic transition in Asia followed a very different pattern, maybe the reason for the contrast with Latin America in results, especially in the economic sphere. Their approach is particularly interesting for Mexico now that it is undergoing a systematic regression politically as well as economically.
In contrast with the Latin-American region, which has undergone democratization processes nearly always during economic crises, in Asia it was the success of economic development that created circumstances propitious for democracy. The central argument of Slater and Wong is that it was developmental governments (almost all military or associated with these) that chose democracy deliberately and voluntarily not because they would confront risks of radical or revolutionary uprisings but more readily the contrary: because they had the expectation, in fact the certainty, that the change in the governmental system would secure stability and contribute to accelerating economic development. They acted through strength, not through weakness or lack of alternatives.
The authors assert that not only there were alternatives, but that economically successful nations such as China and Singapore have elected not to reform their political structures: “Paradoxically, an authoritarian regime strong enough to thrive is strong enough to retain its authoritarian power in the near term if it so chooses.” This way of seeing things stands the theory of modernization on its head in that it implies that governments and economies are strong and, therefore, capable of deciding the best way to administer themselves, a situation very distinct, historically, from that in Latin America.
But the key factor that characterizes the contention of these authors is that, to attain their successful economic development, nations like Japan, Korea and Taiwan, and other less successful such as Indonesia and Thailand, were building indispensable mechanisms for the functioning of the economy, especially in ambits like the bureaucracy, security and justice. Prior to liberalizing they constructed effective and efficient governments to guarantee the functioning of their economies, deriving from which they procured professional bureaucratic structures with substantive autonomy that would allow them to ignore political pressures to fulfill their respective mandates. Having abandoned practices based on patrimonial principles that would favor loyalty and corruption, “the autocrats in the region liberalized because they had very good reason to expect the incumbent regime’s most important political and economic organizations to endure and even flourish under the newly democratic conditions.”
In Mexico the reforms initiated in the eighties followed the opposite pattern: they comprised a response to the succession of economic crises that put the government against the wall. The reforms were the product of weakness and, far from responding to criteria of economic efficiency, were negotiated to always protect the interests privileged by the reigning political coalition. When the time came to negotiate political reforms, especially in the nineties, the governmental structures were lacking all the elements that the Asians had resolved beforehand, beginning with professional and apolitical bureaucratic structures, an effective judiciary and functional strategies of security. Under this yardstick, Mexico entered the democratic era because there was no alternative (conflict was growing) but without a consolidated economic foundation that would ensure continuity or, in the words of the authors, the expectation that the country would flourish under the new democratic provisos. Optimism outstripped the objective circumstances.
López Obrador dismantled the few remaining vestiges of governmental capacity and worse, now he has demolished the judiciary. Difficult to imagine an optimistic future for his successor. However, regression such as that which Mexico is experiencing today has no reason to be definitive in that, as Indonesia illustrates, pressure from the citizenry can force a government to imitate the successful ones, not the losers. That is the challenge.
*From Development to Democracy: The Transformation of Modern Asia, Princeton
Mexico is not experiencing a change of regime, but rather the reaffirmation of the old one. Consciously or not, the electorate accepted Lopez Obrador’s call and voted massively in favor of the reconstruction of the old regime. It was an epic exercise in mobilization, manipulation, leadership and persuasion that had nothing to do with the real world, but with the reality, at least momentarily, of the daily life of the population. Now the President elect will have to deal with the consequences.
The vote was real: the population voted massively in favor of the party in government and, especially, in favor of the President, who continues to enjoy high popularity ratings and intends to determine the future of the country for the following decades. His electoral strategy, perhaps the only thing that attracted his attention outside of the three infrastructure projects (whose future is uncertain), was successful and his decision to achieve a qualified majority, at any cost, bore fruit. All of which only served to show that the Mexico of the 21st century is increasingly looking very much like the Mexico of the 20th century politically. In other words, as an old Mexican saying would have it, the same cat, but rolled upside down…
At the beginning of President López Obrador’s government, his acolytes insisted that Mexico was experiencing a change of regime. They affirmed this based on the notion that “finally” they were being recognized for a victory that, in their interpretation, they had long deserved. Mexico was reaching democracy, they said, because they had won. Everything else was mere pantomime.
However, as time went on, the President undermined one after another of the institutions, practices and traditions that had characterized the hoped-for democratic transition that took place from the nineties onwards. The supposed new regime increasingly began to look more like the old post-revolutionary system than a consolidated democracy.
Looking back, it is clear that the democratic transition that formally began with the series of electoral reforms beginning in the 1970s, but especially that of 1996, liberalized Mexican politics and, by creating a level playing field, facilitated the defeat of the PRI in 2000, opening a new era for the country. In all the series of negotiations and movements that took place, various institutions were created aimed at formalizing national politics, establishing counterweights to presidential power and, in a word, granting citizens predictability regarding government decisions.
The record of this project is mixed. Some of these institutions turned out to be extraordinarily solid and recognized, others ended up being less effective or more prone to being captured by powerful interests. More than anything, all this assembly was not enough to transform the economy, raise growth rates and consolidate a democratic regime that effectively broke with the old post-revolutionary model. This context allowed President López Obrador to launch an attack to destroy institutions and strengthen himself as President, the most important change that the country has experienced in recent years: from a strong presidency Mexico ended up with a weak State and a hyper-powerful President. In this way, the attempt at a regime change towards democracy that was attempted to be built in the past three decades ends up returning to the most primitive model of Mexican presidentialism in the post-revolutionary era. As in the story by Hans Christian Andersen, López Obrador made it clear that the king was naked, and that the entire institutional built-up was so weak that it could not withstand the presidential onslaught. If it could not resist, it did not serve as a counterweight, thereby demonstrating that the old regime was still, and still is, as alive as ever.
