Alberto Aziz’s analysis of the first three years under PAN governor Francisco Barrio in the northern state of Chihuahua provides important insights into Mexico’s unique transition to democracy. He explores the successes and the failures of the PAN governor and highlights a range of difficulties and dilemmas that come with alternation in power. Rooted in the twin assumptions that alternation in power is critical to democratization and that the regional level offers a laboratory to explore the mechanics of the process, Aziz hypothesizes that Chihuahua’s alternation brought by the victory of Barrio in 1992 led to a range of structural changes: (1) the dismantling of corporatism and other forms of state-society relations practiced under the PRI, resulting in a broadening of the public’s political space and pluralism; (2) the institutionalization of intergovernmental and party-government relations, particularly a growing separation of legislative and executive power, and the decentralization of resources; (3)...
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May 1, 2000
