Courting Democracy in Mexico: Party Strategies and Electoral Institutions

ISBN-13: 9780521820011 / Angielski / Twarda / 2003 / 376 str.

Todd A. Eisenstadt

Opis

Pitting opposition activists' post-electoral conflicts against their usage of regime-constructed electoral courts, this study of Mexico's gradual transition to democracy addresses the puzzle of why its opposition parties failed to use these autonomous courts. The electoral courts were established to mitigate Mexico's often violent post-electoral disputes at key moments of the country's 27-year democratic transition, and had formal guarantees of court independence from the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI).

Recenzje

"Meticulously researched and theoretically rich, Eisenstadt's book provides the most extensive account we are likely to see of the interaction between national-level elites--from both regime and opposition--and party activists at the state and local levels as the opposition parties began to seriously contest elections in the late 1980s and 1990s." Political Science Quarterly, Joseph L. Klesner, Kenyon College

Spis treści

Figures and tables; Acknowledgements; 1. Electoral courts and actor compliance: opposition-authoritarian relations and protracted transitions; 2. Ties that bind and even constrict: why authoritarians tolerate electoral reforms; 3. Mexico's national electoral justice success: from oxymoron to legal norm in just over a decade; 4. Mexico's local electoral justice failures: gubernatorial (s)election beyond the shadows of the law; 5. The gap between law and practice: institutional failure and opposition success in postelectoral conflicts, 1989–2000; 6. The National Action Party: dilemmas of rightist oppositions defined by authoritarian collusion; 7. The party of the democratic revolution: from postelectoral movements to electoral competitors; 8. Dedazo from the center to finger pointing from the periphery: PRI hard-liners challenge Mexico's electoral institutions; 9. A quarter century of 'Mexicanization': lessons from a protracted transition; Appendices; Bibliography; Index.