Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 EQUILIBRIUM PARTY HEGEMONY
- 2 STRUCTURAL DETERMINANTS OF MASS SUPPORT FOR THE PRI
- 3 BUDGET CYCLES UNDER PRI HEGEMONY
- 4 THE POLITICS OF VOTE BUYING
- 5 JUDGING ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE IN HARD TIMES
- 6 IDEOLOGICAL DIVISIONS IN THE OPPOSITION CAMP
- 7 HOW VOTERS CHOOSE AND MASS COORDINATION DILEMMAS
- 8 ELECTORAL FRAUD AND THE GAME OF ELECTORAL TRANSITIONS
- 9 CONCLUSION
- References
- Index
- Cambridge Cultural Social Studies
4 - THE POLITICS OF VOTE BUYING
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 EQUILIBRIUM PARTY HEGEMONY
- 2 STRUCTURAL DETERMINANTS OF MASS SUPPORT FOR THE PRI
- 3 BUDGET CYCLES UNDER PRI HEGEMONY
- 4 THE POLITICS OF VOTE BUYING
- 5 JUDGING ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE IN HARD TIMES
- 6 IDEOLOGICAL DIVISIONS IN THE OPPOSITION CAMP
- 7 HOW VOTERS CHOOSE AND MASS COORDINATION DILEMMAS
- 8 ELECTORAL FRAUD AND THE GAME OF ELECTORAL TRANSITIONS
- 9 CONCLUSION
- References
- Index
- Cambridge Cultural Social Studies
Summary
There is wide consensus among experts on Mexico about the key role played by patronage politics in maintaining the PRI regime (Ames, 1970; Cornelius, 1975, 2004; Collier, 1992; Cornelius et al., 1994; Dresser, 1994; Fox, 1994, among others). As Cornelius (2004) explains,
[F]rom the party's creation in 1929 until the early 1990s, authoritarian mobilization of voters was a key ingredient of the PRI's electoral success. A steadily shrinking but still crucial bloc of voters, concentrated in the country's most economically underdeveloped electoral districts, routinely voted for the ruling party's candidates in response to pressures from local caciques and PRI-affiliated peasant and labor leaders. Particularistic material rewards – everything from minor kitchen appliances to land titles to public-sector jobs – were routinely and systematically used to purchase electoral support. (48)
Despite the fact that most scholars agree that patronage played a key role in the system, there are significant disagreements about the actual mechanics of vote buying, on the one hand, and its political effectiveness for the PRI's survival, on the other. This chapter deals with these issues. The empirical evidence will come from a systematic analysis of municipal-level allocations from the PRONASOL, a poverty relief program implemented by the Mexican government from 1989 to 1994. The database employed is the first to include municipal-level allocations from PRONASOL distributed to the country's more than 2,400 municipalities during the entire life of the program.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Voting for AutocracyHegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico, pp. 122 - 150Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006