Party Organization and the Electoral Disconnection in Mexico

8/14/2019 Party Organization and the Electoral Disconnection in Mexico

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PARTY ORGANIZATION AND THE ELECTORAL DISCONNECTION IN MEXICO

Kenneth F. [email protected]

http://www.la.utexas.edu/~kgreene/ Department of Government

University of Texas at Austin1 University Station A 1800

Austin TX 78712-0119Tel. 512-232-7206Fax. 512-471-1061
mailto:[email protected]://www.la.utexas.edu/~kgreene/http://www.la.utexas.edu/~kgreene/mailto:[email protected]


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Economic crisis during the 1980s and 1990s turned voters against the PRI. Falteringgrowth, declining real wages, and increasing poverty generated electoral dealignment. Yet

despite the increasing availability of electoral constituencies, the opposition parties did not makesubstantial gains and beat the PRI until 1997 when together they stripped the incumbent of itsmajority in the lower house of Congress. Why did the PAN and PRD fail to realign majoritarianconstituencies and generate stable winning coalitions until the late 1990s? Why did they remainniche-oriented competitors when they had the opportunity to become catchall parties withbroader support? What factors account for their eventual expansion? Why was the PAN betterable to navigate this process and beat both the incumbent PRI and the challenger PRD in the2000 presidential elections?

Opposition parties failed to expand because they were unable to take advantages of theelectoral opportunities given by dealignment in the 1980s and 1990s. As I demonstrate in otherwork (Greene, 2002b), the PAN and the PRD were built initially by programmatically radicalactivists who were the only ones willing to join when the probability of victory was low and thecosts of affiliation were high. In this paper I focus on the organizational forms adopted by theseearly-joiners. They created niche-oriented parties that made specialized appeals to coreelectoral constituencies and constructed closed organizations with high barriers to new activistaffiliation. Even when more moderate activists affiliated with the opposition, early joiners who

tended to rise to leadership positions blocked attempts to open their parties to broaderconstituencies. It is the path of opposition party building in Mexicos dominant party regime thatmade the PAN and PRD rigid to innovation and hampered their ability to take advantage ofelectoral dealignment. In short, opposition parties in dominant party regimes are constrained bytheir origins.

This paper focuses on the growth-constraint cycle in opposition parties. It highlights theconstraints in challenger party growth based on the sequencing of activists who join and thestickiness of the organizational formulas that they adopt when their probability of victory is low.

In addition to addressing the empirical questions framed above, this argument has twotheoretical implications. First, that party organizations constrain the adoption of optimalstrategies much more than most arguments in the spatial tradition expect. Second, contrary tothe expectations of the so-called Law of Curvilinear Disparities it is the leaders of oppositionparties who are generally more programmatically radical than activists. This, in turn, impliesthat intra-party democracy and electoral competitiveness are positively associated in oppositionparties in dominant party systems as opposed to the negative association found in work onparties in the United States and Western Europe. I defer a full discussion of the absence of

curvilinear disparities for later work.

The first part of the paper presents data on voter dealignment and the electoralopportunities for opposition parties in Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s. In addition, it uses basicformal theory to show the optimal programmatic location for opposition parties to adopt underdifferent levels of dominant party advantages. These formal expectations set a baseline forjudging the degree of policy moderation by the PAN and PRD in the 1980s and 1990s


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Dominant Party Advantages, Dealignment, and Opposition Party Location

The economic crisis of the 1980s turned voters against the PRI. Public opinion datafrom Magaloni (1997: 192) show that over 50% of the population held negative retrospectiveevaluations of PRI performance on economic issues, while only about 30% held positiveevaluations. Nevertheless, as depicted in Figure 1, over 40% of those who held the strongestnegative evaluations still planned to vote for the PRI in the subsequent election. In other words,voters disliked the PRI, but they still planned to vote for it over the opposition.

[Figure 1 about here]

This finding contrasts sharply with the standard assumptions of the retrorpsective votingmodel as conceptualized by V.O. Key. Why would voters reject the incumbent but not prefer theopposition? Simply put, they disliked the PRI, but they liked the PAN and PRD even less.Other data from Magaloni (1997: 193) shows voters prospective economic evaluations. Onlyabout one-third expected that an opposition party better manage the economy compared to thePRI.


Why were the opposition parties less likable than a faltering incumbent? A key elementof likeability concerns the policy offers of the competing parties. The PAN and PRD remainedless moderate on the issues than they needed to be in order to attract the median voter. It wasprecisely the PRIs traditional ability to attract these constituencies that ensured its dominanceand encouraged opposition activists to build niche-oriented parties that made specializedappeals to core constituencies. It is the argument of this paper that this prior episode of nicheparty building constrained challengers from adapting to the availability of centrist votersfollowing the economic crisis. In order to see why dominant party advantages before the 1980s

encouraged niche opposition party building and why dealignment afforded opportunities toexpand by becoming more centrist, it is helpful to examine a straightforward formalization of thespatial logic of party competition between a resource rich incumbent and a resource poorchallenger.

PRI dominance (i.e. electoral alignment) was predicated on centrist programmaticappeals and on the ability to buy voters with patronage resources (see Greene, 2002b).Patronage introduced substantial bias into the way that each voter evaluated the attractiveness

of the competing parties. Thus, whereas the opposition parties relied exclusively on policyappeals, the dominant PRI could also offer tangible rewards. What is the best location forchallenger parties to adopt in the competition space under different levels of incumbencyadvantages? What set of appeals are likely to generate the most votes?

In the Downsian model with a neutral competitive market in which non-policy resourcesare not taken into account or are assumed equal the optimal location is always the median (or


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certain distance from its location. To see this more formally, imagine that voters are

arrayed on the dimension [-1,1] where negative values are associated with leftist positions and

positive values are associated with rightist ones. A dominant party (D) located at the medianlocation with patronage (g) competes against a challenger party (C) located at without

patronage. I make the reductive assumptions that voters are offered equal amounts ofpatronage regardless of their programmatic locations, they always accept what they are offered,

and acceptance always biases their vote choice in favor of the incumbent. The i voter hasutility for the two parties as follows:

[ Ni ...1=

c

th

]

)

X

( ) gXVDU

dii +=

2)( (1)

( 2)( cii XVCU = (2)

The indifferent voter is located at U )()( CUD = or where

)(22 dc

dc

i

XX

gXXV

+

+

= (3)

The first term captures the effect of policy while the second term captures the effect of

patronage. If an opposition party on the left takes an extreme position, then is a large

negative. This makes the policy term dominate and washes out the effect of patronage. Noticethat in this case the policy term becomes large since party location is in the numerator, and thepatronage term becomes small since party location is in the denominator. However, theopposition party will only appeal to voters on the extremes since it adopts and extreme location,

and consequently will win only a small proportion of the electorate. To increase its vote share,the party may want to move toward the median voter, in this model located at 0. But as it

moderates, gets closer to zero and the policy term gets smaller compared to the patronage

term. As the challenger moderates, the differential benefit between its policy and the policy ofthe dominant party gets smaller, so that patronage becomes relatively more important. Whenthe challenger gets too close to the dominant party at the median, it enters the patronage zoneand will win zero votes. Patronage functions like a spatial buffer around the dominant partysposition, effectively blocking opposition parties access to the median voter if the dominant party

locates its policy within a range of the median voter that includes its buffer.1

cX

cX

The challengers optimal location can be derived from the location of the indifferent voter

by maximizing the function with respect to . This yields two solutions. Solution (4) is

associated with opposition parties to the right of the dominant party and solution (5) isassociated with opposition parties to the left.

cX


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gXd + (4)

gXd (5)

Now, assume granges from 0 to 1.2 Figure 3 shows the best location for challengers tothe left and right of a dominant party located at the median at zero. When the dominant partyhas no patronage resources (i.e. g=0), the optimal location for both challengers is also at zero.To see this, substitute in for gin (3) above. This yields the standard Downsian result for neutral(i.e. perfect democratic) competition where no party has a non-spatial advantage over the other.It is also the intuitive result for three party competition provided by Sartori (1976) in which the

two peripheral parties squeeze the location of the party in the middle. As patronage resourcesincrease (i.e. g>0), the optimal location for both challengers moves away from zero and towardthe left and right respectively. The effect of patronage forces the challenger to move off themedian and adopt a losing position or to remain close to the median and win no votes at all.The figure would look similar no matter what policy location the dominant party adopts, with the

center always located at .dX


The PRIs patronage advantages declined with economic crisis and the adoption of freemarket economic policies during the 1980s and 1990s. Both processes diminished theadministrative resources of the state that the incumbent used to make itself more attractive tothe voters. Thus, since 1982, both the PAN and the independent left/PRD could profitably havemoved from less to more moderate policy positions to expand their vote share.

