Drug-Related Violence and Party Behavior: the Case of Candidate

DRUG-RELATED VIOLENCE AND PARTY BEHAVIOR: THE CASE OF

CANDIDATE SELECTION IN MEXICO

Amalia Pulido Gómez

Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS

August 2018

APPROVED:

John Ishiyama, Major Professor Jae-Jae Spoon, Co- Major Professor T. David Mason, Committee Member Philip Paolino, Committee Member Joy Langston, Committee Member Mathew Eshbaough-Soha, Chair of Department of Political Science David Holdeman, Dean of College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Victor Prybutok, Dean of the Toulouse Graduate School Pulido Gómez, Amalia. Drug-Related Violence and Party Behavior: The Case of

Candidate Selection in Mexico. Doctor of Philosophy (Political Science), August 2018, 165 pp.,

19 tables, 19 figures, 5 appendices, references, 148 titles.

This dissertation examines how parties respond and adapt their behavior to political violence. Building a theoretical argument about strategic party behavior and party capture, I address the following questions: How do parties select and recruit their candidates in regions with high levels of violence and the pervasive presence of VNAs? Do parties respond to violence by selecting certain types of candidates who are more capable of fighting these organizations?

Do parties react differently at different levels of government? And finally, how do VNSAs capture political selection across at different levels of government?

I argue that in regions where there is high “uncertainty,” candidate selection becomes highly important for both party leaders and DTOs. Second, I argue that as violence increases and the number of DTOs also, criminal organizations, as risk-averse actors, will capture candidate selection. I posit that as violence increases, there is a greater likelihood that candidates will have criminal connections. To test my theory, I use the case of Mexico. Violence in Mexico and the presence of criminal organizations across the country has experienced a great deal of variation since the 1990s.

In Chapter 2, I find that violence affects the gubernatorial candidate selection of the PRI,

PAN and PRD. In high violence states, parties select gubernatorial candidates with long experience in subnational politics compared to other types of experiences. In chapter 3, however,

I find that at the municipal level not all the parties respond equally to violence. As a municipality becomes more violent, the PRI and PAN party leaders are more likely to select mayoral candidates who were either state or federal deputies or candidates who were both. In contrast, the

PRD is likely to recruit state deputies as a function of violence, but not national deputies or

candidates who were deputies at both the state and federal level. Interestingly, I find that as the

municipality becomes more violent, party leaders are less likely to recruit inexperienced

candidates. This result suggests that parties do indeed respond to levels of violence. Finally, in

Chapter 5, I show that criminal organizations capture candidate selection to reduce uncertainty.

As utility-maximizing actors, DTOs seek to influence the selection of candidates as a function of violence. At the state level, criminal organizations are more likely to capture candidate selection in states with the presence of multiple DTOs. Party capture is more likely to happen in states where more than one DTO are fighting to control the turf. I show that criminal organizations at the state level equally capture all parties. This finding reveals that DTOs are diversifying their political connections. While under the dominant party regime, they colluded with PRI officials,

under the new political Mexican democratic configuration, DTOs are establishing other political

relationships with different political parties.

Amalia Pulido Gómez

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When I started Graduate School, the graduation day seemed too far. First I am deeply

grateful to my major professors Dr. John Ishiyama and Dr. Jae-Jae Spoon. Dr. Ishiyama always

believed in me and unconditionally helped me from the first day of class. Without Dr. Jae-Jae

Spoon I could not get to this point. She was always nice but at the same time she encouraged me

to give an extra more in my research. CJ, Neva and Jae-Jae opened the doors of her house during my stay at the Center for Latin America Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and made me feel like home. Dr. Mason was always nice and kind to me. He was excited about my research and was always willing and patient to hear my ideas. Dr. Paolino helped me to understand and to develop quantitative skills. Dr. Langston always asked questions that encourage me to think more through my theory and implications. Thanks to my friends Melissa, Melda and Alex for being always helpful, nice and hear about my research. Grad school can be tough some times, but having them as my friends made things easier. I am deeply grateful to the Center for US-

Mexican Studies at the University of California-San Diego (USMEX). During my stay at

USMEX I was able to finish my dissertation surrounded by an amazing community of colleagues. At USMEX I understand the value of solidarity. Thanks to Graciela for always being there for me, for her advice and friendship. Thanks to Ale for always have a smile, for being positive, even during tough times, and for being such a good friend. Thanks to Conacyt for the financial support to complete my PhD. I do not have words to express how thankful and grateful

I am with my family. Thanks to my brother, Ju, for always being a positive and supportive brother these years. Thanks to my parents, Amalia y Julian por ser fuente inagotable de fuerza y amor. Finally, I want to thank Bernardo for his unconditional love, help and support: gracias por nunca soltar mi mano y creer en mi.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iii

LIST OF TABLES ...... vi

LIST OF FIGURES ...... vii

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1 1.1 Theoretical Argument ...... 4 1.2 Research Design...... 9 1.3 Plan of this Dissertation ...... 12

CHAPTER 2. GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE SELECTION AND CRIMINAL VIOLENCE ...... 16 2.1 Political Parties, Candidate Selection and Violence ...... 18 2.2 Theory: Political Violence and Gubernatorial Candidate Recruitment ...... 21 2.3 Data and Methods ...... 24 2.3.1 Political Profiles (E) ...... 26 2.3.2 Bureaucratic Profiles (A)...... 27 2.4 Results ...... 30 2.5 Discussion ...... 35

CHAPTER 3. CANDIDATE RECRUITMENT AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE: THE MUNICIPAL LEVEL ...... 37 3.1 Introduction ...... 37 3.2 Political Parties: Multi-Layered Organizations ...... 38 3.3 Subnational Authoritarianism and Party Behavior ...... 41 3.4 The Principal-Agent Problem and Municipal Candidate Selection ...... 45 3.5 Theory ...... 49 3.6 Research Design...... 53 3.7 Results ...... 58 3.8 Robustness Check ...... 68 3.9 Discussion ...... 76

CHAPTER 4. THE SERPENT’S EGG: SUBNATIONAL PARTY CAPTURE...... 78

iv 4.1 State Capture and Political Ties: A Framework to Understand Party Capture ..... 80 4.2 Candidate Quality and Party Responsiveness in Violent Countries ...... 84 4.3 Party Capture: Uncertainty, Collusion, and Democracy ...... 87 4.4 Data and Methods ...... 99 4.5 Party Capture: The State Level ...... 104 4.6 Party Capture: The Municipal Level...... 112 4.7 Discussion ...... 121

CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSION: PUTTING THE PUZZLE TOGETHER...... 125 5.1 Theoretical and Empirical Contributions ...... 127 5.2 Policy Implications ...... 129 5.3 Future Research ...... 131

APPENDIX A. EXTRA TABLES AND FIGURES FOR CHAPTER 2 ...... 135

APPENDIX B. EXTRA TABLES AND FIGURES FOR CHAPTER 3 ...... 139

APPENDIX C. TABLES AND FIGURES FOR CHAPTER 4 ...... 142

APPENDIX D. MUNICIPAL SAMPLE METHODOLOGY REPORT ...... 146

APPENDIX E. MUNICIPAL CRIMINAL CONNECTIONS DATA ...... 153

REFERENCES ...... 156

LIST OF TABLES

Page

Table 2.1: Effect of Violence on Candidates’ Political Profiles ...... 31

Table 2.2: Effect of Violence on Candidates’ Subnational Political Profiles ...... 33

Table 3.1: Rare Events Model Effect of Violence on Candidates’ Political Profiles Pooled Model ...... 59

Table 3.2: Rare Events Model Effect of Violence on PRI Candidates’ Political Profiles ...... 60

Table 3.3: Rare Events Model Effect of Violence on PAN Candidates’ Political Profiles ...... 65

Table 3.4: Rare Events Model Effect of Violence on PRD Candidates’ Political Profiles ...... 67

Table 3.5: Effect of Violence on Candidates’ Political Inexperience ...... 70

Table 3.6: Rare Events Pooled Model Effect of Violence on Candidates’ Political Profiles ...... 73

Table 3.7: Rare Events Model Effect of Violence on PRI Candidates’ Political Profiles ...... 74

Table 3.8: Rare Events Model Effect of Violence on PAN Candidates’ Political Profiles ...... 74

Table 3.9: Rare Events Model Effect of Violence on PRD Candidates’ Political Profiles ...... 75

Table 4.1: Pooled Model: Gubernatorial Candidates Crime Connections Rare Events ...... 106

Table 4.2: PRI Gubernatorial Candidates Crime Connections Rare Events Model ...... 109

Table 4.3: PAN Gubernatorial Candidates Crime Connections Rare Events Model ...... 109

Table 4.4: PRD Gubernatorial Candidates Crime Connections Rare Events ...... 110

Table 4.5: Pooled Model: Mayoral Candidates Crime Connections Rare Events Model ...... 113

Table 4.6: PRI Mayoral Candidates Crime Connections Rare Events Model ...... 117

Table 4.7: PAN Mayoral Candidates Crime Connections Rare Events Model ...... 118

Table 4.8: PRD Mayoral Candidates Crime Connections Rare Events Model ...... 119

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 1.1: Map of Mexican states included in the sample...... 15

Figure 2.1: Effect of violence on candidates’ subnational experience ...... 33

Figure 3.1: Effect of violence on probabililty of nominating a state deputy PRI...... 61

Figure 3.2: Effect of violence on probability of nominating a SMD deputy PRI...... 61

Figure 3.3: Effect of violence on probability of nominating a state and SMD deputy PRI...... 62

Figure 3.4: Effect of violence on probability of nominating a state deputy PAN...... 66

Figure 3.5: Effect of violence on probability of nominating a state deputy PRD...... 68

Figure 3.6: Effect of violence on probability of no political experience (pooled model)...... 71

Figure 4.1: Percentage of candidates with criminal connections: municipal level...... 93

Figure 4.2: Number of candidates with criminal connections by party: municipal level...... 94

Figure 4.3: Number of mayoral candidates with criminal connections by state: 2003-2016...... 94

Figure 4.4: Effect of number of DTOs on candidates’ crime connections...... 107

Figure 4.5: PRI candidates’ crime connections: gubernatorial...... 111

Figure 4.6: PAN candidates’ crime connections: gubernatioral...... 111

Figure 4.7: PRD candidates’ crime connections: gubernatorial...... 112

Figure 4.8: Effect of violence on candidates’ crime connections: municipal level...... 114

Figure 4.9: Effect of previous electoral performance on candidates’ crime connections...... 115

Figure 4.10: Effect of violence on PRI candidates’ crime connections: municipal level...... 120

Figure 4.11: Effect of violence on PRD candidates’ crime connections: municipal level...... 120

vii

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

La familia Michoacana es la banda más famosa, no le tiene miedo a nada pura gente poderosa…el gobierno federal a ellos mucho han buscado yo no sé si tengan suerte, nunca los han encontrado El Solitario del Sur, 2012

On December 6, 2016, Eleuterio Aranda Salgado, aka “El Solitario del Sur” was apprehended because of his connections with organized crime. He was the mayor of the municipality of General Canuto Neri which is in the state of Guerrero. Aranda Salgado represented the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), was the chief of the municipal police before being running as a mayoral candidate. He was also a narco-corridos1 singer (Animal

Politico, 2012). Based on the lyrics of his songs, it appeared that he had close relations with La

Familia Michoacana, a drug trafficking organization (DTO) that mainly operates in the states of

Michoacán, México, and Guerrero.

This is not an isolated story. There are several examples of how candidates and politicians from other parties collude with DTOs in Mexico. Furthermore, there are also cases where DTOs kill candidates2, such as Ulisés Fabian Quiroz3 and Gisela Mota. Events like these

1 Narco corridos are songs that popular bands write and sing and tell stories about narco leaders lives. 2 In the 2018 elections, more than 80 political candidates and politicians had been killed (CNN, 2018). More research is needed to know the mobile of these political assassinations. 3 Ulisés Fabian Quiroz was the mayoral candidate from the alliance between the PRI and the Green Party in the municipality of Chilapa in the state of Guerero. Quiroz was killed on May 1, 2015. Armed men intercepted Quiroz in the local community of Atzacoaloaya in the municipality of Chilapa and shot him to death (Excelsior, 2015). Gisela Mota was killed on January 2016. Mota was the winning candidate from the PRD and was murdered in her home in Temixco where she was elected to govern as mayor for the next three years. Although the investigation is still ongoing, the Mexican authorities claim that the “Los Rojos” cartel is responsible for the crime. Presumably, Los Rojos killed her because she did not agree with the “pact” with this criminal organization (El Universal 2016).

1 raise several questions about party behavior in countries with ongoing violence and the presence

of violent non state actors (VNSAs).

In my dissertation, I examine at how parties respond and adapt their behavior to political violence. Building a theoretical argument about strategic party behavior and party capture, I address the following questions: How do parties select and recruit their candidates in regions with high levels of violence and the pervasive presence of VNAs? Do parties respond to violence by selecting certain types of candidates who are more capable of fighting these organizations?

Do parties react differently at different levels of government? And finally, how do VNSAs capture political selection across at different levels of government?

I argue that in regions where there is high “uncertainty,” candidate selection becomes

highly important for both party leaders and DTOs. Uncertainty increases as a function of levels

of violence and number of VNSAs that operate in a given region. First, I posit that violence will

affect the type of candidates that party leaders select at the state and municipal level. At the state level, party leaders will select candidates with long experience in both state and municipal politics as a function of violence. Long-experienced subnational politicians may have more knowledge and may be more familiar with the violent context and the criminal dynamics at the state level. Therefore, they may be considered as more capable to run for governors and because of their experience at subnational politics, they may have more extensive network with criminal organizations.

In comparison, in high violence municipalities, party leaders will respond differently to violence nominating candidates with political experience at either state or national level. The causal mechanism that drives this argument is information asymmetry and the issue of the principal-agent problem. Because the municipalities are high violence regions, and they may be

in the public eye, state and national party leaders pay more attention to who is getting the

nomination. Then, they would like to nominate someone who is accountable to them and who

will inform about the local dynamics. One of the possible explanations of this argument is that

party leaders want to nominate someone who is closer to them and who is well known by the

state and national party leaders. However, one alternative explanation is that the criminal-politics

nexus is still controlled by the state and national party leaders and nominating someone who was

either a state or federal deputy increases the communication channel and the information flow

about the local issues to the state and national party leaders.