But worse. The new-old regime that the President intends to bequeath to his successor is a weak structure with a powerful President, more reminiscent of the era of post-revolutionary caudillismo than of the most successful years of the PRI in the fifties and sixties. Worse, in that era both Mexico and the world were characterized by essentially inward-looking political and economic systems, where a strong presidency was viable. Today, in the 21st century, the era of digital interconnections, the ubiquity of information and the decentralization of decisions, the claim to control everything is simply absurd. Given the weakness of the government, it does not matter how powerful the leader is: it may violate the law and the rights of people, but it alone cannot make it possible to achieve prosperity.
And that is the challenge that President Sheinbaum will have to deal with: how to govern a country in which there is a person who left the ground mined, a party prone to fragmentation but enormously powerful and a citizenry grateful for the past but extraordinarily demanding of the satisfiers that were promised to them. All this without counterweights, which, if they existed, would limit the President, but also the pressure groups of Morena that will undoubtedly try to extort her.
There is no doubt that the country is experiencing the end of an era, above all of a dream, that of democracy, but not a change of regime. The old regime is still as alive as ever, but now with more capacity to abuse than to build and resolve.
After the victory comes the hangover. A legitimate and unobjectionable triumph that does not alter the structural problem the country is facing -and has been facing since before. The new president will have to decide whether to deal with the political reality that underlies the formal political structure or to let it pass, trusting that the deterioration will be manageable. The first path would open the possibility of governing and perhaps more. The second would sacrifice any possibility of achieving the agenda the electorate endorsed with their vote. Or worse.
The country has evolved systematically throughout the last half-century in its political dimension. Still, it has been the product of circumstances, not of a transition plan like the one in other latitudes. No one expressly and consciously led the political transition; instead, it was done as little as necessary or as much as possible, depending on the point of view of each political actor, to prevent a collapse or to advance a process. In contrast to the economic reforms, which at least in concept followed a coherent logic, in the political sphere, the reforms were responding to social and political demands and, more frequently, to the changing electoral and criminal environment.
The result is the disappearance of the institutional anchors that gave the country decades of stability in the previous century, without consolidating the democratic institutional framework that has been developing since the 1990s and never fully took hold. Consequently, today’s political problems are nothing like those that existed when demands such as those of the 1968 student movement or when the then-three dominant parties approved the landmark electoral reform of 1996.
Here, I will address how the political system has changed in recent decades and, especially, what this process of change has yielded for the moment we live, now with a new government that enjoys enormous legitimacy. The nodal point of the argument is that the president will head a government that possesses all the formal power but not the real power. The latter is not due to the presence of López Obrador but to the lack of an institutional structure to rule, regulate, and control political participation in the broadest sense of the term: the real powers -political, criminal, regional, union, business- that swarm all over the country. A difference of this magnitude between formal and real power should concern the new government and society as a whole. And that circumstance is what distinguishes us from fully democratic countries that can undergo radical changes of government without everything being put in jeopardy.
A logical first question is why this is significant today, i.e., what changed to make the approach relevant at this time? The answer, subject to further elaboration in the following paragraphs, is very simple: President López Obrador, because of his personality and political skill, managed to maintain the appearance of normality even though the country was fragmenting underneath, in full view of everyone. It is doubtful that the new president will enjoy the same privilege: it is much more likely that the cacique, caudillo, and criminal phenomenon will grow and, perhaps, consolidate.
The structural problem can be summarized very simply: the reality of the Mexico of 2024 bears no resemblance to that of the post-revolutionary era; it does not have the institutional mechanisms that characterized the PRI era, nor did it achieve an integral transition to democracy. The stability factor throughout the 20th century was the party founded and structured by Plutarco Elías Calles after the assassination of Álvaro Obregón; it was the party that institutionalized political life, regulated the competition for power, exercised iron control over the different sectors of society and, in general, maintained peace. These circumstances favored the economy’s growth, urbanization, and the emergence of a middle class. At the same time, the nature of that system sowed the seeds of its own eventual destruction: political success alienated the middle class, as seen in the student movement of 1968, and controls over economic activity stifled the economy to the point of requiring reforms that weakened or eliminated that structure of controls. For decades, since 1929, the party -first PNR, then PRM, and then PRI- would be the factor of stability and political continuity above the formal power structures.
The electoral reform of 1996 initiated the transition towards democracy: several institutions were built in the political sphere as well as for the economy and, in general, for social interaction, whose objective was the same as that of Calles, but for a society that had evolved and demanded open political participation. In this context, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation was reformed, and the regulatory agencies (competition, telecommunications, energy, etc.) and the electoral institutions were created: the IFE/INE and the respective Tribunal. Since the nineties, the presidents have respected the institutional framework. Still, President López Obrador, a constant critic of the economic and political reforms, evidenced how fragile they are and, above all, the lack of legitimacy of most of these entities. In no time at all, the president neutralized, eliminated, weakened, or destroyed one by one these bodies. The country was left without institutional structures, but it was not formally noticed mainly because of the president’s personality, whose narrative rhetoric and political skill maintained control of the political processes. Now, in the twilight of his six-year term, the vacuum of institutions will be inevitably present.
This is not a hidden reality: crime, to take the most obvious example, is a product of the lack of institutions dedicated to the population’s security. The inability of the citizenry to obtain justice (the so-called common law) testifies to the lack of a Judicial Power dedicated to the issues that most trouble the citizenry. In more political terms, the murders of candidates and the absence of rules (and the capacity to enforce them) in the electoral and partisan spheres are also palpable examples. The country went from an era of vertical controls imposed from above by an all-powerful Presidency (regularly) through the official party to a costly and complicated institutional framework that did not fulfill its mission and proved not to be able to resist the presidential onslaught, an essential characteristic of any institution. The government that is about to conclude functioned due to the charismatic nature of its leadership, which is extinguished with the six-year term.
