Peña Nieto's Cabinet

Peña Nieto’s Cabinet: What Does It Tell Us About Mexican Leadership? By Roderic Ai Camp An analysis of cabinet leadership in Mexico has always provided insights into political recruitment trends for the policy-making leadership in general. In the past, the leadership of cabinet agencies has exerted a tremendous influence on formal and informal characteristics of Mexican government officials. One only has to look back at the rise of technocratic leadership in the region generally, and Mexico’s own special version in the 1980s and 1990s.1 That component of national political leadership imprinted many distinctive patterns on national politicians, some of which continue to the present. Such an analysis of the present cabinet is particularly significant for three reasons. First, to what extent does the current leadership reflect changes in compositional patterns of the most influential policy-makers which are the result of a democratic electoral process dating from 2000? Second, does the return of the PRI reflect traditional patterns established by the last two presidential administrations, those of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) and Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000), or has the present cabinet taken on features which reflect the influences of two previous National Action Party administrations led by Presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón? Third, have significant patterns emerged reflected in these recent appointments, and those of the two previous administrations, which suggest influential characteristics exercising broader influences in the future? This essay briefly analyzes the backgrounds of the twenty-two cabinet secretaries and important cabinet- level agencies, and the president, and compares them with equivalent leadership, where appropriate, from three prior presidential periods. Those consist of the cabinet members from the pre-democratic era, 1935- 1988, from the democratic transition, 1988-2000, and from the democratic era, 2000-2013. This analysis collectively examines 451 individuals out of 2,985 prominent politicians who have held these positions, a number of them multiple times in more than one administration. Only eight individuals who qualify for inclusion are omitted from the analysis for a lack of information.2 Traditional Background Variables 1 See my "The Technocrat in Mexico and the Survival of the Political System," Latin American Research Review, Vol. 20, No. 1 (1985), pp. 97-118; and “The Time of the Technocrats and the Deconstruction of the Revolution,” in William H. Beezley, ed., Oxford History of Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 569-597. 2 Based on data from the Mexican Political Biographies Project, 2009, 2013. 1 One of the most important background characteristics of national politicians generally, and Mexican cabinet officials specifically, is their geographic origins. By the second half of the twentieth century, Mexico was quickly becoming an urban country. Today, the national census classifies 70 percent of the municipalities as urban, 10 percent as mixed, and 20 percent as rural. More important than the rapid progression from a rural, agricultural economy to that of an urbanized population, however, is the geographic balance by state or region. If one examines the birthplaces of leading Mexican politicians, the most consistent pattern for all of the twentieth century is the overrepresentation of the Federal District, which includes the nation’s capital, Mexico City. Cabinet members are no exception to the general rule; indeed, it is cabinet members’ own birthplaces which help to explain the regional distribution of national politicians generally. The explanation for this lies with that fact that most assistant secretary positions in the top federal agencies are appointed by their superiors, the cabinet secretary or director, and a large percentage of those individuals come in contact with their bosses through prior positions in the federal bureaucracy, through educational institutions, and through family and personal ties. Where one is born, lives, attends school, and begins their career reinforces their career patterns and contacts. When all of these experiences occur in the Federal District, then the Federal District is replicated extensively in the backgrounds of other politicians. Collectively, in the pre-democratic era, nearly a fourth (23 percent) of all politicians came from Mexico City. Many of these figures were born at the end of the 19th century or during the first decade of the twentieth century. What is astonishing about this figure is that in the last two administrations of the twentieth century, 44 percent of cabinet secretaries came from the capital. Mexico’s shift from a semi- authoritarian and presidentially dominated political model, to that of an electoral democracy, has not altered this significant twentieth century trend. Most of the cabinet members in those two administrations (2000-2012) were born in Mexico City when it accounted for only 8 percent of the total population. When the National Action Party won the election in 2000, given the fact that Vicente Fox largely came from a non-political career and spent much of his political experience in his home state of Guanajuato, it was expected that the prominence of the Federal District in the birthplaces of cabinet secretaries would decline. Instead, combined with Calderón’s appointees, cabinet secretaries from the capital increased to nearly half. One of the most interesting characteristics of Peña Nieto’s colleagues is that many of his closest collaborators were attached to the president’s political career in the State of Mexico, the country’s most populous state. In fact, most of his collaborators during the presidential campaign were also from the state. Indeed, the president never served in the federal bureaucracy or in a national political office; the first such president in modern history. His entire career was spent in the State of Mexico. His reputation as a national politician was built during his career as governor of his home state. Nevertheless, he continued the pattern characterizing the last two PRI administrations of the twentieth century, and that of its PAN successors, increasing Mexico City birthplaces to 55 percent, an increase of 9 percent from that of the last PRI administrations. What is also clear about his collaborators’ regional backgrounds is that except for the State of Mexico and Hidalgo (which ranks 18th out of 32 entities), no other state boasts more than one native son or daughter, and many of the major and politically influential states, including Jalisco, Puebla, Guanajuato and Chihuahua, are not represented in the cabinet. The continued domination and consistent increase of Mexico City in the backgrounds of Mexico’s leading politicians suggests the importance of existing regional patterns, likely the most common means through which presidents and their closest associates come in contact with other politicians who are viewed at some point as potential cabinet appointees. While one would expect electoral democracy to contribute to a decentralization of political backgrounds, that has not been the actual outcome in Mexico. Our discussion of other characteristics should shed some light on why this is the case. 2 Another variable which is revealing in understanding leadership patterns generally, and which has been shown to be important among citizen policy views and voting behavior, is politicians’ generational background. Three generations have dominated the top leadership in Mexican politics since 1988: the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s (see Table 1). Typically, top officials, including presidents, tend to appoint colleagues who are relatively close to their own age. Again, this is due in part to close friendships which begin at a young age during the careers of numerous political figures. One of the typical patterns of recent Mexican presidents is that among their cabinet appointees, they tend to be the same age or one generation older. For example, Salinas was born in 1948 and Zedillo just 3 years later in 1951, but the two dominant generations among their cabinet appointees were equally the 1940s and 1950s. For Fox and Calderón, a different pattern emerges because Fox was uncharacteristically much older (1942) than his two predecessors, and Calderón was unusually young (1961). Consequently, nearly half of their cabinet secretaries were from the 1950s generation. Peña Nieto, on the other hand, is extremely young, having been born 4 years later than Calderón. That fact explains why all three generations are represented roughly in the same proportions. Typically, two presidents will come from a single generation, suggesting the likelihood that the next president may be from the youngest generation represented among future politicians, that of the 1970s. However, given the number of prominent politicians in the cabinet and as state governors, it is more likely that the 1960s, or even the 1950s generation will be represented. Table 1 – Generational Representation of Cabinet Secretaries ================================================================ Decade of Birth 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s (percentages) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Democratic Transition 31 29 2 - Democratic 29 48 14 - Pena Nieto 27 27 36 9 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note: The remainder of the cabinet secretaries in the Democratic Transition

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