Second, I argue that as violence increases and the number of DTOs also, criminal

organizations, as risk-averse actors, will capture candidate selection. I posit that as violence

increases, there is a greater likelihood that candidates will have criminal connections. Having a

candidate who has criminal connections reduces uncertainty for DTOs about the future. One way they can reduce uncertainty is to influence politics in one of the earliest stage of politics—the

process of candidate selection

The underlying concept that drives this dissertation is uncertainty. On the one hand,

violence and a strong presence of VNSAs create highly uncertain environments where party

leaders need to select and recruit political candidates. On the other hand, VNSAs also face highly

uncertain situations. Democracy, alternation of power, the presence of other VNSAs and the

absence of a regulatory force increase uncertainty for VNSAs. By violent non-state actors

(VNSAs) I refer to those "non-state armed groups that resort to organized violence as a tool to achieve their goals" (Mulaj 2010, 3). The distinctive feature of VNSAs is their use of organized violence as a tool to achieve their goals. Single criminals operating by themselves do not fit in

this classification. While they may use violence as a tool to achieve their goals, they are not

organized4.

In this project, I focus my attention on one specific type of VNSA—drug trafficking

organizations (DTOs) although my theoretical argument can be generalized to other kinds of

VNSAs. I use the terms DTOs and criminal organizations interchangeably. I follow the

definition of criminal organizations proposed by Finckenauer (2005), who argues that criminal

organizations have the following features: criminal sophistication, structure, self-identification, and authority of reputation. However, some criminal organizations may have more or fewer of these features, but those networks without any of them are not considered as criminal organizations.

1.1 Theoretical Argument

This dissertation is about party behavior in ongoing conflicts, but also it is about how criminal organizations influence political selection. This work attempts to address empirical questions with a theoretical argument about uncertainty. I follow Simon’s definition (1985) of uncertainty in which individuals are rational actors with bounded rationality who take decisions in uncertain contexts and without complete information. For Simon (1985) uncertainty is the

“lack of reliable knowledge and information.” Because it is impossible to know all the facts a priori, human begins always make decisions with some degree of uncertainty. However, uncertainty can be higher in certain contexts. In regions with high violence, I argue uncertainty increases. On the one hand, party leaders’ decisions in high violent context can have irreversible

4 Some examples of VNSAs are: terrorist groups like Al Qaeda; separatist movements like ETA in Spain or IRA in Ireland; insurgent guerillas like the FARC in Colombia; and militias made up of irregular but recognizable armed forces, like paramilitary and organized criminal organizations such as the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico

consequences such as the increase of either discriminate or indiscriminate violence. On the other

hand, in high violent regions DTOs need to make decisions about how to seek cooperation with

political authorities, which strategies they will follow to respond to violence and how they can

eliminate their competitors.

Therefore, the questions that I seek to answer are the following: 1) to what extent criminal organizations influence institutions and 2) how do parties respond to the strong presence of VNSAs and high levels of violence. In this project, I also seek to understand the incentives criminal organizations have to shape party politics. Although the criminal-political nexus had been studied before (see Astorga 2005; Gambetta 2012), we know little about how parties react and behave in the midst of violence. In this way, this dissertation helps bridge the gap between understanding the relationship between criminal organizations and political parties.

Although there has been some recent scholarship from Latin America that has sought to systematically study the relationship between organized crime and politics generally (see for example Alesina, Piccolo, and Pinotti 2016; Casas- Zamora 2013) and elsewhere (Briscoe and

Goff, 2016), there has been relatively little attention paid by political scientists to the connection between organized crime and political parties. Two works stand out as exceptions. First is Casas-

Zamora’s (2013) edited volume that examines organized crime and party financing, primarily in

Latin America, but also places like Bulgaria. Second Alesina, Piccolo, and Pinotti (2016)

examine criminal organizations use of violence (or the threat of the use of violence to influence

electoral results. In particular, such organizations use violence to eliminate candidates from non-

captured parties. Second, violence can be used to disrupt the campaigns of competitors. Third,

violence can be used to intimidate voters and finally, the threat of violence may be credibly used

to intimidate elected honest politicians. However, what this limited literature has yet examined,

is who organized crime influences a critical function of political parties in new democracies—

candidate selection (Ishiyama 2000)

In this project, I speak directly to three different sets of literature. First, I address the

literature on candidate selection (e.g. Norris and Lovenduski 1995; Hazan 2002), where there is

an absence of empirical research about how external shocks, such as violence influence

candidate selection. Second, I address the literature on multi-layered party organizations (e.g.

Deschouwer 2003; Van Houten 2009) and subnational authoritarianism (O’Donell 1993; Gibson

2005), finding that these two literatures do not speak to each other. On the one hand, the multi-

layered party literature assumes that party leaders make decisions at different levels of

government and state and federal party leaders may influence local party decisions to reduce the

principal-agent problem between national/state party leaders and their local counterparts. On the other hand, the subnational authoritarianism literature assumes that in emerging democracies, the

local level is dominated by local bosses who are not accountable to the national and state party

leaders. Thus, there is a disconnect between this two literatures.

Moreover, neither of these two theoretical lenses look at the effect of violence on party

behavior. Finally, I revise the state capture literature (e.g. Stigler 1971; Hellman, Jones and

Kaufmann 2003) and the candidate quality literature (e.g. Acemoglu et. al 2004; Besley and

Reynal-Querol 2011) to build an argument about party capture. In the state capture literature,

there is the argument that private firms capture the state to maximize their private gains through

low taxation and the elimination of competitors. While the state capture literature highlights how

governments can be threatened and influenced by external actors, it does not look at how

political selection may be a crucial process to capture the state. The candidate quality literature

has focused its attention on understanding the variation in demographics across candidates and

6 how good or bad candidates. However, it does not take into account that external actors may be capturing political selection and affecting the quality of candidates.

In my theoretical argument there are two main actors. The first actors are party leaders who are in charge of selection and recruitment of candidates. The second actors are criminal organizations that will try to influence candidate selection to reduce uncertainty and maximize their profits. These two actors behave in highly uncertain environments. I argue that the presence of criminal organizations and high levels of violence would affect the type of political candidates that party leaders will select.

There are two possible scenarios for how party leaders select their candidates in the midst of violence. The first one is that party leaders will choose the candidate that they think has the better capabilities for the job. However, this decision will be different at different levels of government. At the state level, I argue that in high violence states party leaders will select candidates with long experience in subnational politics. The reason to recruit subnational politicians at the state level may be due to several explanations. First, a subnational politician may have more knowledge and expertise dealing with local issues such as security. Second, subnational politicians may know better the dynamics and nature of the VNSAs. Third, subnational politicians may have networks and connections with the dominant criminal organizations. These explanations are not exclusive. While party leaders may select subnational politicians solely because of one of these reasons, it could also be the case that party leaders select subnational politicians because of all the three reasons.

However, at the municipal level I argue that in regions with high levels of violence and a strong presence of VNSAs, party leaders face a dilemma when selecting political candidates. On the one hand, nominating local candidates who are well-known in the community may increase

7 their chances of electoral victory. On the other hand, because of the high levels of uncertainty that violence produces, national party leaders may prefer to nominate candidates who have political experience at either the state or the federal level or both. Selecting a candidate who was either a state or national politician before could reduce the information asymmetry problem and the principal-agency issue between the state and national party leaders and the local level.

Because of the levels of violence and the presence of VNSAs, federal and state party leaders may want to have control over the local level by selecting a candidate who had is familiar at the state and party offices. Leaving the local party branch to decide on the selection process can strengthen local bosses, increase information asymmetry and weaken the state and national party leaders’ agency at the municipal level. But, allowing the decision process to be made at the state level or the national level, gives state and national party leaders more control over the candidate and in case of electoral victory, the winning candidate is more likely to be accountable to them than a local politician. A candidate who has been either state deputy or federal legislator has a more significant political network. Furthermore, to be either a local or federal deputy, politicians need to have connections with either the governor or the national party elite.

Criminal organizations also react to uncertainty in the midst of violence, by influencing candidate selection. Contrary to private firms, DTOs do not have the force of a regulatory state to solve disputes such as unfair competition, the entrance of new competitors into the market or the regulation of markets. Therefore, as utility maximizing actors they need strategies to reduce uncertainty and to maximize their economic gains. The literature on the criminal-political nexus

(e.g. Bailey and Godson 2000; Snyder and Durán Martínez 2009) demonstrates that criminal organizations need state protection to operate. As private firms that seek to capture the state to achieve their financial goals, criminal organizations will attempt to capture political candidate

8 selection to shape electoral politics in its early stage and reduce uncertainty about their future illegal operations.

DTOs have two strategies to influence the state-- cooperation and confrontation (Jones

2016). I argue that party capture is a strategy of cooperation that DTOs use as a function of how uncertain a turf is for their illegal operations. Importantly, DTOs seek to capture candidates from parties that have electoral chances of winning.

1.2 Research Design

To test my theory, I use the case of Mexico. Violence in Mexico and the presence of criminal organizations across the country has experienced a great deal of variation since the

1990s (Valdés 2013). Drug Trafficking and the presence of criminal organizations is not new in the country (Valdés 2013; Enciso 2015). In the 1980’s, with the closure of the Caribbean drug route to the US, Mexico and Central America became the main trafficking routes. However,

Mexico has not experienced the same levels of violence since then. There are several hypotheses about when violence exploded in Mexico. From the policy perspective, the main breaking point is 2006, when former president Felipe Calderón declared a war against criminal organizations

(Grayson 2010). From the criminal standpoint, violence exploded in Mexico because the internal disputes within the Sinaloa cartel, specifically between Joaquín Guzmán Loera, also known as el

Chapo and the Beltrán Leyva Brothers (Illades 2015). The second explanation is that violence dramatically increased when the Gulf cartel started recruiting former Guatemalan and Mexican army soldiers to form an army for its own protection. This army, first known as the Grupo

Aeromovil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE) became los Zetas, one of the bloodiest and cruelest criminal organizations in Mexico. What is true is that Mexico has experienced a dramatic

increase in the levels of violence and the types of violence after 2007. The torture and

assassination of eleven federal policemen and one policewoman in Arteaga Michoacán5; the San

Fernando massacres in 20106; the Casino Royal attack7; the massacre in Allende, Tamaulipas,8

and the disappearance of the 43 students in Ayotzinapa9 are just a few examples of how violent

Mexico became after 2007. According to the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and

Geography (INEGI) the homicide rate per 100000 inhabitants in 2006 was around 10. By 2011

the homicides rate increased to 24 homicides per 100000 inhabitants with more than 25000

deaths just in that single year10. In 2006, former president Felipe Calderón declared war on

drugs. Since then the country has reached levels of violence comparable to countries that have

experienced civil wars.

Mexico transitioned to national democracy11 with the presidential elections of 2000 and

the victory of Vicente Fox. While candidate selection in Mexico has been largely studied from an

5 In Arteaga, Michoacán on July 13 2009, eleven federal policemen and one policewoman were tortured and assassinated by the DTO La Familia Michoacana. The DTO left a narco-message vengan por otro. (La Jornada 2009) 6 The criminal organization los Zetas, killed 58 men and 14 women in San Fernando, Tamaulipas between August 23 and 24 in 2010. Most of these women and men were migrants from Central and South America. Los Zetas kidnapped them and forced them to join the criminal organization. Apparently, these men and women did not accept to join them and they were killed (BBC 2015) 7 On August 26, 2011, armed men, members of los Zetas, set a fire in the casino Royal in Monterrey, Nuevo León. At least 52 people died. The reasons for this massacre was that the casino’ owners did not pay the derecho de piso, or monthly extortion to los Zetas (New York Times 2011) 8 In Allende, Tamaulipas a municipality that shares the border with the US, los Zetas attacked this entire municipality that had 23000 inhabitants. Allende was the hometown of some of the leaders of los Zetas. A member of los Zetas filtrated information to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). When the DEA coordinated an operative with Mexican security agencies, the information was filtrated to los Zetas. Then, los Zetas killed hundreds of people from this town and set houses on fire as an act of revenge (Thompson 2017). 9 43 students from Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, were disappeared in Cocula, Guerrero. There are several hypotheses about the causes of this terrible event. However, the local police in coordination with the criminal organizations Guerrerors Unidos were responsible of this tragic event (Illades 2015). 10 Sambanis (2004) defines a civil war when the conflict has caused more than 1,000 battle deaths. 11 Importantly, the first gubernatorial election that the PRI lost was in Baja California in 1989. Ernesto Ruffo Appel, the PAN candidate, won the gubernatorial election with 52.3% of the votes. The second place was the Margarita 10

institutional and inter-party perspective (Langston 2006; Bruhn 2014), we still do not know how

violence affects candidate selection. This country offers an intriguing case to test the theoretical

arguments of this dissertation. The Mexican multi-party system provides an opportunity to test how different parties react to violence. The federal structure of government allows for an investigation of how parties select their candidates in the midst of violence at different levels of government and how party leaders from different levels of government interact with each in regions with ongoing violence. Also, as the examples mentioned above show, violence and the presence of DTOs are quite heterogeneous across the country, so I can compare candidate selection in high, medium and low violent regions and in regions with more than one DTO that operates.

In summary, Mexico provides a highly uncertain context because of levels of violence, the juxtaposition of power, the strong presence of DTOs and the ongoing battles between criminal organizations to control turf. My research seeks to fill that gap in understanding how political parties are responding to violence but also how criminal organizations attempt to control and influence candidate selection as a function of uncertainty.

To test my argument, I use a mixed methods approach. First, I collected data on gubernatorial and mayoral candidates profiles for the period between 2003-2016 for the three largest political parties: the Partido Acción Nacional or National Action Party, (PAN); the

Partido Revolucionario Institucional or Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática or Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). For the gubernatorial candidates, I gather information of all the candidates from the 32 Mexican states.

Ortega Villa, the PRI candidate, with 41.8% of the votes. This was the first gubernatorial election that the PRI lost in the modern history.

For the mayoral candidates, I use a random sample of municipalities from 10 states: Chihuahua,

Durango, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Jalisco, México, Puebla, Quintana Roo and Sinaloa

(see Map 1). These states were chosen because of their varying levels of violence. I group them into high, medium and low violent states. Then, I randomly selected 10% of the total number of municipalities of each state. I choose these municipalities from the 30% most populous municipalities of each of the states mentioned above. I sampled the 30% most populous municipalities largely because of information availability. For all candidates, I collected information about their previous jobs and the nature of these jobs, their political and bureaucratic experience and the level of government in which they served. I also collected information about whether or not candidates have some connection with criminal organizations. The gubernatorial dataset has a total of 242 observations. The municipal data has 1043 observations. To test my argument, I use several statistical models including OLS regressions, rare events models, random effects models and logistic regressions with robust standard errors.