The old political system was constituted to deal with cacicazgos, caudillismos, political leaders, and other factors of regional, union, and political power that emerged with the end of the Revolution. One feasible scenario is to return to a similar pattern, with the addition of the criminal factor, which is already the factotum in many regions of the country. In fact, hints of this perspective can already be perceived in the form of the regional control exercised by various criminal groups, in the way regional leaders conduct themselves, and in the emergence of actors that, in fact, dispute power with the formally constituted authorities. It is not excessive to imagine a scenario where what is normal in certain regions begins to take place at the federal level, testing the capacity and willingness of the new president to respond to challenges of this nature.
This structural problem dramatically reduces the capacity to govern, creating a paradox: most of the country is not governed or controlled, but legislation can be processed that reduces or makes it difficult for the citizenry, the raison d’être of the government itself, to function.
The end of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government opens a new stage for the Mexican political system. In the last half-century, Mexico went from a system highly structured around a political party, a complex system of participation and control, to a shallow democracy with weak institutions that have now been significantly eroded, if not destroyed. Thanks to the strength of his personality and political skill, López Obrador maintained the cohesion of Mexican politics in general and of his party in particular, which hid the severe and accelerated political erosion that was occurring behind the scenes. With the succession resolved, the risks and fractures the winner and the country will have to deal with will become evident. The president, who ends his six-year term, planned to concentrate, consolidate, and exercise power, his own, but not for the country’s future.
For this reason, the end of the electoral cycle that elected Claudia Sheinbaum president will not be identical to those of the past. With this election, the country reached a turning point, not because of the result itself or the people involved, but because the process, the background, and the imponderables that were evidenced along the way exposed the political system and showed the fragility of the country, the risks of the government of and by a single person and, above all, the impossibility of continuing along this path. The new victors will not recognize the fragility, but they will soon experience it.
President López Obrador is unrepeatable because of his characteristics and circumstances, as well as because of Mexico’s moment. Therefore, as soon as the next government takes office, the shortcomings will become evident: the lack of structures, institutions, and rules of the game, and the counterpart: the propensity to violence or other means, legal or illegal, to advance particular interests and objectives. All this augurs a new political era, very different from the one that existed decades ago or from the one experienced in this six-year term that is about to end.
This is not the first time the country has faced such a challenge, but the solutions used in the past are no longer possible. Now, in the twilight of the six-year term, the country will have to start dealing with the consequences of the fragility of the institutional structures built in recent decades and the intentional destruction undertaken by the government that is coming to an end.
Under normal conditions, one would have expected a gradual collapse of the political system due to the virtual disappearance of the institutional mechanisms associated with the PRI era and the deterioration that has been experienced as a result of President López Obrador’s onslaught on the recently created institutional framework. And yet, that collapse has not occurred, aside from the deterioration that the citizenry is experiencing in numerous areas (such as those briefly described above, including the health system, education, and the like). My impression, as I have already mentioned, is that this deterioration has not become evident primarily because of the characteristics of the president himself. His personality, particular skills, and way of operating maintained the appearance of control, which is a situation that is unlikely to be kept in the foreseeable future.
The formal structure of the Mexican political system has never corresponded to the reality of power. In the 20th century, there was a Judicial and a Legislative Power; however, the dominance of the Executive was legendary but tempered by the existence of the official party, whose institutional structure favored the replacement of elites and the continuity of power. The structure of political control and institutionality of the PRI was gradually degraded by the normal evolution of society, economic changes, and, over time, the advent of electoral competition in a democratic context. Given this, significant questions remain that only time will elucidate, beginning with the president’s power after the government of his successor begins and the potential emergence of competitive power structures: regional or national caudillos. In other words, the weakness of institutions is gaining new momentum as an issue of paramount importance.
Twenty-eight years after the landmark electoral reform of 1996, the country has advanced in certain aspects but has regressed in many others and, due to the laws (and tactics) promoted by the government in electoral matters (the famous Plan B followed by Plan C), can no longer discount the probability of a further deterioration in both political and security matters. The tremendous electoral achievement -certainty about the process, but not about the outcome- could well be reversed in an attempt to impose an outcome outside the electorate’s will. That reform, a great citizen triumph -perhaps the greatest in our history- could be in its last days.
The great paradox of the present moment lies in the contrast between the enormous power accumulated by the president-elect and her party in the recent elections and the real powers that have grown throughout the country; this should also include Morena itself, an entity not organized as a political party that, in the absence of its leader, could well fragment into groupings challenging the central power. Such a scenario would not be uncommon in any democracy, but given Morena’s unstructured nature, the tendency to split is high. That is to say, it is not evident that the numbers achieved by Morena in the two legislative chambers always work in the president’s favor or that they could not be a source of conflict or threat to her projects.
In the realm of real power, it remains to be seen how the new government and the multiple organizations of organized crime will relate to each other (and the strategy to be adopted), the extent to which the governors accept to submit to the federal government, a matter that is also linked to the real regional powers, including the criminal one; the military and the definition of the President’s choice of the areas in which it should operate; and, no less relevant, the international financial markets, which have already shown a tremendous disruptive capacity, even if it has only been a small sample. Internally, the recent election was won with a vast advantage by the government that is about to be born, but this does not imply that it won with 100 % of the electorate: the opposition may not be very organized, but it represents 40 % of the citizenship and that number, as it happened in 2021, can grow at any time, altering the structure of real power in Mexican society. Ignoring this obvious element could be a big mistake: democracy is fluid, and every triumph, no matter how big, is temporary.
Needless to add, many of these poisoned legacies pale compared to the risks that could result from a mismanagement of the relationship with the United States, on whose economy the welfare of the majority of the population depends. The point is very simple: formal and real power are contrasting, to say the least. The latter should be taken with caution because the country could well experience the paradox mentioned above: an enormous capacity to alter the institutional and legal order internally (i.e., modify the formal structure of the country) but be prevented from functioning at the level of territorial, financial and political reality.