At the broadest level, this process of moderation did in fact occur. Opposition parties

were in fact very sensitive to the incumbents policies, resources, and use of repression (seeGreene, 2002b). With overall reductions in the PRIs advantages since 1982, opposition forcestrended toward the center. Nevertheless, their degreeof moderation in the critical period of the1980s and 1990s was halting and incomplete. How can we know this?

Three sources of data suggest that the PAN and PRD moderated incompletely. First,data on activists preferences from the Party Personnel Surveys (see Greene, 2002a) showed acombination of radical and moderate positions inside each party. Rather than pooling on amore moderate policy, they disagreed sharply about how their parties should appeal to voters

even as late as 1999 when the survey was conducted. Second, these differences manifestedthemselves in intra-party debates over each partys profile in the electorate. Activists in thePRD debated and eventually adopted a resolution that defined the party as leftist. Activists inthe PAN debated whether to join the Christian Democracy International made up of center-rightparties, and eventually did so. These affiliations are suggestive of the types of parties thatactivists sought to form: leftist and Christian Democratic ones rather than catchall parties with a


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more open character. Finally, public opinion surveys conducted in the 1990s show that PRIidentifiers were centrist in the aggregate on economic policy issues, while PAN identifiers were

on the center-right and PRD identifiers were on the center-left. Neither opposition party wasable to moderate sufficiently to construct a broad-based catchall coalition in the electorate.

Standard spatial theory generally expects parties to adapt immediately to changingconditions. Many analyses treat party organizations as malleable and easily manipulated by thecandidates who use them to compete in elections (Wright, 1971; Aldrich, 1995). For instance,Wright (1971) argues that parties adopt rationally-efficient organizational forms for maximizingvotes. Even versions of spatial theory that focus on adaptive parties that learn from election toelection find that ambitious parties achieve near-optimality over about five elections, or fewer if

campaigns are long (Kollman, Miller, and Page, 1992). Analyses that treat party organization asepiphenomenal assume that parties are unified actors. In Downss (1957) original formulation,parties are seen as teams of office-seekers. Other work simply names a party dictator(typically candidates) or assume that one exists. In the case of the PAN and PRD, if a partydictator existed or if the more moderate newer office-seekers had complete control, they shouldhave moved their parties toward the median voter at the center of the competition space.

Similar expectations about opposition parties ability to attract majoritarian constituencies

were implied by scholars of Mexico who routinely suggested that the PRI was just about tolose in the next round of elections. As the data on dealignment suggests, by the late 1980s,the PRI was in fact as vulnerable as these scholars suggested. Yet the opposition parties wereweaker than they implied because they adopted sub-optimal positions in the electorate. Whydid the opposition parties fail to maximize their vote share by adapting to changingcircumstances that signaled fairer spatial competition on a level playing field? Why were theyunable to consolidate support among constituencies that were clearly unhappy with the PRIfollowing the 1982 economic crisis?

Path-Dependency and Collective Action Problems in Opposition Party Development

Opposition parties that develop in dominant party systems are constrained by theirorigins. Their growth is limited by the presence of niche-oriented activists and by the partyorganizations that these activists build when their probability of victory is low. Figure 4 showsthe overview of the growth-constraint cycle in opposition party development. To examine thisfigure, notice that it contains and upper half and a lower half. Greene 2002b (Chapter 5)focused on the upper half that contains the relationship between the pre-election probability of

victory, the preferences of opposition leaders and activists, and the parties policy appeals. Thispaper now examines the lower half of the figure that deals with the indirect effects of partyleaders and activists preferences on policy position, mediated through the partiesorganizational forms and their modes of activist recruitment. The next two sections follow theoutline of the figure, first examining activists preferences and then examining the concreteeffects of these preferences on actual organizational form and the mode of party expansion.


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Activist type is a key intervening variable that interacts with the sequencing of affiliation

in producing preferences over organizational form. Office-seekers should become moreinterested in opening affiliation structures more quickly than message-seekers as dominantparty advantages decline. By opening affiliation to broader groups, office-seekers should bebetter able to generate votes and achieve office. Message-seekers who serve in the partybureaucracy are also interested in expansion; however, as the probability of victory increases,they are comparatively more concerned with the partys policy offer than are office-seekers andthis less interested in moving the organizational structure from niche to catchall.

Leaders and Activists Preferences over Party Organization

Preferences over RecruitmentFigures 5 and 6 show the preferences of PAN and PRD leaders and activists over the

question of activist recruitment. In both parties, activists who entered earlier when the dominantpartys resources were significant endorse closed membership structures that prioritize activistquality over quantity. Activists who joined later when the incumbents resource advantageswere eroding, instead preferred to sacrifice activist quality for numbers.

[Figures 5 and 6 about here]

Why would opposition parties not invite in as many activists as possible as a way ofexpanding their support? Why would early joiners willingly choose mechanisms that kept theirparties small? High barriers to affiliation served two purposes. First, when the dominant partysadvantages were high, opposition parties were extremely worried about losing activists to theincumbent. Concern over cooptation was well founded. Historically, seemingly strongopposition labor movements, popular movements and parties were partially or fully demobilizedas their activists were bought off and their constituencies re-incorporated into the PRI (Hellman,

1983; Eckstein, 1988; Haber, 1997). Prudhomme argues that the question of cooptationpermeated opposition party decision-making in multiple arenas. He states that

Cooptation by the Mexican government has constituted a permanent feature of itsrelationship with the opposition. The awareness of this risk is so acute in someopposition forces that they equate dialogue with the authorities with cooptation (1997: fn3).

By making affiliation relatively more difficult, the challengers molded party identities thatdifferentiated them from the dominant party and encouraged only the most committed activiststo join. Presumably these committed activists would be less vulnerable to cooptation by theincumbent.

The second advantage of high barriers was to protect the few resources that oppositionparties could generate for their members Since lowering the relative costs of activism was


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and create new converts. Rather, they sought activists who would serve as campaign workersen masse. They wanted canvassers who would go door to door, legions to put up posters and

paint slogans, and members to turnout at marches and provide a presence at campaign stops.These activists would be part time helpers rather than full time and completely committedactivists. Their actions would be directed not primarily at creating converts to the partisan causebut at helping to maximize the vote.

Although data for both parties correspond very well to expectations, the hypothesizeddifferences between activist types obtained only in the PRD. Among PRD personnel shown inFigure 6, office-seekers become more interested in opening the party structure at a faster rateover time than do message-seekers. Among PAN personnel depicted in Figure 5, activists want

to open the recruitment process to broader segments of society, but there is virtually nodifference between office-seekers and message-seekers by year of affiliation.