In addition to the above data collection, I conducted interviews with national and state party leaders from the PRI, PAN and PRD. I interviewed a total of 18 leaders: three national leaders from PAN, PRI and PRD and 15 state leaders. I conducted these interviews in the summer of 2016. Although most of the leaders allowed me to reveal their names, I decided not to do so to reduce all possible risks for them and myself as some of the information disclosed could be considered highly sensitive. I use the evidence from these interviews to both motivate and illustrate my arguments and statistical analyses.

1.3 Plan of this Dissertation

The dissertation has three empirical chapters. Each chapter explains segments of my

12 theory about party strategic behavior and party capture.

Chapter 2 looks at how parties react to violence in gubernatorial candidate selection. In this chapter, I focus my attention on explaining what types of candidates’ profiles party leaders select for the gubernatorial race contingent on levels of violence. This chapter is about how party leaders react to external shocks, such as the presence of VNSAs. In this chapter, I find, that as violence increases party leaders select gubernatorial candidates with longer experience in subnational politics, over other types of candidates such as bureaucrats and national politicians. I argue that having subnational political experience may increase the knowledge and information that candidates have about the state criminal dynamics. Furthermore, this finding demonstrates that subnational politicians are quite powerful actors in high violence states.

In Chapter 3, I analyze the effects of violence on mayoral candidate selection. This chapter examines the different interactions and preferences that state and national leaders may have in the local candidate selection as a function of violence. This chapter focuses its attention on explaining and analyzing what types of candidates party leaders select in high violence municipalities. Because of violence, uncertainty is high, therefore I argue that state and national party leaders have a particular interest in the local candidate selection. State and national party leaders will try to reduce the principal-agent problem, and this will reflect in the type of candidates that are selected at the municipal level. On the one hand, I find that as the municipality becomes more violent, party leaders from the three parties are less likely to recruit inexperienced candidates. On the other hand, contrary to the subnational authoritarianism literature, I find that as violence increases parties are more likely to recruit candidates with either state or national political experience, but not local experience. While in the midst of violence, the

PRI and the PAN are more likely to recruit candidates who were either state or national deputies

or both, the PRD is likely to recruit only state deputies contingent to violence.

While in chapters 2 and 3 party leaders are the main actors, in chapter 4, I turn my

attention to examining to what extent DTOs seek to influence the nomination of candidates. I

argue that criminal organizations will try to capture the selection of candidates in regions where

uncertainty is high. Uncertainty is measured by the level of violence and the number of DTOs

that operates in a geographical area. I find that in the gubernatorial candidate selection, criminal

organizations will capture candidate selection as a function of the number of organizations that

operate in the state and that all the three parties are likely to be captured in their candidate

selection processes. However, I find that at the municipal level party capture is a function of the number of homicides that occur in the municipality.

When splitting the sample by political party, I find no significant results for the PAN.

Interestingly, I find that the PRI mayoral candidates are more likely to be captured when a

former mayor was killed in the municipality. This result may reveal that criminal organizations

use a plata o plomo12 strategy. This strategy means that criminal organizations threat politicians

and they can either choose to get killed or accept bribes. Then, if a former mayor was killed this

could send a clear signal of the consequences of refusing to cooperate or collude with DTOs.

Chapter 5 discusses the main theoretical and empirical implications of this dissertation. In

the concluding chapter, I also review questions that remain about the relationship between

organized crime and candidate recruitment and outline future directions for my research agenda.

In summary, I build a theory about strategic party behavior and party capture using the

case of Mexico to test my argument. I posit that candidate selection is affected by levels of

12 The English translation is “silver or lead”

violence and the strong presence of VNSAs. However, party leaders react differently at different

levels of government. First, at the state level they nominate candidates with long experience at

subnational politics because this type of candidate may be more capable of fighting DTOs, but

also this type of candidate may have a more extensive network and connections with criminal

organizations. Second, in high violence municipalities, party leaders select candidates who were

either state or national deputies to reduce the information asymmetry between the state and

national party leaders and the local level. Finally, I argue that as uncertainty increases, DTOs

will capture candidate selection to reduce uncertainty and keep their illegal business growing.

In this dissertation, I attempt to contribute to understanding how parties react to violence, but also how crucial is candidate selection for criminal organizations. Understanding that the criminal-political nexus starts at candidate selection could contribute to design better policies of candidate recruitment, and to demand to party leaders to be accountable about the candidate selection processes and to open that secret garden of politics, especially in high violence regions.

Figure 1.1: Map of Mexican states included in the sample.

CHAPTER 2

GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE SELECTION AND CRIMINAL VIOLENCE

How does violence affect party behavior? Do parties behave differently in states with strong presence of violent non state actors (VNSAs)? Do parties recruit more capable and qualified candidates in states with ongoing violence? Does the type of experience matter when parties select their candidates in high conflict regions? In the party politics literature, scholars have analyzed the selection and recruitment of candidates in Western Europe (e.g. Norris and

Lovenduski 1995; Hazan 2002) and in developing countries (e.g. Ishiyama 1998, 2001; Langston

2001, 2006); however, there is a gap in the literature about the influence of external shocks on party behavior. The presence of VNSAs is not limited to a given region. From Europe to Latin

America, several countries face the presence of VNSAs that may be different in their goals but similar in their means: the use of violence. Although, the presence of VNSAs is a worldwide phenomenon and there are several scholars studying their dynamics and behavior (e.g. Mulaj

2010; Nathan 2016), no extant theoretical or empirical work examines the influence of these actors on party behavior.

In this chapter I look specifically at how violence affects gubernatorial candidate selection. While I argue that violence affects party behavior at both the state and municipal level, in this chapter I analyze what type of gubernatorial candidates are selected in high violence states. I look at candidate recruitment arguing that in violent states, party leaders would recruit candidates who they perceive as are more capable to govern in regions where violence is high.

While one would expect that under democratic rules, party leaders care about citizens’ demands and quality of governance, the alternative explanation is that party leaders also care about

VNSAs’ preferences, and nominating certain types of gubernatorial candidates may signal

16 VNSAs the willingness of political parties to either cooperate with them or ignore their illegal activities. Thus, I posit that candidate selection is relevant for VNSAs because by either controlling or influencing this process they may be able to achieve their goals and reduce uncertainty about the future. I explain how violence produce by VNSAs affects party behavior using Mexico as a case. This country has strong presence of drug trafficking organizations, a type of VNSA, and has experienced high levels of criminal violence since 2006. Furthermore, there are several examples of collusion between politicians and drug trafficking organizations

(DTOs) even under the new democratic era. As several scholars have argued collusion between government officials and drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) was the rule and not the exception under the PRI's rule (Jordan 1999; Lessing 2012; Astorga 2005), nowadays collusion is also part of Mexican political life. There are several examples at all levels of government of candidates and politicians who have connections with criminal organizations. The question I try to answer it has several analytic angles. First, one would expect that in order to maximize their electoral goals, party leaders would nominate candidates that are competitive enough to win the elections. On the other hand, in regions where DTOs engage in violence, the nomination of certain types of candidates could have severe implications such as a possible attack or threat against either the candidate or the party leaders. It would be too simplistic to assume that parties are not affected by violence that is the result of strong VNSAs’ presence. Parties are responsible for the nomination of future politicians who will have a direct impact on the VNSAs’ future through public policies.

The chapter proceeds as follows. In the first section, I review the literature from two fields of comparative politics: the party politics literature and the political violence literature.

Then, I build my theoretical argument on the effect of drug-related violence on party behavior in

Mexico at the state level. In the third section I discuss the research design and present the data

and results. Finally, I draw conclusions, consider the implications of my findings, and discuss

extensions of my research.

2.1 Political Parties, Candidate Selection and Violence

Political parties are one of the most important institutions for democratic consolidation

and transition. According to Key (1958), parties have three functions. The first function is parties

in the electorate. One of the parties' functions in this arena is to provide information to the electorate about parties' platforms. Parties in government design and implement policies. Finally, parties as organizations recruit members and select candidates and articulate and aggregate preferences. Within the parties' role as an organization, the selection of candidates is one of the most important processes in which it engages, and while candidate selection is an intra- party's function, I argue that is also a strategy in which parties have to adapt to both electoral rules and other conditions such as the presence of VNSAs. Candidate selection may be an opportunity for

a party to win more votes, seats and improve the party's reputation.

In the literature, scholars have discussed the difference between candidate recruitment

and candidate selection. Siavelis and Morgenstern (2008, 30) define political recruitment as "the

way potential candidates are attracted to compete for political office" and candidate selection as

"the process by which candidates are chose from among the pool of potential candidates.” While the definition of selection is clearer than that of recruitment, is not quite clear when recruitment ends and selection begins. In their work on political recruitment in Great Britain, Norris and

Lovenduski (1995) use the terms selection and recruitment interchangeably arguing that the process is related to three aspects: "who selects and how?; who gets selected and why? and does

18 the social bias of the outcome matter?" (2). Instead of looking at just one dimension of candidate selection, they look at three different dimensions that are within the recruitment/selection process. I follow their theoretical approach arguing that candidate selection is a broad concept that involves internal rules of selection but also the type of candidates that are recruited. Most of the empirical work on candidate selection looks at the formal selection mechanisms that parties choose and which institutional factors influence the way in which parties centralized the selection of candidates (Lundell 2004; Shomer 2014; Wuhs 2006). Lundell (2004) argues that the level of centralization of the candidate selection procedures is a function of party size.

Furthermore, Shomer (2014) finds that parties in unitary systems will adopt more centralized mechanisms while in federal systems they are more likely to decentralize the selection process.

However, her most significant contribution is to show evidence that electoral systems do not impact the candidate selection processes and that electoral systems are not a strong predictor of candidate selection choices.

As discussed, this literature suggests that candidate selection is largely influenced by institutional arrangements. However, these works analyze just one dimension of candidate selection, that is the "who selects and how.” Following the argument that parties have various goals and they may change their behavior in order to adapt to new environments (Harmel and

Janda 1994), there is another set of research that looks at the exogenous shocks such as democratization and the change in the distribution of political power and how this affects the way in which parties select their candidates. In the post communist politics literature, for example, several works have analyzed how parties' candidate recruitment patterns have changed in the post-communist environment (e.g. Ishiyama 1998, 2001).

Using a similar approach to examine the Mexican case, Langston (2001; 2006), shows that the candidate selection process within the (PRI) changed when Mexico went through the democratization process. Before democracy, this decision was highly centralized, but with democratization, new actors, like the state governors, now played a role in the nomination process. Langston finds that candidate selection works as a strategy to help parties recover from unfavorable electoral results. Moreover instead of selecting members who are closer to the party's leaders, the PRI now chooses candidates who will have popular support and will win votes.

While institutional arrangements and the introduction of democratization affect candidate recruitment, there is great deal of variation between countries. For example, the study of candidate selection in Western Europe focuses in the introduction of democratic intra-party rules

(e.g. Bille 2001) as the only explanatory variable for different patterns of candidate selection.

However, not all democracies face the same levels of social and political stability. In Latin

America, for example, political parties behave in highly uncertain environment with high levels of social and political conflict. As Desmond (2017) suggests in his study of Medellin, Colombia,

Kingston, Jamaica and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, armed organizations influence the candidate selection processes: “the degree of influence over nomination can run from putting the name of an armed leader on a major party’s ballot to having some influence over who among a group of candidates receives a nomination” (176). Furthermore, Carreri and Dube (2017) provide empirical evidence that demonstrates the presence of natural resources influences candidates’ affiliation and winning chances. When the price of oil increases in Colombia, candidates from pro-paramilitary parties are more likely to get elected. Thus, while democratization and institutions influence candidate selection, there are exogenous factors, that influencing party

behavior. I argue that in countries with ongoing violence, parties have to make decisions with

higher levels of uncertainty. Parties have to consider the institutional arrangements but also the

external shocks, like violence. Their decisions may jeopardize their electoral success.

Recent research has demonstrated that there is an important relationship between

violence and party and electoral politics. In the party politics literature, political violence has

been shown to have an impact on party system formation in newer democracies with a previous

civil war. Manning (2007), for example, looks at party formation in four post-war countries (El

Salvador, Bosnia, Kosovo and Mozambique) arguing that parties in post-conflict countries have two major challenges: they have to adjust to the new relationships between the elites and they need to attract members. Furthermore, Ishiyama (2014) analyzes the relationship between civil wars and the characteristics of the party system after civil wars, finding that bloody civil wars are likely to have an especially powerful freezing effect on party systems. In the electoral politics literature, violence is considered to have an effect on electoral outcomes and political participation. Ley (2014) finds that while criminal violence may have a negative effect on turnout: it increases non-electoral participation. Furthermore, Bravo and Maldonado (2012) show that criminal violence decreases voter turnout in regions with high levels of economic marginalization. Finally, Wilkinson (2005) shows that party leaders can either prevent or promote violence. However, the extant research has not examined how violence influences candidate selection.

2.2 Theory: Political Violence and Gubernatorial Candidate Recruitment

Political violence has several implications in politics. One cannot assume in countries with either previous violent episodes or on-going violence, that political actors behave the same

as in established and stable democracies. However, there is a gap between the party politics and

the political violence literatures. In countries with ongoing violence the candidate selection and

recruitment may be relevant for both parties and VNSAs. While for parties, the nomination of

certain candidate can maximize votes, for VNSAs who the candidate is may also have

implications for achieving their goals. Ceteris Paribus parties' first preference is to maximize the

number of votes that they received on the election day (Downs 1957), while VNSAs first

preference is to achieve their economic, political or ideological goals. I look at one specific type

of VNSA: drug cartels.

In the literature on political recruitment (e.g. Centeno 1992; Ai Camp 2010) there are two

broad categories for public servants: politicians and technocrats. Centeno (1992) defines the

former as people “qualified for office by technical expertise who have bureaucratic career paths”

(19) while politicians are loyal to their party and may follow political guidelines for decision- making. As the author illustrates, “techno bureaucrats” emerged as a response to industrialization and economic development. This type of public servant often has a specific skill and technical task. This differentiation is quite relevant for this work because my argument is that parties will recruit different types of political candidates based on violence levels. Therefore, I argue that parties in regions with strong presence of VNSAs will recruit candidates who have more of a

“political” profile than a “techno- bureaucrat” profile. Because of the nature of the job, political experience may provide candidates with knowledge about the informal rules, the interests and the political dynamics. For these reasons, I expect parties to recruit candidates with more

“political” profiles. In states with a strong presence of organized crime, candidates with political profiles may be more able to deal with this problem than candidates with bureaucratic experience. My first hypothesis is thus:

H1: In regions with a strong presence of VNSAs, parties will recruit candidates with a more political profile than with a bureaucratic profile.