Finally, how the president will deal with her predecessor remains to be defined. In the Mexican political tradition of the 20th century, it was usual for the winner in the (internal) race for the Presidency to show a sense of gratitude and loyalty to his predecessor; none of this prevented the logic of power from prevailing and, as the old politicians say, the winner, in this case, the winner, ended up being his executioner. That said, it is clear that the still President López Obrador is not a typical character. Still, mythical leaders enjoy temporary advantages, which almost always end up being ephemeral in the long term. The consequences of a government with poor results -arrogant and, at the same time, modest in its objectives- will be paid sooner or later, and that will happen when the successor has the conditions to assert her power and her responsibility, which is not shareable.
The challenge for the new president is monumental, and the sources of potential conflict are multiple, with the aggravating factor that many of the actors with real power could imagine her as weak simply because she is a woman. In this context, the absence of institutions entails much more significant risks than what is apparent. The supposed country of institutions runs the risk of fragmenting under the shadow of caudillos, regional leaders, and organized crime, all of this in the middle of the 21st century with an economy that lives and functions only thanks to a free trade agreement with our complex northern neighbor. The president does not have it easy, but if she focuses on building institutions that enjoy broad legitimacy, she will hopefully leave a more transcendent legacy than her predecessor.
Luis Rubio is President of México Evalúa. His most recent book is La nueva disputa sobre el futuro de México (Grijalbo).
The electoral victory last June has emboldened not only the President, but also his successor, now President-elect, and the entire Morena contingent. The happiness of having triumphed, fully justified despite the irregularities committed by the President, is leading to a cascade of actions and decisions that could well end up undermining, if not destroying, the enormous capital that Dr. Sheinbaum has at this moment.
The warnings come from all sides and there is no need to repeat them: banks, ambassadors, presidents, politicians, judges, businessmen, observers and commentators, from different nationalities and political positions, all agree on the risks involved in the changes proposed by the constitutional amendments that are about to be approved. Breaking with all protocol and tradition, but above all the decency and deference that a duly certified President-elect deserves, AMLO acts as if his six-year term were about to begin. The problem for Dr. Sheinbaum is that she will be the one who will have to pay the price.
Despite the resounding victory, Mexico is not in the best moment of its history. To confuse the popular fervor expressed at the polls with the objective circumstances facing the Mexican economy and politics is to lose sight of what constitutes a sustainable platform for governance and development.
“Confidence arrives on foot, but it leaves on horseback” snapped the leader of the euro group to the finance minister of Greece when that nation experienced a major fiscal crisis. The electorate’s embrace is fundamental, but it requires maintenance and the cash transfers, which proved to be so important in the recent election, are only sustainable to the extent that the country preserves its stability and the economy begins to grow at rates significantly higher than those of recent decades outside the exceptional regional development poles. It is worth remembering, and even more so for a leftist government, that more than past votes are required to be able to move forward. Edgar Snow asked Mao what was needed to govern, to which Mao replied: “A people’s army, sufficient food, and the people’s trust in their rulers.” “If I only had one of the three things, which would you prefer?” Snow replied. “I can do without the army. People can tighten their belts for a while. But without their trust, it is not possible to govern.”
That interview took place in 1931, almost a hundred years ago, in a different political, geopolitical, and economic context. Mao did not have to worry about investors or relations with other nations, only about internal stability. Today the situation is radically different. In a hyper-connected, digitalized world, based on extraordinarily complex and sophisticated technologies, starting with semiconductors, on which Mexico’s economic viability depends, governments cannot deviate from the fundamentals, which consist of understanding and establishing, as well as maintaining, the trust of both the population and businessmen and investors, because that is the most important competitive advantage that a nation has today. Losing sight of what is essential -and being willing to risk it to satisfy the vanity of a predecessor who is already on his way out- is playing with fire and putting her own government at enormous risk.
A common mistake that politicians make -examples of which there are countless in the President’s morning press conferences, especially those after the election- is to believe that the world is static, and that the future depends on the will of the ruler. Just by wanting it, the wish is fulfilled. Perhaps that is why the leader of Morena stated, with similar arrogance, that a “great gift” had to be given to the president in the form of the judicial reform. Easy gifts (and with Morena’s legislators that’s all that’s needed) end up being expensive, especially for those who will have to pay for them.
Mexico faces a structural political crisis because it lacks institutions to give it a sense of direction, discipline and political and economic continuity. At some point in its history, the PRI fulfilled that function and, in the most recent decades, the USMCA has been the vehicle that, at least in the economic sphere, has given the country viability. Morena does not have the characteristics or the mechanisms to recreate the function of the PRI and the President-elect does not have the Weberian trait of charismatic authority that characterizes AMLO. Her personality and history require an institutional construction, what Weber called rational legal authority, to be able to govern. The bills that are in the making would destroy that possibility before her administration even begins.
The Spanish politician Borja Semper says it clearly: “We are experiencing the first great hangover from the new world order that has emerged from globalization, a world that is not static and is characterized by constant change… Globalization is a reality full of opportunities and challenges, a creator of wealth, but it still has the Achilles heel of the absence of governance that would allow us to know and correct its excesses. The crisis is one of trust, and trust is one of the fundamental pillars of democracy.”
As the saying goes, after an intemperate night before comes the morning after. A less amiable way to observe the current government is to recall Louis XV when he stated that “Après moi le déluge.” In effect, soon will conclude the most destructive Mexican government of the last century leaving more than deficits in its wake. The most powerful and electorally legitimate president since vote counting began in earnest did nothing but polarize the population, confront the political parties and threaten those who dissented with him, all while enjoying the reforms that his predecessors put into practice in response to the predicaments exhibited by the economy. These are two sides of the same coin: the politics of permanent battle, and the gradual maturation of the economy. The question is whether the next president will view this legacy as an opportunity or as a curse.
