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Political Reformism in Mexico: Salinas at the Brink*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Stephen D. Morris
Stephen D. Morris*
Affiliation:
University of Alabama, Instituto de Estúdios Económicos y Regionales, University of Guadalajara
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Extract

Despite the Mexican regime's track record of adaptiveness, the 1980s seemingly altered the nature of political reform there. Secular, conjunctural, and policy trends attenuated traditional reformist mechanisms (i.e. the regime's capacity to co-opt, or corruption's “lubricating” potential), exposing a series of wrenching political dilemmas and potentially zero-sum equations. The watershed presidential election of July 1988 and the continuing challenge posed by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas Solórzano's PRD (Parttdo de la Revolutión Democrática) both reflected and crystallized these quandaries, magnifying the need and inherent dangers of reforming the one-party system. Yet during the ensuing years, and contrary to unwieldy predictions and scenarios, the regime neither unraveled (see Wiarda 1988/89), capitulated before a Cárdenas-led electoral or revolutionary front, nor stagnated. Instead it rebounded, raising new questions about Mexico's political future.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , Spring 1992 , pp. 27 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1992

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Footnotes

*

This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the XVI International Congress of die Latin American Studies Association, Washington (DC), April 1991. The author wishes to thank anonymous reviewers of the JIASWA for their helpful comments; revisions were completed while author was serving as Fulbright lecturer at the University of Guadalajara.

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