However, there are different levels where candidates can gain political experience and I argue that this difference is relevant in analyzing candidate selection in high violence regions. I posit that parties in regions with high levels of violence will recruit candidates with political experience at the subnational level compared to political experience at the national level. First, candidates with experience at the subnational level may have more knowledge and information about the local issues such as security. Furthermore, subnational politicians may know better the dynamics and nature of the VNSAs, so parties may prefer to select this type of candidates rather than national politicians. Second, politicians with national political experience may prefer to be far from local politics. Following Caselli and Morelli (2004, 760), "candidates of higher quality are the ones who have more to lose from giving up private life and less to gain from holding office.” One could argue that being a national politician represents a high quality job, at least in a hierarchical logic; therefore politicians with this type of experience may prefer to keep their career at the national level, especially in regions with strong presence of VNSAs. A national politician may consider the nomination as governor in regions with strong presence of VNSAs, as a risky job13.

Therefore, I argue that a candidate with more experience at the local level may be

perceived as a better option for parties, VNSAs and voters. In terms of costs and benefits, a

politician with experience at the national level would have more to lose than to win in getting the

nomination for governor. Also, in regions with strong presence of VNSAs, parties need to

13In Mexico gubernatorial candidates have even been assassinated. For example, Rodolfo Torre Cantu, the PRI candidate to governor in Tamaulipas was killed in 2010 by a group of gunman that were under the instructions of one of the Gulf Cartel' leaders, Eduardo Costilla Sanches aka "El Coss.” Presumably, he was killed because he refused to cooperate with the Gulf Cartel (Animal Político).

nominate candidates who have been exposed to the local political and criminal dynamics in the

region. For VNSAs, it is also convenient to have a candidate with local political experience. A

candidate who is familiar with the state context may be more capable of dealing with these

organizations. Likewise, as Langston (2017) argues, within the PRI governors became highly

important decision-makers. At the state level, one could expect to see candidates with more state

political experience than national political experience. While one could argue that candidate selection is regulated by internal rules, I follow Helmke and Levistky’s (2006) approach that

informal rules are critical in candidate selection in Mexico—as a result, party leaders have a

great deal of influence in deciding who will be the nominee. While the selection procedure

known as “dedazo”14 in its original form where just one political actor, the sitting PRI president,

decided who would be the next candidate is not applicable to the current political situation in

Mexico, party leaders have a strong influence in the process. My second hypothesis is thus:

H2: In regions with strong presence of VNSAs, parties will recruit candidates with more political experience at the subnational level rather than candidates with experience at the national level.

2.3 Data and Methods

To test my theory, I examine the case of Mexico. This country is a good case because it provides a natural experiment to test my argument. Mexico is a newer federal democracy with 16

years of democratic experience. Although, Mexico has experienced high levels of political

violence since 2007, the presence of cartels is not new. I look specifically at one type of

VNSAs: drug-cartels. As Osorio (2012) argues drug trade organizations (DTOs) use violence

"to maintain the power structures that allow criminal to extract economic rents from illicit

14 Helmke and Levisty (2006) define dedazo as “big finger” and as “unwritten code that gave the sitting president the right to choose his successor, specified the candidate pool, and prohibited potential candidates from openly seeking the job.

24 markets"(19). While insurgents have political goals, DTOs have economic goals. In countries like Mexico, DTOs engage in all types of criminal activities not just the trafficking of illegal drugs. DTOs use violence as a mechanism to threaten the state and maintain the status quo that facilitates the operation of their illegal business. DTOs do not have the same political incentives as insurgents; their main goal is not to overthrow government, but to maintain favorable conditions for their illegal activities. In my analysis, I focus on three different major parties.

These are the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD).

To test the theoretical argument of this chapter, I assembled an original dataset on the gubernatorial candidates' profiles for the PRI, PAN and PRD from 2003 to 2016 in Mexico's 32 states. The only years between 2003 and 2016 without gubernatorial elections were 2008 and

2014. However, the dataset includes at least one election before and one election after 2007. The total number of candidates is 244, however, there are only 239 observations in the dataset. I could not find complete information for five of the candidates. I collected the information from national and local newspapers in Mexico. I also used the Legislative Information System (SIL), which contains information for all those candidates who have served in the national Congress. I verified the candidates' profiles in at least three different sources. I collected specific information for two categories: political and bureaucratic experiences. I code for every year that each candidate spent in each job and the level at which she served (national/subnational).

For the first hypothesis, my dependent variable reflects the degree of a candidate’s membership in the sets of politician and bureaucrat. As Camerlo and Pérez-Liñan (2015) argue, membership in those groups are not “clear-cut” (321). Candidates may have both types of experience, therefore I use fuzzy set notation to capture this effect on my dependent variable.

The membership in these two categories is not exclusive, thus it would be wrong to use a

dichotomous variable. This approach has been used in comparative politics (e.g. Camerlo and

Pérez-Liñán 2015; Claire 2009; Mahoney 2003) as a “means of continuously coding variables

according to the degree to which they correspond to qualitative categories of interest” (Mahoney

2007: 136). I argue that fuzzy set notation would allow me to identify candidates “with a

continuum of grades of membership” (Zadeh 1965, 339). This continuum ranges between 0 and

1, where 1 represents the complete presence of the attribute and 0 otherwise. Furthermore, values

below 0.5, that is the cross-over point, indicate that the degree of membership is more “out” than

“in” and values above 0.5 indicate that the degree of membership is more “in” than “out” (Ragin

2009, 91). The degree of membership in the complement of a fuzzy set A is given by = 1

𝐴𝐴′ where is the score of the element A that is the category that is negated (bureaucrat).𝑓𝑓 The −

𝐴𝐴 𝐴𝐴 political𝑓𝑓 membership𝑓𝑓 is then a function of:

= ′ where E is the degree of membership in politics𝑃𝑃 𝐸𝐸that∩ 𝐴𝐴is the union of two conditions: years in subnational and national politics.

2.3.1 Political Profiles (E)

To assign a membership degree of political profile I identify two types of sources for political experience: national ( ) and subnational politics ( ). Both categories are coded as

1 2 follows: 0 if the candidate did 𝑃𝑃not spend any year in politics;𝑃𝑃 0.25 if the candidate spent 1 to 3

years, 0.50 if the candidate spent 4 to 6 years, 0.75 for 7 to 9 years and 1 for those candidates with more than 9 years in politics. I assigned these values for two reasons: I consider that they reflect the degree of experience of a given candidate and the structure of the terms in Mexico.

The length for federal and local deputies as well as for mayors is of three years; therefore

combining these categories by three years may be the best way to measure the degree of political

membership. Membership in E is the union of these two categories, thus the two are

interchangeable.

2.3.2 Bureaucratic Profiles (A)

This variable reflects the membership degree of the candidate in bureaucracy, in other words the degree of experience in public service. I use the same criteria as for the former category in order to have parsimonious measures for membership degrees. I also look at two

different sources of this experience: the subnational and national level. This category is also the

union of two conditions: the degree of membership in subnational and national bureaucracy.

After defining these two categories, I define membership in the set of politicians as:

Politician= min ( ( ), ( )) ′ 𝑥𝑥 𝑥𝑥 where, 𝐸𝐸 𝐴𝐴

A’= 1-

1 For the second dependent variable, experience𝑓𝑓 in subnational level, I follow the same approach. I use fuzzy set notation to capture the degree of membership of each candidate in subnational politics. The subnational-politics membership is a function of:

SP= E NP’ where E is the degree of membership in the set subnational∩ politics and NP’ is the condition that is negated (national politics). I follow the same criteria as I did in the previous section to code this variable. Thus, a candidate with 0 years in subnational politics receive a 0; between 1 and 3 years is 0.25; between 4 and 6 is 0.5; between 7 and 9 is 0.76 and more than 9 is 1. In this

27 category I consider the following as subnational political experience: mayors and all elected offices at the municipal level such as síndicos and regidores, or local deputies and governors.

For national politics I consider the following: SMD and PR federal deputies and senators. Thus, membership in the set of subnational politicians is defined as:

Subnational Politician= min ( ( ), ( )) ′ 𝑥𝑥 𝑥𝑥 where, 𝐸𝐸 𝑁𝑁𝑁𝑁

= 1- ′ 𝑥𝑥 1 The dependent variable for H1 is politician𝑁𝑁𝑁𝑁 (P𝑓𝑓) and has a mean of 0.38 with a standard deviation of 0.26. The dependent variable for H2 is subnational politician (SP) and has a mean of

0.23 with a standard deviation of 0.21 (see Table A.1 for descriptive statistics).

To measure the presence of violent non state actors, which are drug cartels in this context,

I use organized violence. As there is not an existing dataset that measures presence of cartels for the Mexican case that covers the period of time that I am looking at I use the National Institute of

Statistics and Geography (INEGI) data on intentional homicides. I classified the states as High,

Medium and Low violence states. To determine the state's classification, I calculated the national average of homicides in the six years before the nomination. For example, for states that had elections in 2006, I first calculated the national homicide mean and the standard deviation from

2000 to 2005. Then, I calculated the homicides mean for each state for the same period of time. I use the same measure for every state in every period of time. Since the elections are not concurrent, I calculate the national average of homicides in the six years before the nomination in each state. Those states that were one standard deviation above the national mean were considered high violence states. Those states that were one standard deviation below the national mean were considered low violent states. In the medium category, are those states that are in

between. I calculated these values for each election and each state. Low violence states received

a value of 1, medium violence states have a value of 2 and high violence states have a value of 3

(see Table A.2)15.

I also include several control variables at the party and state level. At the party-level, I included to variables. First, I control for party effect. I created a dummy variable for whether or not the candidate is from PRI or PAN. The reason to control for party effect is that some parties may have a specific pattern of who their candidates are (Ai Camp 2011). The level of state electoral competition can also be a factor that influences the candidate selection process. As

Langston (2006) shows, low electoral competition increases the probability of having candidates with a national profile. Second, I control for selection mechanism. To do this, I collect data from newspapers about how the candidates were selected. Then, I create a dichotomous variable for whether the selection process was open or closed. For example, even though some candidates were officially selected using a delegate convention, looking at newspapers allowed me to identify whether the candidate was selected in closing meetings by the party elite if before the convention. If this was the case, I coded the selection as closed (0). On the other hand, when the candidate was selected using closed or open primaries I code the selection mechanism as open

(1). I control for selection mechanisms because this may also affect the type of candidate. More centralized selection may be related to candidates who are closer to the party leaders (Wuhs

2006).

At the state-level I include three variables. First, I include a variable for state competition.

I calculate the difference between the vote share of the first and second place parties in the

15 Although there are other data available such as the Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública (SNSP), this data is available from 2011 to 2015, which does not cover the time of series of this work. In addition, Heinle et. al (2014) concluded that INEGI data is "the most consistent, complete and reliable source of information in Mexico"(43)

previous gubernatorial election. Second, I control whether the party won the previous election.

This may be related to the type of candidate that parties select, in case of winning governors may

have more power in the selection process. Finally, I control for the level of marginalization in the

state. I use the marginalization index from the Consejo Nacional de Poblacíon (CONAPO). It

measures four different dimensions: levels of education; living conditions such as whether or not

people have access to public services such as water and electricity; size of the population and the

income of the population. The reason to control for this is that the level of economic

development could be related to the type of candidates that parties recruit and select. In wealthy

regions, candidates with more levels of professionalization and expertise may be more likely to

be selected.

To test my two hypotheses, I use an OLS regression model because the dependent

variable is continuous16.

2.4 Results

The results from the OLS regressions are reported in Table 2.1 and 2.2. The first table

shows the results for the argument about the effect of violence on the degree of membership in

politics versus the bureaucracy. As the results show, there is not a significant effect of violence

on the degree of membership in the political category. Based on these results, violence is not

playing a significant effect on the parties’ decision of whether to nominate a political candidate

16 For all of the models, I ran three models with various conditions. First, I ran a pooled model with all the observations. Then, I ran two different models with time conditions, one with observations before 2007 and one after with observations after 2007.These models enable me to see whether or not violence actually affects the way in which parties recruit their candidates. As several scholars argue (Lessing 2012; Osorio 2012), in 2006, the former president, Felipe Calderón, from the National Action Party, declared "war" against DTOs. He implemented a national security policy whose main goal was the dismantling of these organizations and the capture of the capos or drug leaders. Violence in Mexico dramatically increased after 2007, so, I control for this effect using different model specification.

30 than a bureaucrat candidate in high violence regions. One example of this are the PRI candidates in 2015 in the state of Campeche, a low violence state, and the state of Guerrero, a high violence state. In the case of Campeche, the candidate was Alejandro Moreno Cárdenas, a lawyer who has a long experience in politics at the national level. He was Senator in 2006 and a federal deputy, via proportional representation, in 2003 and 2012. Moreno Cárdenas has a political profile rather than a bureaucrat. Similarly, Hector Astudillo Flores, the PRI nominee in Guerrero in 2015, held several elected offices at different levels, which makes him a candidate with a more political profile rather than bureaucratic. For example, he was major of Chilpancingo, Guerrrero two times, first in 1996 and then in 2009. This example illustrates how parties may select candidates with a more “political” profile in both low and high violence regions. These findings show that violence does not influence the decision of nominating a candidate with a more political profile.

The only significant result is in Model 3 in medium violence regions after 2007. However, these results does not hold in the pooled model, which may be related to the fact that in medium violence states after 2007, parties may be worried about the states becoming more violence.

Based on this findings, one could argue that the selection of candidates in high violence regions is not a choice between political vs. bureaucrat profiles.

Table 2.1: Effect of Violence on Candidates’ Political Profiles DV: Political Membership Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.037 -0.088 0.100* Medium Violence (0.05) (0.087) (0.058) 0.05 0.034 0.04 High Violence (0.04) (0.064) (0.045) -0.18 -0.367 -0.112 State competition (0.18) (0.363) (0.211) 0.00 -0.002 0.004 Marginalization (0.00) (0.004) (0.004) 0.02 0.015 0.02 Selection (0.04) (0.059) (0.056) 0.12*** 0.11* 0.124** Dummy PRI (0.04) (0.64) (0.051) (table continues)

DV: Political Membership Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.14*** 0.083 0.182*** Dummy PAN (0.04) (0.068) (0.056) -0.035 0.003 -0.057 Winning lag (0.045) (0.058) (0.057) 0.28**** 0.393*** 0.176** Constant (0.07) (0.142) (0.089) N 232 87 145 R2 0.07 0.07 0.12 ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.10. Results are from OLS regression with robust standard errors. Model 1 is the pooled model, model 2 includes observations for 2007 and before 2007 and model 3 includes observations after 2007.