The manner in which the outgoing president conducts himself reminds me of Gonzalo N. Santos, that eminent Mexican political linguist, when he explained how he proceeded with one of his enemies: “in agreement with a group of card sharks… I sent Carrillo to them to get him drunk, all of these individuals masquerading as his party acolytes… when he was completely inebriated, I arrived with a photographer, commanded Carrillo to remove his clothing, and they photographed him in all forms and positions imaginable. Therein died Carrillo’s candidacy because I menaced him with exposing the candidate in the nude in the Electoral College.” An important part of the citizenry was virtually intoxicated during these past few years, the so-called “hard vote,” enticing them into believing that nirvana was just around the corner. In contrast with Santos, AMLO was not as blunt in his ways: instead of getting his adherents drunk, he dedicated himself to procuring their electoral choice with public funds, but the result is the same, except that he left the country mortgaged to the hilt. Now comes the hangover.
This government will come to an end and the undertow from it will ensue, as always happens. What the president manipulates every day in his morning press conferences and discards and rules out as irrelevant will materialize on the horizon as immanent reality, demanding specific responses instead of irresponsible evasions. Today’s chaos -stubborn chaos that has positioned the citizenry to hope for something better- will turn into uncontainable demands. The pressures, passions and resentments that are self-contained at present will acquire such a volume that the new government will be obliged to respond decisively, beginning with the language and the appearances.
It seems clear that the new government will take shape from a dominant party and from a new president with enormous opportunities, but with the sword of Damocles at the ready due to the reforms that, evidently conceived without considering the consequences, the Morena party is disposed to approve without further ado. This month of September will be crucial because it will determine whether such an extraordinary result will evolve into an opportunity or into the beginning of an accelerated decomposition.
Conceptually, the incoming president has three options: persevere in the objectives, strategies and tactics of the departing government; develop her own program, distinct from the existing one, but one earmarked for a radical turn; or procure a broad and inclusive call for change that truly transforms the country or that, at least, sets the bases for a complete transformation.
While practically no government assumes office without much fanfare announcing great projects, the outgoing government will have bequeathed a panorama in economic (above all fiscal) as well as politically, one that is scarcely promising. Of course, the election embodied a devastating result for the opposition, but the future depends on the active participation of the whole of society, something that the government soon to take its leave achieved, perhaps due more to inertia than to a successful convocation of the people, but in good measure to the existence of the free trade arrangement of North America, constituting as it does the main source of economic growth at present.
Independently of the rhetoric, from the panorama left by the AMLO administration more of the same is conceivably possible, but not with good potential. Additionally, the differences in personality between the incoming and the outgoing presidents augur poor viability for blind continuity, even if well informed. A radical turn, for which many leaderships of the Morena constellation advocate, would imply an economically suicidal strategy because, although popular at the outset, it would have the effect of annulling the foundations of the successful component of the economy. It would be much more intelligent to put together a great national agreement that calls for balanced economic growth in social as well as regional terms, sustained on the principal growth engine of the economy (exports) and on nearshoring.
The neuralgic point is that there is, as some dream of, nowhere to return to, but it also not possible to persevere in a model of government dedicated to the citizenry not progressing; that kills and extorts millions of persons; and one that pretends that the country can be successful with only cash transfers.
Six years of negligibly productive polarization, leaving huge costs and damages in its wake that little by little will rise to the surface. It’s time to come together to build, the opportunity that the entire citizenry is surely waiting for, independently of how it has voted. It would be criminal to let the opportunity go by.
“If it does not make sense, it sounds metallic” goes a popular refrain. In Mexico the governments change but not the practices nor the customs. Corruption could be an evil, a cultural factor or a characteristic, but never a crime. Many are accused of corruption, but never for the corruption itself, but instead as an excuse for some political violation of another order or because it is an effective way of eliminating contenders, enemies or rivals. The President frequently stated that he would not cover-up for anyone, but that ceased to be valid when those presumed to be involved began to be close to him. The issue here is that corruption cannot be eradicated with speeches or wishes, but instead with a correct diagnosis that later translates into consistent actions.
Corruption is inherent in the Mexican way of being and being governed. There’s no getting away from that fundamental principle. Everything in the national life, especially in the public ambit, is designed -or at least highly inclined- toward corruption because the laws and rules reward impunity. Although the phenomenon is as old as the country itself, it has worsened due to democratization. Luis Carlos Ugalde* wrote that the pyramidal corruption of the era of authoritarian presidentialism has been “democratizing itself” on becoming incorporated into all levels of government, political parties and branches of government. What was formerly concentrated, and an instrument of political cohesion, has become a mechanism of political control in the hands of a growing number of actors. Worse yet, its ubiquitousness has generated widespread repudiation in society, anger that has become hate.
Campaigning politicians tend to adopt a priggish, moralizing tone in matters of corruption: they vow a heavy hand, all-out combat, and severe measures to eradicate it. The proposal that the then-Morena-party candidate published during her campaign rejects the scheme of citizenry-led effort that characterized the so-called “national anticorruption system,” to be replaced by the strengthening of the judicial instances, that is, more of the old same. The proposal sounds like the diagnoses that led to the creation of the Ministry of the Comptroller’s Office back in the eighties that, like all of the previous efforts, increased bureaucratic requirements and made life ever more complicated for public functionaries, but did not touch corrupt practices in the slightest.
It’s one or the other: either the diverse proposals to combat corruption do not understand the phenomenon, or they constitute nothing more than a rhetorical resource employed to emerge from the situation. The innumerable proposals -the honest ones as well as the merely rhetorical ones- for combatting corruption entail an evident punitive bias: corruption must be penalized and the best way to accomplish that is with sanctions, though these rarely materialize. Some proposals (and politicians) prefer a more powerful authority, others recognize that, given the strong deficit of trust, greater transparency is required. But none of these proposals acknowledge the problem of origin: Mexican laws and regulations make corruption possible, they in fact promote it.