Preferences over Core Constituency LinksThe same pattern of preferences was evident when it came to the question of linkages to

core constituencies: early joiners preferred to maintain the tightest links with their partysrespective core constituencies while later joiners instead preferred to move beyond coreconstituencies and expand into new groups. Figures 7 and 8 show the relationship between

year of affiliation still treated as a proxy for the dominant partys resource advantages andpreference for links to the partys core constituency.

[Figures 7 and 8 about here]

From its inception, the PANs core constituency was primarily the upper and middleclasses. Citizens with higher levels of education and less in need of public assistance foundtheir political needs accommodated in the right-wing PAN. The core constituency of left partiesand the PRD was instead primarily working class voters. The PRIs strong links to organized

labor in the formal sector made this constituency unavailable to the left, so instead independentleft parties created tight relationships with dissident labor groups, urban poor peoplesmovements, and some rural poor peoples movements.

These were the constituencies that had traditionally supplied both activists and votes tothe party and thus served as the lifeblood of the opposition when its probability of victory waslow. Without these loyal constituents who voted their beliefs, sometimes even in contrast withtheir interests, opposition parties may not have survived. Thus, niche-oriented activists with

long tenures in the opposition preferred to maintain tight links to these groups.

These activists had fewer personal ties to their partys traditional core and also saw thepotential electoral advantages of expansion. Interestingly, PAN activists show more change intheir interest in expansion over time than do PRD activists. This may be explained by therelative size of their core constituencies in Mexico. The middle class groups affiliated with thePAN are clearly not large enough to yield electoral majorities in single member districts On the


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constituencies than early joiners. This finding should be underscored. Office-seekers whojoined later are the primary motor of change, while activists with longer tenure and those inside

the party bureaucracy seek to deepen relationships to the core. In both parties, this signals areal danger of stagnation; however the problem is potentially more acute in the PAN since itscore is made up of the smaller middle class. Not expanding could doom the party to limitedsuccess at the polls.

The same relationship obtains among PRD personnel in Figure 7. Here, message-seekers who join later are significantly more oriented toward core groups. Later office-seekersare less so; however, their rate of change is very slight. This suggests that overall, PRDpersonnel are more oriented toward core constituents than are PAN activists. On the one hand,

this appears less threatening to the PRDs success since its core is made up of larger workingclass groups; however, as the case studies below will show, the PRD is often limited toorganized groups and movements that count for a small proportion of the working class.

How did the preferences outlined in this section manifest themselves in actualorganizational forms and modes of expansion of the opposition parties? The next two sectionsfollow the causal path outlined in Figure 4.

Party Organizational Form

Creating high barriers to affiliation and advancement meant that the PAN and parties ofindependent left and PRD paid very close attention to the mechanisms of activist recruitment.Both parties established institutes to recruit and train activists, funded executive levelsecretaries to track membership, and instituted formal and informal affiliation procedures thatwere designed to incorporate good types who were ideologically pure.

From its founding in 1939, the PAN considered itself to be a party of excellent

minorities. The party began as a reaction to the Crdenas Administrations successful effortsto organize and incorporate the labor movement and peasant producers through peak-levelorganizations (Collier and Collier, 1991). Founding party president Manuel Gmez Mornviewed these party sectors as inimical to democracy and the free expression of individualpreferences. The PAN therefore eschewed relationship with social organizations and reliedexclusively on individual affiliation. However, since the PRIs sectors included the major socialgroups of the early and mid-20thcentury, the PAN resigned itself to recruiting what amounted toa minority of activists. Ensuring that the small number of activists were high quality required

strictly controlling membership roles and screened potential members multiple times. Until1996, would be members had to secure the sponsorship of an existing local activist and then beapproved by the National Members Registry that was controlled by the National ExecutiveCommittee. Activists were screened by way of an exam on the partys basic principles. Theexam limited affiliation to the more educated and literate segments of the population andensured that only the most committed activists joined. Indeed, the high barriers to affiliationbecame a point of pride The party president and others recounted a story that involved the


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they were sometimes willing to sacrifice electoral gains. According to ex-Party President FelipeCaldern as late as 1996, the PANs challenge is to win elections without losing the party.

This emphasis on party identity seems almost fantastical from the perspective of Downsiantheory that expects parties to act as rational vote maximizers.

Neither parties of the independent left nor the PRD imposed formal barriers to affiliationlike the PAN. However, they all had strict informal barriers to affiliation and advancement.Parties of the independent left were based on dissident labor organizations, organized peasantgroups, and radical intellectual clubs (see Carr, 1992). In sharp contrast to the PAN, individualaffiliation in these parties was almost unknown and advancement without the support of anorganized social group was practically impossible. This group basis of intra-party politics

migrated into the PRD when it formed in 1989.

The PRD maintained a technically open affiliation procedure designed to incorporatebroad segments of civil society; however, in practice, the group basis of recruitment andadvancement persisted. It was hoped that low formal barriers would spark a massive inflow ofsupport. The PRD fused pre-existing parties and partisan organizations of the independent leftwith a handful of leaders who defected from the PRI under the name Democratic Current (CD).In the 1988 elections, these forces along with a broader array of social groups formed a

temporary alliance called the National Democratic Front (FDN) in order to back CuauhtmocCrdenas for the presidency. Although Crdenas was defeated, his candidacy sparked a massmobilization and suggested that a more organized left party could win in the future. In 1989, keyplayers in the FDN formed the PRD (see Bruhn, 1997). The new party maintained a technicallyopen affiliation process in the hope of re-igniting the broad oppositionist sentiment of 1988.However, like the parties of the independent left before it, the PRD also had strict informalbarriers to affiliation and advancement.

Typically, entry into the PRD is regulated by factions that are made up of partisan

organizations, social movements, and nongovernmental organizations. The group basis of theparty became so complete, that according to one disgruntled ex-activist,

There are more than a few who have tried to affiliate with the PRD as simple citizensand have had to give up after coming up against the barrier of hermetic and sectariangroups that demonstrated little appreciation for individual activism (Aurelio Sanchez,1999: 100).

Membership in base-level social and partisan groups and in the broader factions thataggregate them at the state and national levels served as the analytical equivalent to formalbarriers to entry. Factions, known as corrientesworked as a filter to ensure that only goodtypes played a role in party conventions and local leadership. According Augustn GuerreroCastillo, now President of the PRD in the Federal District, The corrientesare responsible formost of the growth of the party. Without their structure, there are no activists, because everyactivist belongs to a corriente (Aurelio Sanchez 1999: 100)


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Porfirio Muoz Ledo and seems to have had the support of Cuauhtmoc Crdenas from the CD.It also included Jess Ortega from the PRT, and both Ral Alvarez Garn and Marcos Rascnfrom Punto Crtico. The CID had a much broader base in social and political. It included Marioand Paco Saucedo from the ACNR, Carlos Imaz from CEU, and Ren Bejerano and DoloresPadierna from the UPNT. As a result of its ties to the partys base, the CID was better able tomaintain positions inside the party during internal elections and negotiations over candidacies.


In the period 1994 to 2000, these mega-factions broke up and the resulting factional mixbecame both highly fluid and highly personalized. Each of the major players launched what was

essentially a candidate-centered faction. On the one hand, this represents the increasingAmericanization of intra-party politics in the PRD. On the other hand, these personalistfactions still had deep roots that travel from the party leadership to base level organizations. Asone example, candidates for the party presidency in Mexico City in 1998 measured their pre-electoral force exclusively in terms of the local social and partisan organizations that supportedthem.

Both the PAN and PRD created high barriers to affiliation and recruitment based eitheron formal screening procedures or on the informal group basis of intra-party politics. Theseearly organizational arrangements were created by niche-oriented activists who sought togenerate a tightly knit corps of activists that would help their parties endure even when theprobability of victory was low and the costs of participation were high. The remainder of thispaper examines the effects of these early organizational forms on party expansion and theattempt to become catchall.