If candidate selection in high violence regions is not a decision between political profiles vs. bureaucratic profiles, then do parties in high violence regions care about the level of

candidates’ political experience? Table 2.2 reports the results for the second hypothesis. The

results support Hypothesis 2, and the effect of violence in the level of political experience is

significant and positive. As Figure 2.1 shows, compared to low violence states, in high violence regions parties nominate candidates with more political membership in subnational politics rather than in national politics. This effect is significant in the pooled model (1) and in the model that only includes observations after 2007 (3). As I argued, because of violence, candidates need to have specific skills and knowledge about local politics. Being familiar with the subnational level becomes quite important to understand the local criminal dynamics. Furthermore, candidates need to know how the DTOs operate at the state level. A candidate with political experience at the national level may be quite unqualified to govern in high violence states.17 .

17 I also run also a logistic model where the dependent variable is whether or not the candidate was presidente municipal before the nomination (see A.3).This is a robustness check for my second hypothesis about the subnational experience of candidates in high violence regions. I find also support. In high violence regions, parties are more likely to nominate candidates that were mayors in the past. Compared to low violent states, the probability that parties would nominate a former mayor as gubernatorial candidate goes from 37.23% to 53.10%, however this result is significant just in model 3. After 2007 there is a change in the candidates’ profiles in high violence regions. After 2007, being a mayor, apparently, is a skill that parties may value when making their decision in high violence regions.

Table 2.2: Effect of Violence on Candidates’ Subnational Political Profiles DV: Membership in subnational politics Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.026 -0.012 0.042 Medium Violence (0.049) (0.098) (0.055) 0.059* 0.049 0.065* High Violence (0.03) (0.043) (0.037) -0.08 -0.212 0.024 State competition (0.137) (0.31) (0.206) -0.001 0.000 0.000 Marginalization (0.002) (0.003) (0.003) -0.017 0.019 -0.005 Selection (0.03) (0.052) (0.054) 0.111** 0.065 0.138** Dummy PRI (0.042) (0.053) (0.055) 0.086*** 0.010 0.124** Dummy PAN (0.034) (0.056) (0.046) -0.026 -0.039 -0.024 Winning lag (0.034) (0.044) (0.046) 0.18*** 0.177 0.122 Constant (0.055) (0.12) (0.077) N 232 87 145 R2 0.06 0.04 0.08 ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.10. Results are from OLS regression with robust standard errors. Model 1 is the pooled model, model 2 includes observations for 2007 and before 2007 and model 3 includes observations after 2007.

Figure 2.1: Effect of violence on candidates’ subnational experience

As I mentioned above, the comparison between the cases of Hector Astudillo Flores and

Alejandro Moreno Cárdenas illustrates this finding. Both candidates more political experience

than bureaucratic. However, there is a difference in the level of government where they got the

experience. Astudillo Flores has a long political experience at the subnational level. He was

major and local deputy two times, which means he spent at least twelve years as elected

politician at the subnational level. On the other hand Morenos’ political experience is only at the

national level.

Another example of the effect of violence on level of political experience are the PAN

candidates in 2016 in the states of Hidalgo, a low violence state, and Sinaloa, a high violence

state. In Hidalgo, the candidate of PAN, Francisco Xavier Berganza18 had a long experience as a national politician. He was a federal deputy in 1997 and then Senator in 2006. On the other hand,

Martin Heredia Lizárraga the PAN candidate in Sinaloa is an experienced politician at the subnational level. Heredia Lizárraga was regidor and major of the municipality of Cosalá in

1990 and 1993 correspondingly. These examples illustrate the effect of violence on the level of subnational experience. Based on these findings, it seems that while violence does not affects whether parties select candidates with a more political profile, violence does affect the candidates’ level of political experience. In high violence regions, parties recruit candidates that are experienced politicians at the subnational level.

As reported in Table 2.2, the only control variable that is statistically significant is the party effect. Both the PAN and PRI nominate candidates with more political experience in subnational politics than the PRD. This may be related to the political opportunities for both PRI and PAN politicians. As Ai Camp (2012) says, the PRD has been in politics for a shorter period

18 He is a popular singer in Mexico.

34 of time and the opportunities to build a political career may be more bounded than the opportunities for PRI and PAN members. It is interesting that the selection mechanism that parties choose do not have an effect on the type of candidates that parties select. Following

Siavelis and Morgenstern (2008) one could argue that if the selection mechanism is closed, then the decision is more centralized and candidates would have a profile closer to the party elite.

However, the results show that there is no effect of the selection mechanisms on candidates’ experience. Likewise, whether the party won the previous election does not have an effect on candidates’ experience. Based on these results, one could argue that in the case of gubernatorial candidate selection, neither institutional nor political factors are affecting the type of candidates’ profiles. The findings of this work show that in countries with ongoing violence, parties are affected by exogenous shocks such as political violence.

2.5 Discussion

In this chapter, I have examined how parties select gubernatorial candidates in high violence states. Although there is research that demonstrates that VNSAs influence electoral competition and party institutionalization, there is no empirical research on the influence that these actors may have on intra-party behavior. I have filled this gap by looking at one dimension of intra-party behavior which is candidate recruitment. I show that VNSAs’ presence, measured by levels of violence affects candidate recruitment. To test my argument, I analyzed to what extent drug-related violence influences the type of candidates that parties recruit at the subnational level in Mexico. Building a unique dataset on candidates' profiles from 2003 to

2016, I show that political violence in fact influences party behavior at the subnational level.

My findings have important implications for understanding the relationship between politics and criminals. First, my results show that political parties are not only affected by institutions but by external shocks such as the presence of Violent Non State Actors. Overall, I show that it does not matter whether a candidate has a more political profile than a techno- bureaucrat. What matters is the level of experience of candidates that parties recruit in high violence states. I offer evidence that in regions with high levels of violence parties will recruit candidates with more experience at the subnational level. My results show that political parties in countries with ongoing violence respond to different incentives when selecting candidates. Most of the literature that analyze candidate selection looks at the institutional and political factors to explain intra-party behavior, however this work offers a different theoretical approach, arguing that there are other factors that may be affecting intra-party behavior. I find that, in the case of

Mexico, neither institutional nor political factors affect candidate recruitment. It is violence the variable that is affecting the way in which parties select and recruit their candidates.

My results have important implications for the study of intra-party behavior. My findings suggest that there are exogenous shocks that may be affecting party’ behavior, especially in countries with ongoing violence. While institutions and political factors, such as electoral competition, may affect party behavior, parties are not excluded of suffering the effects of violence. More research is needed to understand this complex relationship and how VNSAs through violence can affect political parties.

CHAPTER 3

CANDIDATE RECRUITMENT AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE: THE MUNICIPAL LEVEL

El municipio es la parte del gobierno que cobra multas y derechos de plaza, registra niños y matrimonios, mete a los borrachos a la cárcel, organiza la feria y nunca tiene dinero [The municipality is the part of the government that charges fees and rights, registers babies and marriages, puts the drunk in jail, organizes the municipal fair and never has money.] Lorenzo Meyer

3.1 Introduction

What types of candidates do parties recruit and select in high violence municipalities? Do parties react to political violence differently at different levels of government? Do party leaders consider violence when nominating candidates? In this chapter I address these questions, by examining how parties behave different at different levels of government in Mexico.

In the comparative study of political parties, there is the notion that these organizations

are neither unitary nor unconstrained actors (Strom 1990). There exist party leaders at different

levels of government, all of whom are influenced by environmental factors such as electoral

systems and decentralization (see Ishiyama 1999). From these assumptions, one could argue that

party leaders have different preferences at different levels of government. While research has

demonstrated that institutions and electoral calculations play an important role in their

preferences, we know little about how other factors such as political violence affect party

behavior at different levels of government. I argue that in high violence municipalities, party

leaders may need to adjust their preferences at the time they recruit and select candidates. In the

context of democratic institutions, the notion of competition by itself introduces some level of

uncertainty. However, in the midst of violence, party leaders need to consider other factors when

making their decisions on who to recruit.

37 Political violence increases uncertainty but may also serve as justification for party leaders’ decisions. National party leaders may justify their intrusion on local candidate selection in high violence regions as a necessary measure to protect the party and members from the threats of violent non state actors (VNSAs). Furthermore, in regions where there is a strong presence of VNSAs and high levels of violence, party leaders may consider violence as a factor in candidate selection. In this chapter, I propose a theoretical argument about the effects of political violence on party behavior at the municipal level driven by two conceptual frameworks from comparative politics: the multi-layered political party and subnational authoritarianism.

The chapter proceeds as follows. First, I review the literature on multi-layered political parties and subnational authoritarianism and develop a theory about the effects of political violence on candidate selection at the municipal level. Next, I test my theory about how parties have different incentives in high violence regions using the case of Mexico. Finally, I discuss my results and implications for the study of political parties and candidate selection in countries with ongoing political violence.

3.2 Political Parties: Multi-Layered Organizations

In the party politics literature, scholars had defined political parties from different

approaches. There are two dominant approaches that vary on their unit of analysis. One is the

study of political parties as unitary actors (e.g. Duverger, 1954; Lijphart 1994); and the other

one looks at parties assuming that these organizations are “teams” of men and women (see

Downs 1957). From these two approaches, we know that the idea of political parties as unitary

and homogeneous actors is being challenged in the comparative study of political parties (Strom

1990).

According to Downs (1957, 25), a party is “team of men seeking to control the governing apparatus by gaining office in a duly constituted election.” These men and women are selfish individuals who seek to maximize their goals. From the rational choice perspective, instead of referring solely to one political party, parties are organizations with several individuals, who are rational actors with defined preferences. These difference in member’s’ preferences create a complex environment where party members and party leaders have to interact to each at different levels of government.

An important way in which this organizational heterogeneity influences party behavior is in the area of candidate selection. In the study of candidate selection, although several scholars had mentioned that parties select candidates at different levels of government, there remains a lacunae of work that empirically examines how this actually takes place (see Deschouwer 2003;

Van Houten 2009). However, from the existing literature about candidate selection we know that this process is influenced by institutional factors as well as by internal organizational interactions. Rahat and Hazan (2001) mention that when studying candidate selection one should look at the extent to which the selection process is centralized. Shomer (2014) posits that in unitary systems parties tend to adopt more centralized candidate selection processes, while in federal systems parties are more decentralized. However, internal party dynamics at the local level may be strongly influenced by the different dynamics between national and local party leaders (e.g. Van Houten 2009). Furthermore, how parties select and recruit leaders at the local level may be result of the delegation from the national party leaders to their regional counterparts and the degree of interest that national leaders have in regional issues. There are also contextual factors influencing party behavior. Specially, in emerging democracies research has

demonstrated that parties behave quite different than in consolidated democracies in terms of

candidate recruitment.

When studying parties’ internal organization, one cannot ignore that these organizations are regionally organized with national and regional leaders. National parties have regional branches that represent the party but also respond to regional demands. However, how does the multiplicity of decision-making levels affect the way in which parties adjust their behavior in high violence contexts? The literature on multi-level parties argues that in democratic systems, even under centralized ones, there is some sort of autonomy and delegation between the central and regional party leaders. However, there is a great deal of variation among the level of delegation from the national party leaders to the regional counterparts. Deschouwer (2003) argues that there are different dimensions to evaluate the extent to which delegation and openness take place within the party: electoral results, party discipline, selection of candidates, political career patterns and the availability of money and staff at the regional level.

Certainly, candidate selection can reflect the level of centralization of the party. While under authoritarianism, it is easier to identify the level of centralization within the internal party organization (e.g. Wu 2001; Weldon 2005; Gillingham 2014; Langston 2017), under democracy it is not quite clear how party leaders select their candidates. Multiple interactions between different party branches may take place involving different party leaders’ preferences. Van

Houten (2009) argues that giving autonomy to local and regional party branches may have a positive effect on the party’s performance at the polls. Regional leaders may know the voters better and this could facilitate mobilization. Furthermore, regional leaders may have more credibility and popularity than national leaders increasing their chances to win the election.

However, delegating and decentralization may have other negative effects. Van Houten (2009)

40 notes that there is the risk of information asymmetry, hidden information and losing control over the regional branch. Therefore, ceteris paribus, party leaders face a dilemma. National party leaders can use candidate selection and recruitment either to control the regional party leaders or to delegate power (Deschouwer 2003; Van Houten 2009). As Van Houten (2009) points out, different actors interact at different territorial levels within political parties and “party fortunes at each level are usually influenced by those at other levels” (137). While this set of literature provides an intriguing theoretical approach to understand parties as multi-layered organizations, it does not take into consideration other possible factors that may increase uncertainty in party leaders’ preferences such as violence and the juxtaposition of power.

3.3 Subnational Authoritarianism and Party Behavior

One of the main caveats in the study of political parties is that most of the theories emerged to explain party behavior in consolidated democracies (e.g. Duverger 1954). However, party behavior is quite different in emerging democracies (West 2011; Luna 2014; Spoon and

Pulido 2017). In emerging democracies, party leaders may be driven more by opportunity than by ideology (Kitschelt 2000). Likewise, parties adapt their behavior and strategies differently in different contexts. Green parties, for example, are quite different in France than in Mexico

(Spoon and Pulido 2017). Parties which are from the same ideological family may adapt opposite electoral strategies in different geographical regions. It is often argued that in emerging democracies, party success is a function of party ability to deliver selective benefits to the electorate (Luna 2014). In the democratization literature, there are two different theoretical lenses to study candidate selection. On one hand, scholars had argued that the introduction of democracy changed the internal party dynamics and candidate selection was more inclusive and

41 democratic (e.g. Wuhs 2006; Langston 2017). On the other hand, the subnational authoritarianism literature argues that in some cases, the democratization processes follows a top-down logic where regional authoritarianisms persist within a national democratic regime

(Gibson 2005). Still it is not clear how party leaders select candidates in emerging violent subnational democracies.

While these two approaches highlight the influence of institutional factors on party behavior, we do not know if these expectations hold in contexts of high violence. In this chapter,

I offer some an explanation, which assumes that parties are multi-layered organizations that behave in unstable democracies with high levels of contextual uncertainty. While we know that candidate selection is affected by electoral competition (Bruhn 2014) we do not know how party leaders adapt their behavior in subnational violent clusters. I identify two sources of factors that can increase uncertainty and influence the level of autonomy of the regional branches: institutional and contextual factors. On the institutional side, electoral competition may play an important role influencing the level of autonomy of the regional branches. However, the rise of subnational authoritarianism may be an important factor, especially in emerging democracies that are the main target of this research. On the contextual side, criminal violence may represent a threat increasing uncertainty about the information that regional party leaders report to the national party leaders. Having a candidate who has no relation with either state or national party leaders may influence the extent to which the candidate may be accountable to the party. On the other hand, having a candidate who either was a state or national politician may increase the amount of information that party leaders have about the candidate and it could be the case that the candidate owns her political career to state and national party leaders. However, how does this factors influence candidate selection in emerging violent democracies? When analyzing this

question, one could not ignore that emerging democracies had shown a great deal of regional

variation in levels of democracy.