Fortunately, there are examples of that it is possible to diminish or eradicate corruption: when the spaces of arbitrariness and impunity are eliminated, corruption is no longer possible or inevitable. That is what occurred at the end of the eighties in the former SECOFI (today the Secretariat of Economy) where a change in the rules modified the entire nature of the Secretariat dedicated to trade and industry. Historically one of the spaces of greatest corruption in the government, the SECOFI bureaucracy lived from the exploitation of its discretionary powers in the awarding of permits for investment, importing, exporting and other similar permissions. With the liberalization of the economy (that, essentially, consisted of the substitution of the permit requirements with tariffs or rigid rules), nearly the whole industry of corruption in that Secretariat disappeared. The thousands of bureaucrats devoted to paper-shuffling (or impeding papers being shuffled) stopped being necessary and the personnel was reduced to less than 10% of what it was. In that world, corruption simply vanished. With the elimination of the need to obtain permits from the Secretariat and the establishment of clear and transparent rules for the obtaining of those still required, corruption virtually evaporated.
There is no science in this: Mexican bureaucratic practices and the extreme use of discretion conferred on the authority by the laws and regulations are a permanent source of corruption. When a governmental functionary is endowed with ample faculties to contract, permit or render a project possible, grant a permit or authorize a work, the tendency to become corrupt is immense. If the son of a functionary can de facto decide who will be in charge of a public work, the probability of corruption flourishing is infinite. The phenomenon is not new and it affects all politicians and all political parties. Although the outgoing government denies this, the old saying that goes, “Don’t give me anything; just put me where it is” is as valid today as it always was in the past. And it would get worse should the judicial reform be approved.
If someone really means to change the panorama, they should start with the issue at hand: the excessive discretional powers that lead to absolute impunity.
Opportunities are opportunities when they are taken advantage of and summarily assumed, because contrariwise they simply are not. At the same time, no governmental or national action constitutes a panacea. Nearshoring is a great potential opportunity if Mexicans know how to take advantage of it and convert it into an instrument for the accelerated development of the economy. But it will only materialize if we come to understand what it implies and accept the whole package as such.
Throughout all the months that the so-called “category 2” was the norm for Mexico on the part of the U.S. civil aviation authorities, the real issues that differentiated the perceptions of the authorities across the border were not practical (whether about runways or peripheral airport boundary walls, security procedures or flight controllers) but instead cultural. Mexican authorities in the matter did not perceive any need to accept the de facto jurisdiction that implied “category 1.” Not until it was understood that the complete package had to be accepted did the wheels begin to turn, which ended up reestablishing a functional relation between the aviation authorities of both nations.
The matter repeats itself in all ambits, each with its own characteristics and relevant actors. The U.S. constitutes a great opportunity for Mexico’s development because of its dynamism, size and wealth, as exhibited by the extraordinary engine of the Mexican economy that exports have become from the first Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) more than three decades ago. The neighborhood in which geography has situated Mexico constitutes an enormous opportunity, one that is at present magnified by the China—U.S. conflict, the latter conferring primacy on Mexico with respect to attracting investments, provided Mexico realizes how to take advantage of it: it will not materialize on its own.
Although there has been important growth in the installation of new plants in diverse points of the country, above all in the north, the truth is that the numbers are very small. The government has boasted about the growth of foreign investment, but the overwhelming majority of that growth has been the reinvestment of profits, not new investments. The question is what has been lacking.
The challenge resides in a basic option: accept the nature of the correlation of power between the two nations or pretend that Mexico can be successful on its own. In the case of nearshoring, the relevant actors are not governmental but business: those who would invest are hundreds or thousands of enterprises of diverse sizes that would be seeking the opportunity to improve their productivity, guarantee the quality of their products and count on the certainty that the entire process, from the investment to the delivery of the goods to the final consumer, is going to be perfect. This involves factors as simple as or as complex as: security, physical infrastructure (industrial parks, highways, border crossings), the availability of electricity (and many potential investors now demand clean energies), amply trained personnel (which implies an educational sector oriented toward the integral development of the people, not one devoted to their ideological evangelization) and transparent and reliable rules of the game (that is, judicial mechanisms for conflict resolution and making contracts be complied with). Above all, no differentiation between national and foreign investment, in that both assume risk in the same way.
Judging by the patterns of migration (from south to north), the expectations of those with relatives in the U.S., the remittances, the investments and the financial flows, the citizenry is not confused: the relationship with Mexico’s neighbor to the north is seen by all as an opportunity. Nearshoring raises that possibility in dramatic fashion due to the total and potential volume that it entails. If in addition the government dedicates itself in eliminating obstacles to investment and to the creation of an industry of Mexican suppliers committed to offering parts, components, services and so on, to the new investors, the circle could be virtuous and would involve millions of Mexicans who today do not perceive for themselves any opportunity at all. The point is that this concerns a prodigious potential opportunity, but only if we know how to seize it. And to seize it would imply a complete transformation of the manner in which the government perceives economic activity, foreign investment and the creative potential of millions of Mexicans who could end up being prosperous entrepreneurs.
I began by saying that nearshoring is not a panacea, but instead a mere opportunity if we know how to take advantage of the circumstance. Well-conceived, it could be a great opportunity to improve the access of many Mexicans, currently excluded, to the formal economy, open opportunities for new entrepreneurs who frequently find much better terrain for prospering in Chicago or in Los Angeles than they can in their own country. That is, this is an opportunity that ties in with the criteria of equity and fighting poverty and inequality, which comprise the essential thrust of the next administration.
Leonard Cohen seemed to be thinking about Mexico and nearshoring when he coined his famous phrase, “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” The challenge is to convert the crack and the light because that’s where the transformative opportunity slips in.
A banner hanging from a building during the recent presidential race defined the challenge of Mexico in pithy fashion: “democracy with defects or dictatorship without rights: you decide.” Although democracy is a term frequently employed in Mexican political rhetoric, AMLO, the outgoing president, converted the term into an insubstantial turn of phrase that does not enjoy popular consensus. The upcoming government would do well to find a definition that embraces the entire population.