Mode of Activist Expansion

Niche and catchall parties expand their activist corps in different ways. Niche partiesexpand by deepening affiliation among core constituencies. This intensive form of expansionprioritizes depth over breadth and tends to create islands of support within districts. Winningnew support and expanding into new areas is typically a slow and arduous process, involving asignificant amount of base-level work designed to convert citizens to the partys worldview.Catchall parties expand by adding activists from non-core constituencies at a higher rate. Thisextensive form of expansion prioritizes breadth over depth by incorporating constituencies innew districts. Extensive expansion may occur through base-level work but may also occur

through broader-based recruitment campaigns waged in the media.

The political biographies of activists and data on membership expansion can be used tocharacterize both niche and catchall forms of party building and chart the timing oforganizational change. First I examine the non-party organizational affiliations of activists usingindividual level data from the Party Personnel Surveys. Then I examine the dynamics ofmembership growth at the aggregate level A final substantive section of the paper examines


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organizations such as dissident labor unions and the urban popular movement. The process oftransiting from niche to catchall party forms meant decreasing reliance on core constituenciesand instead recruiting from beyond the parties traditional organizational bases.

Figure 10 shows the average number of organizations (total and by type) to which PANactivists belonged. Members of the PAN who joined in the 1970s belonged to an average ofalmost 3.5 organizations. Most important among these were family values organizations suchas Church-affiliated groups and parents clubs (Padres de Familia). Surprisingly, PAN activistsalso reported membership in working class groups, more than of middle class groups. Oneexplanation for this is that there may have been fewer middle class organizations available to

join. The second important finding presented in this figure is the notable reduction in

organizational memberships among activists who affiliated with the PAN later. The reductionbegins in about 1980 and then the rate of decline increases beginning in 1990. These datasuggest both that the PAN was significantly reliant on core constituencies associated with alliedorganizations at earlier stages in its development and that it became less reliant on these coregroups over time.


A similar pattern at the level of individual activists obtains in the PRD. The data shownin Figure 11 indicate that PRD activists who joined parties and partisan organizations of theindependent left in the 1960s were members of almost 4.5 non-party organizations. Nearly twoof these were working class organizations.


Party activists who joined the left later were less likely to be members of alliedorganizations, dropping to an average of about three by 1999. However, the overall

organizational basis of the PRD is significantly higher than in the PAN, suggesting that it wasmore reliant on core constituency groups for generating new activist recruitment at a later datethan was the PAN. Are these patterns reflected in the pace and dynamics of activist recruitmentin the aggregate?

Aggregate Membership DataAggregate membership data show evidence of a similar process. Before the mid-1990s,

the PAN and the PRD expanded by affiliating activists in core districts where they already had abase of support. During this period they appeared unable to add activists in new areas of thecountry. Beginning in the mid-1990s, both parties improved their ability to expand beyond coredistricts; however, the PAN proved more able to do so.

These data can be used in two ways to distinguish between niche and catchall forms ofparty organization. First, since niche parties erect high barriers to entry and limit affiliation togood types their activist corps may be small in absolute terms Second niche parties engage


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extends its coverage as it adds new members. To examine the relationship between coverageand growth, I look at the overall level of organizational membership and Jones andMainwarings (2003) Party Nationalization Score (PNS). The PNS measures how evenly spreada party is over geographic units. In this case, the PNS measures the evenness of activistpresence across Mexicos 32 states. A party that is spread evenly regardless of the numberof activists receives a PNS score of one. A party that is maximally uneven receives a scorecloser to zero. The PNS is 1-GINI where GINI is the standard coefficient used to calculateincome inequality across geographic units. For a full description of the calculation of the PNS,see Jones and Mainwaring (2003).

Figures 12, 13, and 14 show the overall membership and PNS score for the PAN and

PRD. The parties overall size can be read off the y-axis. However, the more interesting resultcomes from examining the angle and direction of movement between the years. Movementfrom left to right indicates catchall growth because the party is spreading in states where it hadless presence as it adds members. Full lateral movement to the right without an increase inmembership would indicate a reshuffling of existing members across a larger number of states.Movement from right to left indicates niche-oriented growth. In this case, as the party addsmembers it becomes less evenly spread across the country because it is adding members instates where it already has a greater presence. Full lateral movement to the left would indicatea reconcentration of existing members in a smaller number of states. Perfect vertical movementin the absence of moving left or right indicates that the party maintains its level of unevennessas it adds members. Here, the party is adding members in states where it has a smallpresence, but at the same time it adds members to its existing bases of support at the samerate.

The PANs priority for slow growth through the affiliation of good types rather than openaffiliation in the style of a catchall party is reflected in its consistent but extremely slow growthfrom 1939 to the 1990s. The party began in 1939 with 60 members. It did not reach 1,000 until

1958. It remained under 5,000 until 1980. From that point on, the number of active partymembers approximately doubled every five years. However, by 1994, it still had not reachedthe 50,000 member mark. During this same time period, the PRI claimed to have over sevenmillion members.

Figure 12 shows the mode of party expansion for the PAN using membership data from1980 to 1999. Notice that between 1982 and 1993, the PAN expanded by adding coremembers in states where it already had a presence. The movement from left to right suggeststhat the party in fact became less nationalized as it grew. Figure 13 shows an exploded view ofthe years 1980 to 1994 so that the direction of movement can be better appreciated. This figureshows short waves of expansion in coverage with larger leaps in the number of activists onlyafter the party gains a foothold in new areas. Thus, between 1980 and 1982, the partyincreased its coverage, but added very few members. Still, this increase in coverage, set thestage for the next growth stage between 1983 and 1985.


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120,000. As it did, it spread itself out more evenly across the national territory. Expansionbetween 1996 and 1999 slowed again and became more niche-like; however, by this time theparty was significantly larger and more nationalized than it had been two decades earlier.

Membership data on the PRD does not exist for the period 1989 to 1995. Beginning in1995, party records show almost 800,000 members. A year later, membership topped off at justunder one million, and by 1999 it surpassed two million. These numbers fall far below the PRIbut appear to significantly surpass the PAN. However, these data should be interpreted withcaution. First, since affiliation was open, anyone could register with ease. In-depth interviewssuggest that a significant proportion of members registered the day of primary elections, almostas part of the process of voting itself. As a result, the PRDs membership rolls include many

who cannot really be counted as active contributors to the party. Second, during the earlierstages of party development, the majority of members came from the Federal District and thestates of Mexico and Michoacn. Total PRD membership minus these three states stood atonly 70,000 in 1995. This number was in fact below the PANs total membership of almost85,000 in that year. The PRD only expanded significantly beyond its regional activist base inthese three states after 1995.


Figure 14 shows aggregate membership and Party Nationalization Scores for the PRDfor 1995 to 1999. The time series is truncated because membership data was not available forthe period before 1995. Presumably, significant growth occurred before 1995, since the partyreports about 800,000 registered members by that time. The available data then show adramatic leap in membership and increase in national coverage between 1995 and 1996.However, after 1996, the increase in coverage halted and the party expanded by addingmembers in new areas at the same speed at which it added members in states with anestablished PRD presence. The overall magnitude of membership continued to increase during

this period, reaching a reported 2.1 million by 1999. Although the PRDs membership growthappears impressive and the overall magnitude of its membership seems to indicate a catchalltype of organizations, the PRD remained significantly less nationalized than the PAN. Acomparison of the Party Nationalization Scores on the x-axes show that the PRDs highestscore between 1995 and 1999 is in fact lower than the PANs lowest level of national coveragefor any point after 1980. For its part, the PANs activists were better spread out, but there werefar fewer of them. Thus, both parties suffered from expansion problems that limited their sizeand reach.