In the literature about democratization, there is an increasing interest in studying the

democratization process at the regional level. As several scholars have argued (e.g. O’Donnell

1993; Fox 1994; Cornelius 1999), in the third wave of democratization, there is a great deal of

democratic variation among provinces and districts. One cannot assume that the democratic practices and institutions are exactly the same at the local level. O’Donnell (1993) for instance questions the extent democratization is homogeneous and symmetric. His work is a starting point to question to what extent democratic practices are being replicated or learned at the subnational level. As O’Donnell (1993) points out: "provinces or districts peripheral to the national center create or reinforce systems of local power which tend to reach extremes of violent, personalistic rule-patrimonial, even sultanistic-open to all sorts of violence and arbitrary practices" (10).

In several developing countries, the existence of subnational authoritarianism is evident19.

In some countries, democracy was achieved at the federal level with the alternation of power in

the national executive, however at the subnational level the democratization process did not take

place equally across countries. Cornelius (1999) analyzes the case of Mexico, arguing that

democracy started at the national level without expanding to the peripheries. Democracy was

“tight, centralized top-down control” (Cornelius 1999, 4) and subnational units showed

resistance to democratize. The subnational level was perceived as a democracy-free arena where

local priistas20 could behave with high levels of impunity and authoritarianism.

19 See Gibson 2005 for a detail explanation about the cases of Oaxaca, Mexico and Santiago del Estero, Argentina. 20 Priistas is the term to refer to PRI members or supporters.

Likewise, other scholars argue that the restoration of democracy, opened institutional mechanisms, such as candidate selection, and increased power and autonomy to political actors at the subnational level. De Remes (2006), for example, demonstrates that while under the dominant party regime in Mexico, governors were subordinated to the president while local officials to the governors. Under democracy, the federal pact was more of a reality with a greater dispersion of power between the center and the periphery.

Importantly, there is a theoretical tension between the democratic candidate selection literature and the subnational authoritarianism literature. The first approach conceives democratization as a mechanism of including new political actors and openness of the subnational enclaves. However, the subnational authoritarianism literature perceives democracy as a national symptom without replication at the subnational level. Still, it is not clear how these two approaches speak to the multi-layered party literature. We know that democracy is a process where multiple actors interact---however there is a gap in understanding how parties are involved in this process and how party leaders at different levels make decisions. As I pointed out before, in Mexico as in other countries, there is more than one subnational unit. In the case of Mexico, there are states and municipalities. Benton (2012) identifies these multi-subnational enclaves, analyzing the case of Oaxaca’s municipalities and providing empirical evidence of the existence of municipal authoritarianism. It seems that there is an empirical gap in the research about the municipal level. Because of the nature of the unit of analysis, we know little about the political dynamics at the municipal level. The same is true for the candidate selection and party dynamics at the lowest layer of government. Although, one could argue that the municipality is the closest government to the citizens, we do not have evidence about how political actors behave and interact with the upper level. Likewise, we lack a parsimonious explanation about how

subnational authoritarianism is either strengthened or weakened in municipalities with high

levels of violence and strong presence of VNSAs.

While this set of research claims that subnational authoritarianism in the form of local

bosses and caciques21, is taking place within democratic states, how can we contextualize this phenomenon in the candidate selection processes in the midst of violence? Though scholars have analyzed the multi-layered nature of parties, how do these sets of literature talk to each other

when looking at the recruitment of candidates? Does violence increase the role of caciques and

political bosses at the municipal level? Or do party leaders select candidates that are closer to the

national level in order to weaken local caciques and reduce the influence of criminal

organizations in their selection process? Party leaders face a complex dilemma in high violence subnational units. On the one hand, the selection of local caciques may maximize their electoral winning chances, since this type of political actors may have a strong electoral base in the community with all sorts of groups, including criminal organizations. However, ceding the nomination to local caciques, party leaders may face information asymmetry and the possibility of a principal-agent problem.

3.4 The Principal-Agent Problem and Municipal Candidate Selection

The concept of principal-agent is not new in political science. The principal-agent theory

(Jensen and Meckling 1976) posits that in an “agency relationship is a contact under which one or more persons (the principal (s)) engage another person (the agent) to perform some service on their behalf with involves delegating some decision-making authority to the agent” (308).

21 The term cacique was introduced in Mexico by the Spanish conquerers to refer to the nobles who lead the indigenous communities (Meyer 2000). Paul Friedrich (1965) defines caciquismo as “a type of local, informal politics in the Hispano-American area that involves partially arbitrary control by a relatively small associations of individuals under one leader” (190).

However, the principal can limit the agent’s behavior by monitoring her behavior and imposing

certain costs. One of the most relevant assumptions in this scholarship is that the agent and the

principal may have different interests, therefore the agent may maximize her own utility

according to her preferences. This theoretical framework has been used in the study of political

violence. For example, the interaction between rebels’ behavior and foreign sponsors is analyzed

with this approach (Salehyan et. al 2014).

However, in the party politics literature, this concept has been rarely discussed22. Van

Houten (2009) introduces the notion that party regional branches are the agents of the national party leaders and the degree in which national party leaders delegate decisions on regional party leaders may decrease the control over the regional party leaders. Leaving regional party leaders to fully decide over the local party matters may cause information asymmetry. Having information asymmetry increases uncertainty, since national and state party leaders do not have accurate information about the local issues such as security. In regions with high violence and strong presence of Violent Non State Actors, national and state party leaders may have two choices. They could leave the local party leaders to decide over the candidate selection and recruitment without interfering in their decisions, assuming the cost of information asymmetry and losing agency over the local party matters. However, they can centralized the decisions and interfere in candidate selection. This may reduce uncertainty and information asymmetry. If state and national party leaders have agency over the local selection process, they can push the candidate that they think will have a good communication with them about the local issues. This

22 Laver and Sergenti (2011), for example, posit that political parties are formed by “large numbers of boundedly rational agents” who have different preferences and who have to interact to each other. The agent-based models provide a useful framework to study the multiplicity of interactions and dynamics between party leaders.

means, that the candidate will be accountable to state and party leaders and no the local party

leaders.

In emerging democracies where candidate selection is a secret garden of politics, candidates’ profiles and experience can signal how the selection process works, which types of profiles party leaders prefer and to what extent the national and state party leaders are involved in the local party affairs. Furthermore, when formal selection mechanisms are not as formal and legal as one would expect, 23 candidates’ previous experience can provide information about how

close the candidate is to either the national or the local party branch.

During my fieldwork on the summer of 2016, I went to several municipal PRI

Convenciones de Delegados in municipalities from the south part of the State of Mexico. While

the PRI established this Convención de Delegados as the formal rule of selection, during that day

just one candidate present her nomination and was officially selected by the delegates who

represent the different groups or sectors of the party such as women, young people, peasants and

workers. The state party leaders appointed the delegates. However behind doors the municipal

and state party leaders decided who would be the candidate. The Delegates Convention is more

like a rally in which members wear red t-shirts with the PRI logo, bring matracas24, bandas de

pueblo25 and express their support to the chosen one. This is just one example of how informal

rules may decide the candidate selection process, and looking at the candidates’ profiles can tell

us more information than looking at the formal rules. Furthermore, one could expect that in high

violence regions, party leaders decide the nomination of candidates in a more informal ways.

23 One example is the PRI convención de delgados. Although the formal call can establish this method in which delegated participate, behind doors party leaders decide the nomination presenting a “candidato de unidad” (candidate of unity). 24 The English translation is rattle. 25 Musical groups that play band music that is originally from Sinaloa.

Because of the high levels of uncertainty, state and national party leaders may have some degree

of interference over the local candidate selection.

The information disclosed in an interview with a national party leader from the PRI26,

exemplifies how important the local selection in high violence regions could be for the national

party leaders. She told me that in regions with a weak rule of law and strong presence of criminal

organizations, internal democracy is not important: “we try to keep a close eye in the selection

process and sometimes this means to designate the candidate from the National Executive

Committee (CEN).” She also mentioned that the national party is worried about the threat that

DTOs represent for it internal processes and it will take the necessary measures to protect the

selection mechanisms, especially in the state and municipal races. Because of several scandals

about collusion between organized crime and politicians and their impact on the public opinion

one could argue that national party leaders pay special attention to the nomination of candidates

in regions with security issues. Because of their violent context, these municipalities are more

likely to have a larger level of media exposure attracting both the public’s opinion and the

national party leader’s attention.

While violence can increase the municipality’s media exposure and relevance, it also can

affect the quality and type of candidates that are willing to run in regions where their life and

safety cannot be guaranteed. Several candidates and politicians have been killed by criminal

organizations. According to Trejo and Ley (2015), between 1995 and 2014 there were 494

attacks against local officials. Likewise, Calderón (2018) shows with data from the Justice in

Mexico Program that since 2002, at least 150 mayors, mayoral candidates and former mayors

had been assassinated. This is not inconsequential, and we can expect that these previous events

26 Interview recorded in Mexico city on July 6, 2016.

may reduce the incentives for some politicians to run for office in high violence municipalities.

However, which types of politicians are more likely to be intimidated by these targeted violence?

Do local politicians feel more threatened, reducing their participation in local politics?

It is not quite clear if these politicians come from the local, state or national levels of

government, therefore one should not assume that a specific type of politician will be less likely

to get the nomination in high violence municipalities. At the same time, one might expect that

politicians with experience at the state and national level may feel more supported by the upper

level party leaders since they may have a larger political network than local politicians.

3.5 Theory

In the literature on candidate selection, there is a gap in the study of party behavior at the

municipal level. Although there is the assumption that parties are multi-layered organizations, we

know little about how party leaders at different levels interact to select and recruit candidates at

the local level. The fact that there is no systematic analysis about candidate selection does not

mean that this level of government is not important.

In Mexico, in 1519 Hernán Cortés brought the municipio as a level of government to the

Nueva España. In the Nueva España, the municipio was an autonomous and powerful unit that

was governed, mostly, by local elites. In the 19th century, after the reform war and the Porfiriato,

the municipio was completely subordinated to the national government. During the Mexican

Revolution, one of the main demands was the “municipio libre,” however the revolutionaries were not successful. By 1929, the municipality was subordinated to the dominant party, electoral competition was absent and caciques dominated municipal politics (Meyer 1994).

However, how did democratization change the way in which party leaders recruit their

candidates in the municipality? Likewise, what type of candidates do party leaders select and

recruit in high violence municipalities? To my knowledge there is not a systematic analysis of candidate recruitment at the municipal level in the study of comparative political parties.

Likewise, there is not an empirical and theoretical argument about how party leader select their

candidates in countries with ongoing violence.27 First, one could argue that because of the

violence and hostile nature of these municipalities, experienced politicians are not willing to risk

their lives by being nominated. However, being a violent municipality means that the region is in

public eye and this could increase its political relevance, this assisting an ambitions politician’s

career. Furthermore, high violence municipalities are more likely to get special federal economic

incentives,28 which can also make the municipality more attractive for ambitious politicians.

The existing literature about candidate selection at the municipal level in Mexico has

touched upon candidate selection, but this work has not offered much in terms of empirical

evidence. For example, Langston (2017) posits that under the dominant party regime in Mexico,

governors had full control over the municipal nominations. She also mentions that in poor and

rural municipalities, caciques were a powerful figure. Likewise, Gillingham (2014) argues that

even when governors had great influence over the municipal nominations, the party elite was

highly involved in the decision-making process. These two approaches explain candidate

selection under the dominant party regime. While governors were key actors in the decision-

making process, the party elite scrutinized governors’ behavior. However, according to Langston

27 Bruhn (1999) analyzes the case of the PRD local government in Michoacán. However, she does not look at candidate selection at the municipal level. 28 One outstanding example of this is the program SUBSEMUN programs in which states and municipalities can apply to get a special subsidy to prevent crime and to strength the municipal police.

(2017), with the introduction of democracy, mayoral candidate selection processes remained

similar to those practices of the previous PRI regime. Governors still controlled the municipal

selection process, sometimes negotiating with local party factions. Langston (2017) also noted

that in states where the PRI was not the incumbent, the National Executive Committee (CEN)

was the decision-maker.

But, how does violence affect this dynamic? Do party leaders favor some types of candidates over others? In high violence municipalities, does the previous experience of a candidate matter when getting the nomination? I argue that, in high violence regions, party leaders may prefer to reduce the information asymmetry between the municipal branch and either the national or state headquarters, nominating candidates who have political experience at either the state or the national level. There are three reasons for this argument. Nominating candidates who are not well known in municipal politics in high violence regions may have positive results on election day, since these candidates may represent new and fresh faces for citizens. According to data from the National Strategy of Civic Culture (ENCCIVICA) from

2017, 47.42% of citizens do not trust political parties, while 35.40% trust a little. Likewise,

37.42% do not trust the municipal government, while 35.57 trust just a little. These numbers reveal that there is a trust crisis in institutions. One should expect that parties are aware of this, especially in regions that are in the public eye, such as high violence ones. Therefore, candidates who are more removed from localities may have a cleaner image with the electorate than those associated with municipal politics.

Nominating candidates who have either state or national political experience could reduce information asymmetry and the principal-agent problem between regional and national party branches. If violence is an issue, and the presence of VNSAs increases uncertainty, one could

expect that either state or national party leaders want to have agency in the selection process.

Leaving the local party branch to decide the selection process can strengthen local bosses,

increase information asymmetry and weaken upper level party leaders’ agency at the municipal

level. A candidate who has been either local deputy of federal legislator has a larger political

network. Furthermore, to be either a local or federal deputy, politicians need to have connections

with either the governor or the national party elite. It is impossible to find a politician who has

been either local or federal deputy who does not have any relationship with the state or national

party elite. In emerging democracies, political careers follow informal rules (e.g. Freidenberg

and Levitsky 2007).

One could argue that candidate nominations are selective incentives that party leaders use to either reward some party members’ loyalty or increase their own gains. In high violence regions, the candidates who were selected can have major implications for the whole party reputation and survival. It is not clear how the nominating of a local boss in a high violence municipality can increase the likelihood of winning the election. On the one hand, local bosses may have a stronger electoral support and may be more well-known in the community. On the other hand, selecting local bosses as candidates may reduce national and state party leaders’ agency over the municipality and the candidate behavior. Because of the levels of violence, state and national level party leaders may prefer to nominate someone who can be accountable to them but also who also may have perceived the nomination as a selective incentive and therefore may pay loyalty to party leaders.