In its most elementary definition, democracy not only consists of electoral processes that determine who will govern, but also respect for the opposition, in the broadest sense of the term. However, the two things highlighted most often in the recent manner of conducting politics break with that central principle: the disqualification of the opposition, which it considers illegitimate; and the intimidation of the individuals whom the president considers adversaries, a concept that would include, potentially, everyone. That is, for the outgoing president the only thing that is in any way relevant is the monopoly of power that by definition excludes all the others, including, of course, his own voters.
The reforms proposed by AMLO last February 5 clearly outline the spirit that animates them. Everything in those bills reflects a purpose of control, and the concentration of power in a sole person. Beyond the vindictive and small-minded character embodying the proposals, especially the one on the judiciary, the pertinent question is what is important: development or control. Dr. Sheinbaum has been particularly meticulous in separating those two elements, rendering a panorama of uncertainty as well as one of opportunity for this coming September.
Together, the proposed reforms aim at sanctifying in the constitution elements as central to democracy as the suppression of the opposition in the legislature (by eliminating proportional representation); elimination of the Supreme Court of Justice as a counterweight (with the proposal that its members be elected rather than proposed by the executive and then ratified by the Senate); transfer of control of the electoral processes to the government with the elimination of the National Electoral Institute (INE) and the Electoral Tribunal; elimination of legal protection such as habeas corpus (amparo in Spanish); and the expansion of imprisonment without due process of law, which would confer vast arbitrary powers on the authority. The proposed bills thus constitute an implacable scaffold for the conformation of a constitutional dictatorship.
The question now is where the next government’s team finds itself in all this. Its electoral strategy privileged the figure and proposals of the president, leaving it to the citizenry to interpret where the former presidential candidate stands. One hypothesis is that, in effect, she approves the notion of the “second phase” of the president’s “fourth transformation; the other hypothesis is she is her own person and, thus, that she will give shape to her governmental vision as she advances in taking control of the government. Of course, the difference is critical, because, in the former case, the country would find itself at the edge of the abyss. In the latter, there would exist the opportunity to restore civility in the public arena, opening the door to a civilized interaction of the presidency with the Congress, the Supreme Court and the citizenry at large. In addition, as the saying goes, the drunk is not the same as the bartender: one thing is the electoral race, and another, quite distinct, is governing, the situation in which the winner now finds herself.
Given the result of the election, the opportunity is immense, but it would imply abandoning the attempt to structure a constitutional dictatorship. Such is the size of the quandary -and the inherent risks- that the next president and the country face.
Bill Hicks, a cantankerous British comedian, dreamt about the creation of a political party for “people who hate people.” The problem was that he did not achieve getting them all together in one room: the egotists defeated the central principle. For some reason, every time I heard of or saw the irate morning TV presidential rants I thought of Hicks. I ask myself whether Claudia Sheinbaum understands the enormous damage that the president generated with his intimidating diatribes; more to the point, I ask myself whether she understands that the role of the government is not to attack or destroy but rather to create, conciliate and lead.
It is evident that many Mexicans not only appreciate the president soon to take his leave, but also, they are loyal and believe in, at least until now, the veracity of his invectives and his supposed achievements in economic and social matters, in those of poverty and corruption. It is likely that the oft-resorted-to recourse to “other data” will end up discrediting the alleged accomplishments as reality begins to sink in. For the President-Elect the dilemma is how to preserve her base and, at the same time, bring the rest of the citizenry on board, which would inevitably entail distancing herself from the manner of conducting public affairs of the outgoing government, beginning with the rhetoric and its excesses.
Once without the personage dominating the outlook, the true question is what is it that the next president herself wishes to achieve and whether that is feasible. “A king, said Bruce Springsteen, “ain’t satisfied ’til he rules everything.” To impede that is the reason why the great thinkers of the 18th century, such as Montesquieu and Madison, posed the separation of powers, thus contributing to the creation of the most developed and successful societies of the world. Isn’t that what is desirable?
In The Name of The Rose, Umberto Eco employs an anecdote to evoke an obvious fact. He says: “In the Middle Ages, cathedrals and convents burned like tinder; imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a Second World War movie in the Pacific without a fighter plane shot down in flames.” Equally evident was the presidential strategy to win the recent election: pay and subsidize almost half the population.
The strategy was public, open and systematically explained and repeated: no one can claim surprise; the president utilized resources that had been budgeted and earmarked for health and education, infrastructure and the maintenance of governmental installations, but were instead allocated to subsidize his clienteles in a permanent manner, creating a support base that was decidedly and brutally reflected on election day.
As the 19th century philosopher Frederic Bastiat explained it, there are two sides to each coin: what is seen and what is not seen. And what is not seen is what is truly transcendent.
The visible part was the cash transfers. Millions of families were the beneficiaries of the clientelist strategy. The concept was not new: election after election throughout the 20th century was characterized by a transactional strategy of the exchange of benefits for votes. The innovation that López Obrador incorporated was that of eliminating the transactional nature of the exchange by making the transfers permanent. Now an enormous portion of the public budget is dedicated to a subsidy which reaches, according to official figures, 45% of families.
There are two sides to every transaction: at the end of the day, this comprises an exchange. In the PRI era, the exchange was circumstantial, related to the upcoming election; the voters played the game by voting for whoever gave or promised them benefits, but they continued being, to employ a professional sports term, free agents. What changed in this election, resulting in brutal effectiveness, was the systematicity of the “support”, as the president denominates it, as it converted the “free agents” into permanent clienteles. Without doubt brilliant as a political strategy, but the relevant question is, what does this tell us about the Mexican reality?