Case Studies in Mexico City

Mexico City is the political center of the country. Nine million people live in the FederalDistrict and 22 million live in the metropolitan zone, making it the largest urban area in the world.Politically, it is so important that the government appointed the mayor of the Federal District(known as Regent) until 1997 and borough presidents until 2000 Historically the city has


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it won an average of just over 30% of the vote. It dipped dramatically in 1973, but thenrebounded to an average of over 20% of the vote from 1976 to through the 1990s.

The incredible concentration of political power and media coverage in the FederalDistrict makes it more important on the national scene than any of the countrys 31 states. TheFederal Districts 40 federal electoral districts before 1996 and 30 after the reforms of that yearrepresent an important proportion of the 300 single member districts nationally. Its more than5.5 million eligible voters make it the center for campaigns. Data compiled by Crespo (1996:181) show that 37.5% of all campaign activities by the three parties took place in the FederalDistrict in 1994. The next largest number occurred in the State of Mexico that surrounds MexicoCity, but it accounted for only 5.9%. Perhaps due to concern over opposition voting in the

Federal District, the PRI made 45% of its campaign stops in the Federal District. Campaignsoutside of the city are also affected by politics inside. For instance, citizens from all over thecountry watched the 1997 mayoral elections unfold, and this created a positive coattails effectfor the PRD.

No single state is representative of all of Mexico, and the Federal Districts uniquequalities mark important distinctions with other areas of the country. Nevertheless, theconditions of partisan competition inside the Federal District do mirror the patterns foundnationally. The PAN and the PRD have met with different levels of success across the citys 16boroughs and electoral districts, creating some areas of two party competition between oneopposition party and the PRI, and some areas in which all three parties are competitive. Like onthe national scene, the opposition parties do not compete head-to-head in the absence of acompetitive PRI in any district or borough.

The case studies in this section come from the boroughs of Miguel Hidalgo andIztapalapa. These two cases were purposively selected to maximize variation in the patterns ofparty competition. Miguel Hidalgo has three party competition borough-wide, but one of its two

districts has PAN-PRI competition and the other has PRD-PRI competition. Iztapalapa has twoparty competition between the PRD and the PRI. In all boroughs, like in Mexico in general,about 40% voters are not strictly identified with any party. All three parties compete vigorouslyfor this large floating electorate and have made concerted attempts to reduce electoraluncertainty by incorporating its members. Table 1 shows basic data about the three boroughs.

[Table 1 about here]

Miguel Hidalgo: Geographic Limits to Expansion

Miguel Hidalgo is home to almost 275,000 eligible voters. The borough includes thecitys main park (Chapultepec) and the presidents residence (Los Pinos). Bordering the park isthe fashionable Polanco neighborhood and the elegant Lomas area. Further to the north ofPolanco begins a working class zone that includes giant public housing projects on the west anddensely packed single family houses and small apartment buildings to the east Overall Miguel


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The PAN and the PRD engaged in serious efforts to expand their vote shares in MiguelHidalgo during the late 1990s, and both parties were very interested in winning the pluralityacross the entire borough. Doing so would enhance the possibility of winning bothcongressional seats and would add to the vote total for mayor and for proportionalrepresentation seats chosen in a large multi-state district. But most importantly, each partywanted to win the borough presidency that became an elected post for the first time in 2000.With these high stakes, and the possibility of going down in history as the first elected boroughpresident, candidates and party operatives were very focused on achieving the pluralityborough-wide. Winning a large proportion of votes in one district alone was unlikely to producea plurality across both, so both parties had to engage in aggressive attempts to expand.

Given prior performance, the parties had their work cut out for them. In the 1997 federalelections that immediately preceded the 2000 contest, the PRD swept 29 of 30 districts and wonthe mayoral race. Nevertheless, it did better in working class areas than in middle class ones,and Miguel Hidalgo was no exception. Figure 15 shows that in District 5 that had a loweraverage SES, the PRD won 42.2% of the vote, but in the richer District 10 in won 31.3%. Thisconstituted nearly an 11% gap between districts inside the same borough. The PANexperienced the inverse problem. It won 28.3% of the vote in the more prosperous District 10and 18.2% in the less prosperous District 5, creating more than a 10% gap. For its part, the PRImaintained an almost equal vote across the two districts, winning 29.3% in District 10 and26.6% in District 5. Local operatives from all parties knew that the PRDs overall performance in1997 was especially strong due to the candidacy of Cuauhtmoc Crdenas for mayor of the city.Operatives and analysts alike expected that the party would lose about 10% of its vote city-widewhen Crdenas was not running for local office. Thus, expectations were for vigorous threeparty competition in Miguel Hidalgo, with PAN-PRI competition in District 10 and PRD-PRIcompetition in District 5. But of course, neither party could take the borough without expandingits support into the district in which its support lagged.


The PRDThe PRDs presence in Miguel Hidalgo owes almost entirely to a local leader named

Javier Hidalgo and two community organizations he helped organize: the NeighborhoodDefense Committees (CDBs) of Pensil and Anahuac. Javier founded these groups following the1985 earthquake that devastated large portions of Mexico City and left many working classfamilies homeless. An architect by training, he helped organize families to lobby the city andfederal governments to rebuild damaged and destroyed housing. These two CDBs joined withother groups from throughout the city to form the Unified Coordinator of the Homeless (CUD)that successfully pressed the de la Madrid Administration to invest millions in housingreconstruction (Massolo, 1989). By 1987 most of the post-earthquake reconstruction wascomplete, but Javier and others saw the potential for mobilizing working class citizens over thelonger-term. His groups and others from the CUD formed a city-wide organization dedicated topublic housing construction and urban service provision called the Assembly of Neighborhoods


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Superbarrios Barriomvilthrough the mid-1990s. Based initially on his local leadership, Javierhas held several key posts in PRDs National Executive Committee, served as president of thepartys National Political Council, and was elected to two terms in the Mexico City legislature.3

Javier used his base in Pensil and Anahuac and his credentials as a social movementleader to expand the PRD's presence in the borough. Activists associated with both CDBscanvassed the surrounding areas and slowly incorporated other activists, winning converts tothe partys cause one activist at a time. Following the style of neighborhood organizations inMexico City, the PRD in Miguel Hidalgo staged meetings and marches, handed out flyers, hungbanners, and painted logos on buildings. Under Javiers leadership, the party had little troublein expanding into the public housing projects where the PRI was once especially strong.

The PRDs activist base in Miguel Hidalgo is concentrated in neighborhoods where it hasaffiliated non-party organizations. By 1999, the party had activists in 80 neighborhoods in theborough, but its activist support was in fact highly localized. Fully 40% of all 6,867 registeredactivists came from Anahuac (19.1%), Pensil (10.0%), and two geographically contiguousneighborhoods, Popotla (5.5%) and Tlaxpana (5.5%).4 The neighborhoods of Escandon (7.1%),Tacubaya (4.1%) and America (4.1%) are located in District 10 and were among the ten areaswith the most PRD activists. Importantly, these are the most working class-orientedneighborhoods in the district and include a concentration of car repair shops and informalcommerce in the streets.

Despite its very strong showing in 1997, the PRD seemed to reach its limit and hadfailed to expand beyond its core constituency in the run-up to the 2000 elections. Theorganization was no longer expanding the partys presence. The public opinion survey data inTable 1 above showed that only 14.4% of the electorate in the borough identified with the PRD.The same survey showed that just 15.1% planned to vote for the PRD candidate for congress.Why was the partys expected vote strictly limited to its core constituency? Why was it not

expanding? Javier put it this way,

Im coming to the conclusion that the form of organization I have is not capable ofexpanding into District 10. Its a middle class district and people just do things differentlythere. I have tried everything, including personal door-to-door canvassing, and Im luckyif I even get to the door before their guard dog attacks me! I just dont know how toexpand the party in neighborhoods like Polanco. What would you do?