Finally, party leaders may prefer to nominate state and federal politicians in high violence regions because of the criminal dynamics that operate in these municipalities. Most of the literature about the so-called war on drugs in Mexico has argued that with the introduction of

52 democracy the criminal-political alliances changed. While under the authoritarian regime, these alliances were centralized-systemic (e.g. Bailey and Godson 2000), meaning that upper level politicians controlled this relationship from the top. Under democracy, there is the expectation that the municipality became quite important for drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) which are trying to control municipal politics (Trejo and Ley 2015). However, it is not quite clear the role of national and state party leaders in the selection of candidates. Because of the complexity of the situation, I argue that nominating politicians with state and national political background may reduce the information problem and increase the agency of national and state level party leaders and politicians over municipal politics. It could be also the case that the connections and informal agreements between DTOs and party leaders are taking place at the national and state levels. Thus, my hypotheses are:

H1: The more violent the municipality is, the more likely that party leaders select mayoral candidates who were elected state politicians in the past.

H2: The more violent the municipality is, the more likely that party leaders select mayoral candidates who were elected federal politicians in the past.

H3: The more violent the municipality is, the more likely that party leaders select mayoral candidates who were both elected state and federal politicians in the past.

3.6 Research Design

In order to test my theory about candidate selection at the municipal level I use the case of Mexico. As I noted in the previous chapter, Mexico has experienced high levels of violence since former president Felipe Calderón declared a war on drugs in 2007. But violence at the municipal level, and its effects on party behavior has not been examined.

Analyzing the municipality is like opening a Pandora’s box. Although the municipality is the closest level of government to citizens, we know little about local political dynamics and

candidate selection. Studying candidate selection represents a challenge, since there are plenty of

possible interactions that can take place at the municipality. Furthermore, the information about

the municipal candidate selection is limited and even political parties are not sure how their

previous selection process took place.

For purposes of this project, a formal information petition was sent to all the State

Committees for the three mayor parties: PRI, PAN and PRD. I asked for the convocatorias29 of

nomination and the curriculum vitae (CVs) of all the candidates between 2003-2016. In some

cases, parties did not respond---and in others they provided the convocatorias for the past two

electoral processes. The only party that provided the candidates’ CVs was the PAN in

Guanajuato for the electoral process of 2016 election. These data problems suggested some

methodological challenges for this project. Thus, in order to test my theory about the influence of

violence on candidate selection at the municipal level, I thus built an original panel dataset from

a random sample of municipalities. Although, collecting information about all candidates from

all municipalities is possible, it would require an inordinate amount of time and effort for the

purposes of this project since Mexico has 2462 municipalities. Because of this reason, I sampled

10% of the municipalities of 10 states in Mexico (see Appendix D for full description of the

sample strategy).

I classified the municipalities by levels of violence. Those municipalities with a homicide

rate that is one standard deviation higher than the state homicide rate where they are situated

were classified as high violence municipalities. The municipalities with a homicide rate that is

one standard deviation lower than the state homicide rate where they are situated were classified

29 This is the official call or document that parties publish in their websites, and in some newspapers to select their candidates. In these “convocatorias” they establish the selection method, the deadlines and the documents that the potential candidates need to submit.

as low violent regions and those that are in the middle were classified as medium violent

municipalities. Therefore, the sample includes high, medium and low violence municipalities.

I use INEGI data on homicides to classify the municipalities. I calculated the homicide rate mean of the previous three years from the first election period that I include in my data. For example, the first election that I include from the state of Chihuahua is the 2004 election, therefore I calculated the homicide rate mean for the three previous years to 2004 (2001-2003) in each of the municipalities of this state. Chihuahua has 67 municipalities; therefore my dataset has 7 municipalities of this state. (See Table A.1 for the complete list of municipalities).

I collected data about candidates’ backgrounds from the three largest political parties in

Mexico: Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), National Action Party (PAN) and Party of the

Democratic Revolution (PRD). I code candidates’ profiles for municipalities over time from

2003 to 2016. This allows me to track municipalities and see how violence affects party behavior over time. I collected data from local and national newspapers and blogs. I used a web search entering the name of the candidate plus several combinations of words such as “name of candidate+ name of municipality+ party+ candidato.” Likewise I use the website of

Organización Editorial Mexicana (OEM) that includes several regional newspapers. My data includes 1084 municipal candidates profiles. However I did not find information for 262 candidates and for 15 observations, parties did not select any candidate. I coded candidates’ previous political and bureaucratic experience and when it was available I collected information about the profession of candidates. I coded the following elected political experiences: council member (regidor/síndico), previous mayor, governor, local deputy, federal deputy and federal senator. Furthermore, I collected information on whether or not the candidate served as bureaucrat and at which level of government.

For the first hypothesis, the dependent variable is measured as whether or not the mayoral candidate was a state deputy in the past. There are two possible sources of political experience at

the state level: governors and state deputy. Just three mayoral candidates were governors before

being mayoral candidates30 therefore my dependent variable for the first hypothesis is whether or

not the candidate was a state legislator before being selected as mayoral candidate. For the

second hypothesis, I operationalized elected federal politician looking at whether or not the

candidate was a federal deputy in the Single-Member- Districts31. I do not consider PR federal

deputies because they do not campaign as individuals and are highly dependent by definition on

the party. This type of experience does not expose the candidate to grassroots campaigning. For

the last hypothesis, the dependent variable is also a dichotomous variable that takes the value of

1 if the mayoral candidate was both state and federal deputy (see tables in Appendix B for

descriptive statistics).

The main independent variable is criminal violence. I use the National Institute of

Statistics and Geography (INEGI) data on homicides. I calculated the percentage of homicides

that occur in a municipality over the total number of homicides in the state. The reason to use

this measure is that knowing whether a municipality has a disproportionally high level violence

acts as a measure of the extent to which a criminal organization views that municipality as

important or valuable (since they are willing to fight for that municipality). If the proportion is

high, this may be related to the interest that different criminal organizations have in controlling

that region.

30 These candidates are all from the PAN: Alberto Cárdenas Jimenez (Guadalajara 2012), Héctor López Santillana (León 2015) and Carlos Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo (Acapulco 2015). 31 Mexico has a mixed electoral system. The Cámara de Diputados has 500 members, of which 300 are elected in Single-Member Districts (SMDs) and 200 through closed-list proportional representation. As Spoon and Pulido- Gómez (2017) point out, the Mexican mixed system is different from others. Voters have just one vote and the 200 PR members are chosen based on the number of votes that each party wins in the Single Member Districts.

I also include several control variables. First, I control for how politically competitive is the municipality by calculating the difference in vote share between the first and second place on the previous election. Following Bruhn (2004), electoral competitiveness may affect the way in

which party leaders select and recruit their candidates. When competition is low, party leaders

may delegate this nomination to the regional branch since they either are more likely to win the

election or completely pessimistic about the electoral outcome. Second, I control for the vote

share of each party in the previous election. Past electoral performance may be associated with

the level of delegation from the national party leaders to the local party leaders. In those

municipalities where the party had strong local electoral support, national party leaders may be

less involved in the local candidate selection process and it may be more likely to select

municipal politicians or local bosses. Third, I include a dummy variable to control for whether

or not the party is the incumbent at the municipal level since this may have an effect on the

candidates that parties select. In municipalities where the party is the incumbent, it could be

more likely to see a candidate that is closer to the mayor elite and with a municipal political

career. In other words, the incumbent may have a strong involvement in the selection process as

several governors had had (Langston 2006). These three variables were coded with information

from the local electoral institutes. Fourth, I include a variable for whether or not the municipality

is in a border region with either another state or the US. Being a border municipality can increase

the geographical relevance of the municipality for organized crime but also for regional politics.

This can have an effect of the type of candidates that parties recruit, and can also serve as proxy

of how relevant the regions is for DTOs. Fifth, I control for marginalization levels to have some

variable that accounts for the economic conditions of the municipality. This data is available in

the National Council of Population (CONAPO). Finally, I included a control variable to account

for the presidential periods. Drug-related violence dramatically increased during Calderón’s

administration. Therefore, I include a control variable for the presidential cycles with the

administration of Peña Nieto as baseline32.

In order to test my hypotheses I run a firthlogistic regression that is a penalized maximum likelihood estimation to reduce bias that may be the result of rare events. The three dependent variables are over dispersed, which means that the presence of the observed outcome is rather a rare event. For the case of state deputy, 66 PRI mayoral candidates were local deputies before

getting the nomination, 41 for the PAN and 31 for the PRD. In the PRI, 25 candidates were SMD

deputies before getting selected as mayoral candidates, 20 in the PAN and 12 in the PRD.

Finally, in the PRI 13 candidates were both state and federal deputies before getting the mayoral

nomination, 5 in the PAN and 7 in the PRD. I run separate regressions for each party to see if

there are different patterns of candidate selection across different parties. The unit of analysis is

the mayoral candidate by election year. The equation for the model is:

3.7 Results

As Table 3.1 reports, in municipalities where there are more homicides, the PRI is more

likely to select candidates who were state deputies, SMD deputies and candidates who were both

state and national deputies33. Figure 3.1 illustrates this effect. If the municipality has 40% of the

32 Finally, I tried to control for the selection mechanism that parties use for each election and I asked for information through a transparency request to each party. Just a few parties provided this information, and I also did a Google search finding information just for 333 observations. 33 I also test the effect of the interaction between being a border municipality and previous vote share had some effect on the type of mayoral candidate that party leaders select. I did not find significant results.

58 state homicides, there is a probability of 0.3 of nominating a candidate who was a state deputy in the past with a 95% confidence interval.34 The effect of violence on the probability of selecting a candidate who was an SMD deputy previously is lower but statistically significant, however. As

Figure 3.2 shows, in a municipality that concentrates 40% of the state homicides there is 15% more likelihood of selecting a candidate with federal legislative experience. Likewise, the probability of nominating a candidate that was both national and state deputy is statically significant at p<0.001 but with a lower likelihood (see Figure 3.3). If the municipality concentrates 40% of the state homicides, party leaders are 13% more likely of selecting a candidate that were both state and national deputy.

These results support the theory about the effects of political violence on party leaders behavior. As Table 3.2 shows, PRI party leaders are reacting to violence selecting candidates that had state and national political experience. Nominating this type of candidate increases the likelihood that they are well known by the state and national party elites Because of the political offices that they have had in the past, state deputies have some sort of connections to the state party branch and state politicians. In some cases, state deputies are responsible for more than one municipality; this condition may increase their political and social network within a geographical region.35

Table 3.1: Rare Events Model Effect of Violence on Candidates’ Political Profiles Pooled Model Local and Federal DV State Deputy SMD Deputy Deputy 0.021*** 0.018** 0.037*** Violence concentration (t-1) (0.006) (0.008) (0.011) 1.779** 1.594 2.763 Electoral competitiveness (0.793) (1.17) (1.688)

(table continues)

34 In all the figures the tick marks on the x-axis denote the distribution of the independent variable. 35 For example district 10 in Sinaloa contains the municipalities of Badiraguato, Mocorito and Navolato.

Local and Federal DV State Deputy SMD Deputy Deputy 1.979** 2.83** -1.718 Vote share (t-1) (0.801) (1.213) (1.829) -0.047 0.035 1.267** Border municipality (0.192) (0.279) (0.498) 0.430 0.274 1.565** Municipality incumbent (0.263) (0.378) (0.660) -0.048*** -0.074*** -0.116*** Marginalization index (0.012) (0.021) (0.043) -0.151 0.119 -0.107 Calderón (0.225) (0.332) (0.506) -0.195 0.259 0.567 Fox (0.255) (0.372) (0.542) -2.034*** -3.041*** -3.545*** Constant (0.374) (0.595) (0.960) N 1043 1043 1043 Penalized likelihood -345.63845 -182.25919 -80.621774

Table 3.2: Rare Events Model Effect of Violence on PRI Candidates’ Political Profiles Local and Federal DV State Deputy SMD Deputy Deputy 0.021** 0.023* 0.044*** Violence concentration (t-1) (0.011) (0.012) (0.015) 3.32*** -0.275 3.001 Electoral competitiveness (1.219) (2.047) (3.149) 2.96* 1.573 -3.355 Vote share (t-1) (1.669) (2.453) (4.256) 0.234 -0.182 0.527 Border municipality (0.293) (0.417) (0.617) 0.141 0.868 3.128* Municipality incumbent (0.406) (0.613) (1.6) -0.058*** -0.04 -0.038 Marginalization index (0.018) (0.028) (0.044) -0.091 0.007 -0.286 Calderón (0.344) (0.452) (0.664) -0.141 -0.809 0.096 Fox (0.398) (0.663) (0.818) -2.315*** -2.821** -4.54** Constant (0.713) (1.133) (1.972) N 354 354 354 Penalized likelihood -132.16008 -69.919026 -33.6912 ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.10. Results are from Firth Logistic regression. Multicollinearity test was run after each model and the VIF and the Tolerance coefficients were close to 1, suggesting that there is not multicollinearity.

Figure 3.1: Effect of violence on probabililty of nominating a state deputy PRI.

Figure 3.2: Effect of violence on probability of nominating a SMD deputy PRI.

Figure 3.3: Effect of violence on probability of nominating a state and SMD deputy PRI.

These results echo what was revealed to me in my field interviews. One PRI national leader mentioned that in regions where violence is an issue, the PRI National Executive

Committee pays special attention to the selection process: “in regions where criminal organizations are strong and the rule of law is weak, we do not care about internal democracy but in selecting a candidate who is trustworthy”36 In a different interview with a state PRI leader from the state of Sinaloa, I was told that violence is a variable that party leaders consider when selecting their candidates: “in the past election, the CEN contacted the State Directive

Committee (CDE) to ask the list of candidates, they were involved in the selection process.”37

By asking for the list of candidates, the CEN showed special interest in the municipal candidate selection process. In the same interview, the PRI national leader told me that they try to make sure that they know the candidates and their background. In 2014, the PRI CEN published an

36 Interview conducted in Mexico City in July 6, 2016. 37 Interview conducted in Mexico City in August 26, 2016.

agreement38 to shield its selection process from organized crime influence. This document

explicitly posits that all the candidates at all levels of government would have a background

check to prevent organized crime involvement. This document reveals that the CEN has an

interest in the selection process at the local level.