In a country in which everything is difficult, in which there are obstacles for anything and everything, the Obradorist subsidy resulted in being a decisive factor for the loyalties of these families. In fact, no one can doubt that the central objective of the government throughout the outgoing administration was to build those clientelist relationships to achieve the result that came about last June 2. What can be (and should be) criticized is the contempt with which the government operated on not promoting -or eliminating obstacles to- economic development, as well as the flagrant violations of the Electoral Law, but the heart of the strategy consisted of facilitating the lives of millions of Mexicans. This is the true factor of success and against this milestone is what the incoming government as well as its future opponents will have to contend.
Life in Mexico is in truth hard: whoever want to open a business knows that they will have to deal with the Treasury Department (Hacienda), the municipal government, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and a morass of local and federal regulations. Complying with the regulations is complex and costly; even paying taxes is difficult for those without basic knowledge, and the educational system does not help. In fact, education in Mexico is conceived to preserve poverty and dependence, two historical factors that the outgoing government emphasized with its school textbooks dedicated to no one being able to prosper. This point is a crucial one: education does not contribute to the formation of persons apt to developing themselves to their best, but instead to their continuing to be shackled by poverty, while the government, which avowedly put the poor first, did nothing other than shore up the permanence of the poor in that category. Why progress if it is better to be dependent on the government: a purposeful vicious circle.
For those who succeed in making it on their own, they will encounter themselves up against the crude reality of a government devoted to its clienteles or one that is flatly absent: rather than protection and security, extortionists appear who exact protection money, inspectors who demand their “fair share” and police officers not far behind. Insecurity, the element that demonstrates that the government is not committed to what matters to the citizen, is the reality in which the overwhelming majority of the population has to contend. Opening a bank account has become an almost impossible ordeal and access to an education conducive to a better standard of living is only available at great cost because it is solely offered by private schools and universities. It is not necessary to talk about the health sector, virtually inexistent throughout the long six-year presidential term that is finally coming to an end.
The wrongs that Mexicans experience are the result of a system of government that capitulates to the priorities of the president and not to the development of the population. Instead of resolving the problems that truly afflict Mexicans, the president opted for subsidizing families: Who would not accept their life being facilitated when that very life is already so complex, costly and unattractive?
As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Holmes fame) wrote, “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”
No one can doubt that justice in Mexico is practically nonexistent. The average Mexican lives in a sea of permanent abuse without having any recourse to protect their interests. Most of the issues -contracts, services, defective products- that involve the average citizen are local, unlike the federal jurisdiction, which is the one that involves matters linked to the federal government and that, at the pinnacle of the structure, refer to the Supreme Court of Justice. The former affect 99% of Mexicans; the latter engage the remaining 1%. One would think -it would be common sense- that any reform to the justice system would focus on the problems faced by the 99%.
However, the bill that is being discussed and feared so much is not aimed at improving justice or at creating mechanisms to resolve conflicts or disputes that affect citizens, but rather to establish tight control over the members of the Supreme Court of Justice. In one word, the objective is strictly political, derived more from a spirit of revenge than from a constructive goal of solving real and tangible problems that afflict the population.
The challenge that the outgoing president’s project represents for the judiciary is but one component of the broader framework that integrates the set of constitutional amendments that, like poison, he is trying to inherit Dr. Sheinbaum. The repercussions of the proposed changes to the structure of the Supreme Court are multiple and with consequences in many more areas than its promoter probably imagines. However, in terms of political power, they go hand in hand with the proposed elimination of the members of Congress by proportional representation, the incorporation of the Electoral Institute (INE) and the Electoral Tribunal (TRIFE) into the federal government and the dismantling of the few remaining independent regulatory bodies, including Transparency and Access to Information (INAI).
The nodal point is that the proposed reforms are not a matter of laws but of power. Much of the discussion that has taken place in the media, periodicals and academic debates has revolved around the powers of the various entities and branches of the government, that is, their constitutional attributes. However, this approach seems misguided because the outgoing government has shown its unwillingness to abide by the laws or powers of the presidency, whether derived from the Constitution of other laws. For President López Obrador, what is relevant is not the law but the power that the presidency can wield without check, and his mantra throughout his term has been to increase those powers systematically, first de facto and now in the Constitution.
There is no doubt that the checks and balances that were created with the reform of the Supreme Court in 1994 and thereafter turned out to be weaker than their authors intended, perhaps largely because they were never explained and socialized among the population and, therefore, they did not acquire the legitimacy that is, in the end, the factor that determines the strength of an institution. It is no coincidence that the two most disputed institutions -by attackers and defenders alike- are the best known: the Supreme Court and the INE, where citizens are duly invested. Their legitimacy provides credibility and, consequently, their elimination would have enormous costs for the government and the country in general.
The current moment will end up being crucial, whatever the outcome. The notion that it is possible to recreate the old presidency at no cost is laughable. The size, diversity and dispersion of the population bears no resemblance to the idyllic era which the president seems to want to recreate (the 1970s); the structure of the economy in the globalized world has nothing to do with that of the period known as “stabilizing development” (1950s and 1960s) nor can the country return to that era; and Morena, in addition to not being a political party in shape, does not have the tentacles that the PRI of yesteryear had nor the control of social structures such as the Labor Congress, the peasants organizations (CNC) or the popular organizations (CNOP). Opium dreams can end up being extraordinarily expensive.
The big battle being played at this moment (the so-called “Plan C”) aims to recreate the authoritarian regime of yesteryear. But the “small” battle is the crucial one at this juncture because it is what will determine the possibility of the total control project being consolidated. This “small” battle has to do with the overrepresentation that Morena aspires to in the two legislative chambers, for which the certification of the election is the central factor. The president, a calculating politician, intends to control the process that leads to overrepresentation and, from there, to the qualified majority by his party through the judges of the electoral tribunal, whose current number, by the actions of the president himself, is insufficient to produce the certification of the June 2 election. It is not a conspiracy, but the attitude should deceive nobody.
The underlying point is what is crucial: how would these constitutional and political games affect the future president? One would think that after an overwhelming victory, the smoothest possible transition would be the logical goal, but the president seems bent to create the conditions for a potential Waterloo.