The PRD in Miguel Hidalgo had reached the geographic limits of its expansion. Theparty did comparatively well in District 5 because it benefited from pre-existing socialorganizations that were linked to the party. This niche-oriented mode of expansion was poorlysuited for generating support in the predominantly middle and upper class District 10. The PRDwould not become a catchall party capable of winning the entire borough unless it moved awayfrom its traditional expansion style and instead found ways to generate support in the absenceof pre-existing social organizations Indeed in the 2000 elections for borough president Javier


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The PANThe PAN in Miguel Hidalgo experienced similar expansion problems, but from the other

side of the tracks. The PANs presence is significant in the more prosperous District 10 whereits middle class core constituents live, but its success in the poorer District 5 has been minor.Figure 15 shows that it too experienced a 10% gap in its vote share across districts in 1997.

In the run-up to the 2000 elections, Mauricio Candiani was the partys local leader.Mauricio is a young, energetic, and well-educated man who gave the impression of impendingupward-mobility. He was quick to produce pamphlets, brochures, and flyers of information thathe distributes throughout the borough on campaign trips. He also comes well-armed withsample surveys and demographic analysis of the district from census data produced by his local

staff in conjunction with the national partys research institute. These are the kinds of data thatPRD operatives were much less likely to produce or pay attention to. Yet the PAN lacked thePRDs legions.

Before becoming borough party president, Mauricio was president of the PAN in District10 where the partys presence is strong. There, middle class constituents support the partythrough a combination of individual affiliation and linkages between the party and pre-existingresidents associations. Mauricio founds it relatively easy to set up campaign visits with thesegroups, and his six paid staffers were sufficient to carry out preparations. These same groupsare so unavailable to Javier in the PRD, that he was not even sure they existed.

Data from 1999 show that the PAN counted with 1,133 registered activists in MiguelHidalgo. This number reaches barely one-sixth of the PRDs total. The relative percent of PANactivists in middle class areas far outpaces the partys presence in working class ones. Of theactivists for whom federal district location was noted in the partys membership rolls, 76% werefrom District 10 and only 24% from District 5. This is the inverse distribution of the PRDsmembership across the borough; however, the imbalance is far more severe.

When campaigning in District 10, Mauricio primes the partys market-oriented economicpolicy message. The retraction of the states presence in business and industry would createnew investment opportunities, and enhanced trade with other countries would increase theavailability of consumer goods at better prices. Enhancing individual responsibility through, forexample, the privatization of pension funds would help keep the tax burden relatively low.Mauricio finds that these economically-oriented campaign messages are especially important inDistrict 10. One area in which these appeals play significantly better than the partys socio-religious message of the 1950s and 1960s is the wealthy Polanco neighborhood where thesubstantial Jewish population has always been skeptical of the PANs social conservatism andties to the Catholic Church.

But the real battle is in expanding into District 5. In lower class areas, Mauricio says Idont talk about the partys program. Instead, I talk about gestin. Gestinrefers to theadministration of local needs whereby party operatives help residents facilitate their petitions for


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Its natural that a party that recruits by personal contact and has middle class memberswill continue to recruit from the middle class. And this is a central problem that the partyhas. We need to expand our recruitment into the lower class. The only real way to dothis is by canvassing door-to-door in the territory, having a presence in the street, anddetecting potential leaders among the lower class and then encouraging them to join theparty. But this is slow and difficult. I try to organize canvassing drives, but there aremany local activists in the party who dont spend time in the streets. They dont knowthe lower class areas and they are afraid of them.

Without an organizational base or the ability to generate one in lower class

neighborhoods, the PANs vote share is very sensitive to its candidate. When the candidate cangenerate lower class support, as Fox was able to do in 2000, the party does very well. When itcannot, the party flounders. As one example, the candidate for mayor of Mexico City in 1997,Carlos Castillo Peraza, was highly ineffective in generating support among the lower class. Asa result, the party lost convincingly, ceding every single member district to the PRD except one

District 10 in Miguel Hidalgo.

The 1997 campaign proved so disastrous for the PAN in the Federal District that theparty undertook a plan to reorganize. The new formula was designed to create closer links withindividual neighborhoods, and in particular to target lower class groups for expansion. Theborough of Iztapalapa was an important proving ground for this strategy.

Iztapalapa: Islands and Bunkers

Iztapalapa is the most populous borough in the Federal District, and it is poor. Its morethan one million eligible voters are divided into five federal electoral districts. Many homes inthe borough are self-built, 42% do not have access to the citys water service compared to 29%

city-wide, and 20% do not have drainage, five percent higher than the city average. Theboroughs history is the history of urbanization, internal migration, and the cacique(politicalstrongman) in Mexico. Families settled there in waves that rippled out from the distant citycenter to the northwest. Caciquesoften controlled land tenure, access to building materials,water, and other urban services by virtue of their links to local and federal politicians. As aresult, they also controlled a vast network of neighborhood organizations that were linked to thePRI. If the governments political control reached down to the block level anywhere in Mexico, itwas in Iztapalapa (Cornelius, 1975; Eckstein, 1978). Even in the 1990s after a dramaticincrease in partisan competition, the PRI still benefited from significant organization in theborough. Its presence owed to links it enjoyed with the trash-pickers (pepenedores) union (seeGuillermoprieto, 1994), the National Confederation of Popular Organizations (CNOP), a newerorganization designed to re-establish links to working class neighborhoods called the TerritorialMovement (MT), and groups dedicated to land invasions and neighborhood settlement such asAntorcha Popularand organizations controlled by a local leader simply known La Loba(TheWolf)


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dipped significantly as the Salinas Administration funded a massive patronage effort through thepoverty-alleviation program called PRONASOL. The partisan elements of this program weredesigned to win support back from the left, and in Mexico City, PRD activists report thatIztapalapa was a major target (author interviews, 1990-91). During this period, the PRDssupport was sufficiently depressed that the PAN advanced, and the borough temporarilyexperienced three party competition. But in 1997, the PRD won 49.5% of the vote to the PRIs25.4% and the PANs 12.9%. In 1999, local elections were held for neighborhoodrepresentatives. Although the contests were technically non-partisan, all three parties paidclose attention to the results and there is some evidence that each participated behind thescenes. According PRD operatives in Iztapalapa, it won 104, the PRI won 45, and the PAN wononly one.5

In the run-up to the 2000 elections, all three parties made significant attempts to expandtheir support. The PRD saw the opportunity to solidify its base and generate a durable majorityin the borough. The PRI sought to regain support among dealigned constituencies that it hadlost since the end of PRONASOL had diminished the partys capacity to distribute patronagegoods. For the PAN, Iztapalapa was a testing ground for its ability to expand into working classareas and improve on its dismal showing in 1997.

The PRD

The PRDs support in Iztapalapa, like in Miguel Hidalgo, was built on pre-existingindependent social movements and community organizations. Following the repression of thestudent movement in 1968, some communist and socialist activists dedicated themselves toorganizing communities on the outskirts of Mexico City and other cities. One such group wasthe Revolutionary Popular Union Emiliano Zapata (UPREZ). In 1980, the UPREZ was a majorelement in the creation of the National Coordinator of Urban Popular Movements (CONAMUP)that played an important role in the PSUM and later in the PMS. Like in Miguel Hidalgo, the

Assembly of Neighborhoods also had a strong presence as did a local community group called

the Civic Union of Iztapalapa.

However, the character of PRD-allied organizations in Iztapalapa was different thanthose in Miguel Hidalgo. Miguel Hidalgo is located in the center of the city and contains olderneighborhoods with mixed use that combine rental and owner-occupied housing as well asbusinesses. Community groups there tend to establish a presence neighborhood-wide.Iztapalapa, by contrast, contains many large public interest housing projects that are physicallyseparated from the rest of their neighborhoods. Most of this housing is owner-occupied, andresidents typically had to engage in struggles to claim land, secure political support to gethousing constructed, and amass resources for a down payment. This generated communityorganizations that are both more militant and more separated from their surroundingneighborhoods than those in the older areas of the city center.

To local political operatives of all parties, Iztapalapa feels territorially divided byorganizations associated with the PRD and the PRI Activists in all the parties can readily


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While this militancy resulted from hard-fought citizens struggles, it may have limited thePRDs ability to expand. In Miguel Hidalgo, the party was constrained geographically. It had apresence in working class neighborhoods but had difficulty expanding into middle class areas.

The party did not experience this type of problem in Iztapalapa because most of the borough isworking class. Thus, although the PRD has been successful there, based solely on theboroughs demographic profile, it should have been better able to consolidate an electoralmajority. Yet the party still fell below what seemed like its carrying capacity in the 1990s.Rather than geographic limits to expansion, the partys allied organization in Iztapalapa tendedto create islands of support. Sympathetic community organizations were very effective atmobilizing support inside large public interest housing projects, but they were much less able todraw in individual members from the surrounding neighborhoods.

In 1999, the PRD rolls showed 16,381 members in Iztapalapa. Membership was spreadout across the borough among the five federal electoral districts. Unlike in Miguel Hidalgowhere the party had significantly more members in the working class district than it did in themiddle class one, Iztapalapas working class profile created a more even distribution. However,within each district, the party experienced a dramatic concentration in areas where its socialorganizations were strong. As one example, the UPREZ controls a massive public housingproject called San Miguel Teotongo located in District 22. Overall, in 1999 the district had 2,501members (17.2%) of the total for the borough. San Miguel Teotongo accounted for 750 of

these, or 30% of the partys total presence in the district. Borough Party President Victor Hugocommented that

There arent many individual members of the party here who affiliated without a prioraffiliation with one of our organizations. People affiliate with the party because theleaders of their social organizations tell them to. This leads to a lot of activists, but ofpoor quality (author interview, July 14, 1999).

Victor won the presidency of the local party in a close election against ten othercandidates, all of whom were backed by a specific set of community organizations at the locallevel and party factions at the state and national levels. His support came from the UCI foundedby Congressman Ren Arce. The second place candidate was backed the UPREZ, and thethird by organizations allied with the faction described in Chapter 4 called the CID. The electionwas close enough and contentious enough that Victor felt he could not run the party effectivelywithout the support of the other community organizations. In an interview conducted in thepartys headquarters that was teeming with activity he stated,

One of the biggest problems here is the institutionalization of social movements andcommunity organizations in the party. These groups are powerful enough here andthey think they are even more powerful than they are that they threaten to leave theparty and work alone unless they get their way (author interview, July 14, 1999).

The PRD appeared stifled in Iztapalapa The borough seemed ripe for a left-wing


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The PANThe PAN had almost no natural base of support in Iztapalapa. The partys middle class

profile found little echo with local residents, and the borough appeared dominated by social

organizations allied with the PRI and the PRD. At the same time, the PANs doctrine ofindividual affiliation constrained it from adding members by linking with pre-existing groups.Party founder Gmez Morn had adopted the principle of individual affiliation in 1939 as a way toprotest what he viewed as the governments authoritarian corporatist form of affiliation throughgovernment-sponsored unions. Instead, the PAN would be a democratic force that eschewedrelationship with social organizations and instead focused on the free affiliation of individualcitizens. However, this approach severely hampered the partys ability to gain a foothold inIztapalapa.

Following the 1997 elections, the PAN invested significant resources in Iztapalapa aspart of its campaign to expand in working class neighborhoods and diminish its reliance on theparticular appeal of its candidates. The party hired a staff of 19 in the borough and purchased alarge and well-maintained building to serve as headquarters. In sharp contrast to thechoreographed chaos in the PRDs headquarters, the PANs locale resembled a bunker. Thepartys small paid staff seemed lonely in the large space set back from the road with only a backentrance behind an empty parking lot separated from the street by a car barricade.

The partys borough president in 1999 was Esperanza Gmez Mont. Previously,Esperanza had served as an elected representative to the 1stRepresentative Assembly of theFederal District (ARDF) from 1988 to 1991, and as the appointed president of the middle classborough of Benito Juarez. In that capacity, she was enormously popular and viewed as aneffective leader. These were precisely the skills needed to launch the PAN in Iztapalapa. Buthow could that be accomplished? The party would have to identify what it called naturalleaders in the boroughs neighborhoods and train them in the partys doctrine and style. Twovery similar initiatives were launched in the borough and through both the partys Mexico City

headquarters and national offices.

The first initiative brought existing activists who were professionals such as doctors,lawyers, and architects together under the title Homogeneous Groups. These groups wouldoffer legal aid, limited health care, advice about home construction, and help in securing urbanservices to residents in the borough. The PANs middle class professionals would essentiallyperform the functions of leaders of the social organizations allied with the PRD and the PRI.They would engage in what has been referred to above as gestin, designed to help citizensnegotiate the public bureaucracy and fulfill their particular needs.

Second, the PANs Mexico City headquarters created a secretariat called CitizenPromotion. This office coordinated gestinefforts city-wide. During 1998 and 1999, the partyengaged in about 200 to 300 acts of gestin. To give a sense of the magnitude of this effort, thePRI reports engaging in about 1,000 efforts per year in each of the citys 16 boroughs. GabrielaGutierrez leader of the citywide effort reports that


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Citizen Promotion in the Federal District was linked to a national effort led by LuisaMara Caldern, the sister of fomer party president Felipe Caldern. The program beganfollowing the PANs loss in 1988 and the PRDs very strong showing with Crdenas. According

to Luisa Mara,

We realized that the lower class did not vote for the PAN. We decided that this was ourmain problem, and we needed to gain support among the lower class to expand. CitizenPromotion was a new idea. After 70 years of using theoretical and intellectual positionsto convince the electorate, we decided to begin doing things withthe electorate.

Nevertheless, the effort has not been very large. Countrywide, the program coordinates

about 300 projects and involves approximately 3,000 activists. Only about 20% of these effortsare in cities.

By 1999, the PANs rolls counted with 3,196 members in Iztapalapa. According toEsperanza, only 369 of these are active members who have gone through the partys trainingcourse. The other are adherents who joined since 1996 when the party lowered barriers toaffiliation. The partys total membership in District 22 was 465, only about two-thirds what thePRDs membership was in San Miguel Teotongo, a single housing project inside the district.

Overall, the PANs efforts in Iztapalapa seemed removed from politics on the ground anddistant from the social organizations that served as the PRDs backbone. Esperanza reportedthat the party was making concerted efforts to make inroads in the neighborhoods. The partyhad purchased eight small buildings to establish satellite headquarters throughout the borough;however, when I asked to visit them I was told that it wasnt safe. In Iztapalapa, the PAN was ina bunker, unwilling to engage in organization-building through local community groups thatdominated the borough and seemingly afraid of the very constituents they were supposed torecruit as activists and voters.

The case studies presented in this section highlighted the difficulties in expandingopposition party organizations at the local level. The PRDs close association with pre-existingsocial organizations in working class neighborhoods limited its expansion to core constituenciesthat were defined by neighborhood in Miguel Hidalgo and as islands in Iztapalapa. The PANsmuch closer association with middle class constituents gave it strength in neighborhoodspopulated by professionals, but its success in working class areas was limited by its refusal tocreate links with pre-existing social organizations. The particular strengths of the PAN and PRDyielded core groups of voters that amounted to about 20% of the electorate. The limits of both

parties left more than 40% of the electorate unaligned with any party during the 1990s. Tocatch these voters, the parties would have to find new formulas for expansion.

Conclusion

Opposition parties are constrained by their origins The programmatically radical


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competitors. Nevertheless, their transition from niche to catchall was slow and halting. Despitethe efforts of later joiners who endorsed moving beyond core constituencies and loweringbarriers to affiliation, niche-oriented activists and the organizational routines they had created

blocked these efforts. The case studies from Mexico City showed the ways in which partyleaders ways of thinking about expansion and their existing organizational routines blockedtheir ability to catch more activists and voters.

Niche activists were both the heroes and the villains of opposition party development.On the one hand, they formed challenger parties when a strictly electoralist logic would suggestthat they should not have. Further, they maintained these parties during periods of extremelylow probability of victory and in the face of material incentives to join the dominant party and the

threat of physical repression for continued activism in the opposition. Without these niche-oriented activists, opposition parties in dominant party regimes would never get off the ground.

Niche activists are also the villains of opposition party development because theyconstrain their parties to less efficient positions once the dominant partys advantages declineand spatial competition is more likely to yield an opposition victory. Even when catchall-orientedactivists push for expansion, more senior niche-oriented activists may constrain their moves.

The rigidities built into opposition parties encouraged candidates to make end-runs

around their party organizations in the attempt to catch broader segments of the electorate.This dynamic was especially clear in the 2000 elections. Following nearly two decades ofausterity under the aegis of a free market economic model, one might expect the left wing PRDto expand its electoral coalition at a faster pace than the right wing PAN. However, both partieswere constrained by their origins. The level of constraint was sufficiently high in the PRD thatthe presidential candidate Cuauhtmoc Crdenas continued to make relatively specializedappeals aimed at core constituencies. As a result, the PRD won only 16% of the national vote,pulling in what most analysts agree was its core constituency. Vicente Fox, on the other hand,

recognized the PANs limitations and instead bet on the risky separation of his campaign fromthe party apparatus. This encouraged PAN stalwarts to try to scuttle his candidacy in the earlystages in favor a candidate more closely tied to the partys traditional bases. Fox was able toprevail only by using significant independent resources exactly the type of capital resourcesthat the PAN lacked during the period of niche party building. Once he won the internal battle,he launched a very centrist campaign designed to pull in voters from across the left-rightdimension. His electoral victory owes in part to his success in putting together a broad coalitionfor change.

What can the mode of opposition party building and the episode surrounding the 2000elections tell us about the future of Mexicos party system? In brief, the PAN and PRD will haveto adapt to changing circumstances or risk becoming irrelevant. The dynamics of oppositionparty building demonstrated in this paper suggest that both the PAN and PRD developed ashighly institutionalized parties. Nevertheless, they became so rooted in their respective coreconstituencies with a particular demographic and even organizational style that they failed to


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process that has eluded them for decades they may become appendages to candidates whorun media-centered campaigns and are only loosely tied to the electorate. Mexico may be onthe verge of a candidate-centered politics, and the formerly opposition parties now face a new

stage in their evolution.


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Figure 1. Retrospective Economic Performance Evaluations and Incumbent Support

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Very Negative Moderately

Negative

Slightly Negative Neutral Slightly Positive Moderately

Positive

Very Positive

PercentVotingforIncumbent

Voted for PRI Distribution of Responses

Source: Magaloni (1997: 192,404-05).

2

5


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Figure 2. Prospective Economic Performance Evaluations and Incumbent Support

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Opposition

Better

Neutral Incumbent (PRI)

Better

PercentVotingforIncumbent

PRI vote Distribution of Responses

Source: Magaloni (1997: 193,404-05).2

6


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Figure 3. Optimal Locations for Left and Right Challenger Parties

10.750.50.250

1

0.5

0

-0.5

-1

Patronage Resources (g)

Opposition Party Location

Patronage Resources (g)

Opposition Party Location

Challenger's Optimal Location

Xr

Xc

2

7


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Figure 4. The Growth-Constraint Cycle of Opposition Party Development in Dominant Party Regimes

Preferences ofopposition leadersand activists

Policy appeal (proximityto median voter)

Centrist

Radical

Pre-electionprobability of victory

Party OrganizationalForm

Open

Closed

Mode of activist expansion

Intensive (core constituencies)

Extensive (non core

constituencies)

2

8


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Figure 5. Preferences over Mode of Activist Recruitment by

Year of Affiliation (PAN)

Year of Affiliation

200019951990198519801975197019651960

ActivistAffiliation(+=qualityoverquantity)

4.5

4.0

3.5

3.0

2.5

Elected office

Party post

Figure 6. Preferences over Mode of Activist Recruitment byYear of Affiliation (PRD)

ActivistAffiliation

(+=qualityoverquantity)

3.0

2.5

2.0

1.5

Elected office

Party post


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Figure 7. Preferences over Core Constituency Links by Year of Affiliation (PAN)

Year of Affiliation

200019951990198519801975197019651960

LinkstoCoreConstituency(+=deepen)

.8

.7

.6

.5

Elected office

Party post

Figure 8. Preferences over Core Constituency Links by Year of Affiliation (PRD)

15

14

13

12

11

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

LinkstoC

ore(+=deepen)

.9

.8

.7

.6

.5

Elected office

Party post


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Figure 9. Abridged Factions Tree in the PRD

PCM OIR-LM(1960s) (1960s)

PST(197X)

PRT(197X)

Punto Crtico ACNR PPR COCEI(1970s)(1970s) (1970s) (1970s)

MRP Student

Movement(CEU)

MUP

(UCP/UPREZ/(1980)CD(1987)

UPNT/AB)(1986) (1980s)

Trisecta(1989)

Six Pack(1991)

Arcoris Corriente de IzquierdaDemocrtica (CID)(1993)

(1993)

NuevaRepblica

Chuchos(Jesus Ortega)

Punto Crtico(Alvarez Garn)

Amalios(Amalia Garca)

Hebertistas(Heberto Castillo)

Rnes(Ren Bejerano)

(Munoz Ledo)

31


33/36

Figure 10. Average Number of Organizational Memberships (PAN)

2000199519901985198019751970

Nu

mberofOrganizationalM

emberships

5

4

3

2

1

0

Organization Type

Family values

Middle class

Working class

All

Figure 11. Average Number of Organizational Memberships (PRD)

ofOrganizationa

lMemberships

5

4

3

2

1

Organization Type

Family values

Middle class


34/36

Figure 12. Mode of Party Expansion PAN, 1980-1999

PAN Party Nationalization Score

.65.55.45

NumberofPAN

Activists(activosonly)

160000

140000

120000

100000

80000

60000

40000

20000

0

1999

199819971996

1995

1994

1993

19861982

Figure 13. Mode of Party Expansion PAN, 1980-1994

rofPAN

Activists(activosonly)

60000

50000

40000

30000

20000

10000

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

19891988

19871986

198519841983

1982


35/36

Figure 14. Mode of Party Expansion PRD, 1995-1999

PRD Party Nationalization Score

.5.4.3.2.1NumberofPRD

Activists

2200000

2000000

1800000

1600000

1400000

1200000

1000000

800000

600000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

Figure 15. Federal Deputy Elections, Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico City, 1997

18.2

42.2

26.628.3

31.3 29.3

20

30

40

50

60

10.1% difference 10.9% difference 2.7% difference


36/36

Table 1. Borough Case Study Information

Party Identification (1999)Case Number of Competitive Parties (1997)

PAN PRD PRI floaters

Miguel Hidalgo (District 5) 2 (PRD-PRI)

Miguel Hidalgo (District 10) 2 (PAN-PRI)

15.4% 14.4% 21.7% 41.5%

Iztapalapa 2 (PRD-PRI) 9.7% 20.0% 23.0% 44.0%

Row totals for party identification do not add to 100% because dont know answers were excluded.

Source for party ID: Reforma Delegacin surveys, 1999.

35

Documents

Party Organization and the Electoral Disconnection in Mexico