The results above reveal that in high violence municipalities, contrary to the expectation of having more local bosses, party leaders select state and federal politicians rather than local politicians and local bosses. Party leaders may reduce information asymmetry and increase their control over the municipal level. Interestingly, the only political control variable that is significant is municipal competition in the state deputy model. As the municipality is less competitive, meaning that the difference between the first and the second place is higher, there is more likelihood of nominating a state deputy as candidate. This result is quite puzzling, since one could argue that a state deputy has more political experience and can be a better candidate in a high competitive region. On the other hand, state deputies may be less involved in the community, which means that their nomination responds to a different party strategy. As multi- layered organizations, national party leaders may use these safe positions to reward experienced politicians such as candidates that were state deputies in the past. Likewise, the level of marginalization is negative and statistically significant, meaning that as marginalization increases, the party is less likely to recruit a candidate that was state deputy before. More research is needed to explore the relationship between levels of economic development and type of candidates that parties select.

In the case of the PAN, the results reported in Table 3.3 support Hypothesis 1. As the

38 Agreement to establish measures to shield the party, their precandidates and candidates against organized crime and illicit money in the electoral federal and local processes of 2014-2015”

63 municipality concentrates more homicides, there is more likelihood of selecting a state deputy as candidate. These results reveal that the PAN also is reacting to violence adjusting its candidate recruitment. However, differently from the PRI, the PAN in high violence municipalities is more likely to recruit state deputies but not SMD deputies. This tells us something important about the multi-layered dynamics within the PAN, where state party leaders of may be more actively involved in the nomination process, having a preference for state politicians. While scholars have analyzed the presidential and legislative candidate selection processes within the PAN (e.g.

Wuhs 2009, Ascencio 2017) we do not know how this party behaves at the municipal level and which type of candidate it is more likely to recruit. Loaeza (2010) defines this party as risk- adverse actor who tries to avoid uncertain outcomes such as nominating a candidate who is polemical and can increase the likelihood of electoral lost. She mentions that since 1943 when the PAN first competed in local elections, the party’s first preference was to reduce uncertainty by increasing internal party discipline and reducing scandals about different factions within the party. Loaeza posits that the same panistas define this behavior as “estrategia de la prudencia”

(127). From this assumption, the fact that this party is selecting state deputies as mayoral candidates in high violence regions can be associated with the trust and reputation that these candidates may have within the state and national party elite. Furthermore, because of high levels of violence the municipalities are in the spotlight, therefore PAN leaders may be reacting by selecting politicians that have political experience at the state level. However, it has been argued that the PAN is a more disciplined party with formal and institutionalized selection mechanisms

(e.g. Freidenberg and Levitsky 2007; Ascencio 2017), therefore these results may also be

explained by taking this into consideration. While the PRI is well-known for dedazos39, the PAN

has a long history of internal democracy with high levels of participation among their members.

Therefore, this result may reveal that within the PAN, party elites and members consider state

politicians as a better option to run for office in high violence municipalities. As Figure 3.4

shows, if the municipality concentrated 40% of the homicides of the state, there is 23%

probability of selecting a state deputy as mayoral candidate with a condifence interval of 95%.

Because of the high levels of violence in the municipality, a candidate who was state deputy may

feel that she has higher levels of support from both the state party leaders and national leaders to

run in these regions. Apparently, in high violence regions the PAN and the PRI are equally likely

to select state deputies as mayoral candidates.

Table 3.3: Rare Events Model Effect of Violence on PAN Candidates’ Political Profiles Local and Federal DV State Deputy SMD Deputy Deputy 0.027** 0.019 0.036 Violence concentration (t-1) (0.011) (0.015) (0.023) 1.08 2.46 5.828* Electoral competitiveness (1.466) (1.826) (2.983) 1.377 5.15** -0.903 Vote share (t-1) (1.553) (2.239) (3.875) -0.353 0.013 0.866 Border municipality (0.351) (0.464) (0.961) 0.597 -0.912 -0.347 Municipality incumbent (0.485) (0.670) (1.503) -0.057** -0.062* -0.076 Marginalization index (0.025) (0.038) (0.076) 0.185 0.183 0.371 Calderón (0.414) (0.597) (1.075) -0.036 0.78 1.402 Fox (0.474) (0.622) (1.205) -1.792** -3.837*** -4.46** Constant (0.768) (1.121) (2.046) N 348 348 348 Log pseudolikelihood -97.271995 -55.373937 -14.796935 ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.10. Results are from Firth Logistic regression. Multicollinearity test was run after each model and the VIF and the Tolerance coefficients were close to 1, suggesting that there is not multicollinearity.

39 Informal expression to refer to the selection mechanism, mostly used by the PRI, in which democracy is absent and party elite decided who the candidates are (Hernández 2016; Langston 2017).

Figure 3.4: Effect of violence on probability of nominating a state deputy PAN.

Finally, Table 3.4 shows the results for the PRD. As the municipality becomes more

violent, there is a higher likelihood of recruiting state deputies as candidates; however, it is

statistically significant at p<0.10. As Figure 3.5 shows, in a municipality that concentrates 40%

of the total state homicides, the PRD is 18% more likely to recruit a state deputy with a

confidence interval of 90%. From its inception, the PRD was a party formed by former PRI

members who were against the authoritarian internal party dynamics. This party is organized in

different factions or tribus, and it lacks internal discipline (Bruhn 2014). Because of low levels

of party internal discipline and high levels of internal party fractionalization, it is quite difficult

to know how the political careers are built within this party. One outstanding example of the

high levels of PRD internal division is the exit of Andrés Manuel López Obrador40 in 2012 and the formation of the new party Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (MORENA).

40 AMLO was the PRD presidential candidate in 2006 and 2012. Currently, he is the MORENA presidential candidate.

Furthermore, it has been shown that PRD candidates have less experience because they

have less political opportunities (Ai Camp 2010). Based on this premise, one would expect to see

PRD inexperienced mayoral candidates. Furthermore, the recent scandals about connections

between PRD mayors and organized crime provide some evidence that some of these politicians

do not have political experience before standing for mayor41. In the next section I do a

robustness check to test the argument about the relation between violence and political

inexperienced and the likelihood of selecting local bosses.

Table 3.4: Rare Events Model Effect of Violence on PRD Candidates’ Political Profiles Local and Federal DV State Deputy SMD Deputy Deputy 0.021* 0.012 0.034 Violence concentration (t-1) (0.013) (0.017) (0.024) -0.672 3.865 1.443 Electoral competitiveness (1.747) (2.411) (3.208) 0.654 2.638 0.806 Vote share (t-1) (1.360) (2.146) (2.646) -0.133 0.298 4.028** Border municipality (0.380) (0.603) (1.942) 0.05 0.723 2.568* Municipality incumbent (0.627) (0.961) (1.548) -0.013 -0.134** -0.431** Marginalization index (0.023) (0.058) (0.170) -0.703 0.248 -0.06 Calderón (0.442) (0.785) (1.015) -0.532 1.323 1.861 Fox (0.483) (0.811) (1.157) -1.671** -2.85** -2.510 Constant (0.648) (1.295) (2.222) N 341 341 341 Log pseudolikelihood -86.618831 -34.50043 -13.777778 ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.10. Results are from Firth Logistic regression. Multicollinearity test was run after each model and the VIF and the Tolerance coefficients were close to 1, suggesting that there is not multicollinearity.

41 One outstanding example is José Luis Abarca Velázquez who was mayor of Iguala, Guerrero and who was involved in the disappearance of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa. He did not have any type of previous political experience and presumably he was in collusion with the criminal organization Guerreros Unidos (El Universal 2015).

Figure 3.5: Effect of violence on probability of nominating a state deputy PRD.

3.8 Robustness Check

In the previous section I show that parties select and recruit candidates in high violence municipalities, following a top-down logic. In this section, I test two alternative arguments. First,

I include a robustness check to test the argument about the nomination of inexperienced politicians as a function of violence. Because of the high levels of violence, one could argue that politicians with experience do not want to risk their life and running for office in violent regions.

Second, I test the argument about the nomination of local bosses and previous mayors in high violence regions. As Langston (2017) argues, it could be the case that in high violence municipalities local party leaders and local bosses control the selection process nominating candidates who were either local political bosses or municipal politicians before the nomination.

For the first alternative explanation, I collected information about whether or not the candidate had some sort of political experience. For the inexperienced politicians’ argument, the dependent variable is dichotomous. For the second alternative explanation about local political bosses and local politicians, I collected three different dependent variables. To test the argument about local bosses, I gather information about the candidates’ family ties and whether or not she

comes from a political dynasty. If the candidate has at least one relative who was an elected

politician before, I consider the candidate to be part of a political dynasty. To test the argument

about local politicians, I coded two dummy variables. The first one captures if the candidate was either a regidor or síndico42 before the nomination. The second variable captures whether or nor

the candidate was a mayor before the nomination. As in the previous section, I gather

information from local newspapers. I also use a web search entering the name of the candidate

plus key words such as ”name of candidate+ name of municipality+ familia / dinastía / cacique”

For the argument about inexperienced politicians, I run a logistic regression with robust standard

errors with four model specifications. Model 1 is a pooled model with all the candidates from the

three parties. Models 2, 3 and 4 estimate the effect of violence by party. For the argument about

local bosses and local politicians, I run a rare events firthlogistic regression because of the nature

of the distribution of the dependent variable.

Table 3.5 reports the results for the argument about inexperienced politicians. These

results show that as a municipality is more violent, there is less likelihood of nominating an

inexperienced politician and this result holds in the four different model specifications. Figure

3.6 shows the results for the pooled model. In a municipality without homicides, party leaders

42 These two political offices are elected offices on the PR list. However, they campaign with the mayoral candidate of their party.

69 are 64% more likely to recruit inexperienced politicians. In comparison, in a municipality with

20% of the state homicides, party leaders are 10% less likely of selecting inexperienced candidates. Violence does influence the decision of party leaders in nominating an inexperienced politician. In the pooled model, this result is statistically significant at p<0.001. While being a candidate in a high violence municipality may be a risky job, I have demonstrated that party leaders do select candidates with some sort of political experience as well as candidates who had been exposed to political campaigns. There is a growing literature about the quality of candidates in democracies (e.g. Besley 2005; Besley and Reynal-Queral 2011). This result speaks directly to this set of literature. While Besley and Reynal-Queral (2011) measures the quality of candidates looking at their education levels, finding that democracies are more likely to select highly educated candidates, I provide evidence that in the midst of violence, parties are less likely to select inexperienced candidates. However, one caveat of this finding is the causal mechanism behind the decision of party leaders in choosing experienced candidates. While one could argue that in high violence regions party leaders want to nominate someone with political experience because she can do a better job, it could be also the case that this decision is motivated by the networking that a experienced politician may have with both the upper level party elite and with criminal leaders. Having political experience increases the political capital of the candidate and her exposure to the political environment.

Table 3.5: Effect of Violence on Candidates’ Political Inexperience Pooled Model PAN PRI PRD

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Violence concentration -0.024*** -0.037*** -0.019* -0.02* (t-1) (0.006) (0.012) (0.019) (0.011) Electoral -0.145 -0.71 -1.208 1.466 competitiveness (0.57) (1.036) (0.984) (1.058) -2.41*** -2.783** -1.683 -1.855** Vote share (t-1) (0.535) (1.021) (1.251) (0.888)

(table continues)

Pooled Model PAN PRI PRD

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 -0.071 0.134 -0.415* 0.12 Border municipality (0.134) (0.247) (0.226) (0.237) 0.249 0.139 0.316 0.356 Municipality incumbent (0.186) (0.345) (0.291) (0.415) 0.019*** 0.029** 0.024** -0.001 Marginalization index (0.006) (0.013) (0.010) (0.013) 0.282* 0.567** -0.206 0.612** Calderón (0.16) (0.287) (0.276) (0.282) 0.924*** 1.191*** 0.662** 1.11*** Fox (0.18) (0.329) (0.306) (0.324) 0.505** 0.403 0.566 0.262 Constant (0.241) (0.47) (0.523) (0.402) N 1043 348 354 341 Pseudo R2 0.0748 0.1290 0.0679 0.0633 Log pseudolikelihood -647.83593 -200.74682 -227.00172 -208.84301 ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.10. Results are from Logistic regression with robust standard errors. Multicollinearity test was run after each model and the VIF and the Tolerance coefficients were close to 1, suggesting that there is not multicollinearity.

Figure 3.6: Effect of violence on probability of no political experience (pooled model).

In a second robustness check, I ask if party leaders recruit local bosses and local politicians in high violence municipalities. Table 3.6 shows that this is not the case. While the

relation between violence and the likelihood of recruiting candidate who are members of a

political dynasty is positive, it is not statistically significant. This means that violence does not

affect the decision to nominate someone who is part of a political dynasty. To the contrary, the

relation between violence and local politicians is negative but it is not statistically significant

either. These results provide a robustness check for the argument about the effect of violence on

the decision of party leaders to nominate a candidate with political experience at either the state

or national level. This finding reveals that in the high violence context, none of the three political

parties analyzed here are nominating municipal politicians such as regidores, síndicos or

previous mayors. Contrary to the subnational authoritarianism literature, violence may reduce the

incentives that party leaders have to nominate local bosses. One possible explanation is that the

high violence municipalities have more political importance for state and national party leaders than municipalities without a security issue. Party leaders may want to select someone who they know, who is close to the state and national party leaders and who can be accountable to the party. An interesting example is the PRI nomination of Jesús Antonio Valdéz Palazuelos in

Culiacán, Sinaloa in 2016. One year before the selection of candidates, 49.7% of Sinaloa’s homicides43 occurred in Culiacán. The local newspapers, RíoDoce44 and Debate45 reported that

Valdéz Palazuelos “got the call” from the PRI National leaders who told him that he was the

chosen one to run as mayoral candidate. Valdéz Palazuelos was a State Deputy from 2007 to

2010 and SMD Deputy from 2012 to 2015. These two political offices provided him with

political skills, but also he was close to the state and national PRI elite. Furthermore, these

43 I consider the homicides that occurred 12 months before the selection of candidates. 44 https://riodoce.mx 45 https://www.debate.com.mx

results reveal that state party leaders are still quite important in the municipal candidate

selection.

Table 3.6: Rare Events Pooled Model Effect of Violence on Candidates’ Political Profiles DV Political Dynasty Regidores/ Síndicos Mayor 0.007 -0.009 -0.011 Violence concentration (t-1) (0.009) (0.009) (0.01) -1.243 0.292 1.075 Electoral competitiveness (1.255) (0.927) (0.952) 1.618 2.087** 2.756*** Vote share (t-1) (1.079) (0.921) (0.966) 0.032 0.169 0.176 Border municipality (0.259) (0.218) (0.233) 0.149 0.29 -0.258 Municipality incumbent (0.344) (0.295) (0.318) -0.035** -0.029** -0.036** Marginalization index (0.016) (0.012) (0.013) 0.435 0.06 -0.127 Calderón (0.315) (0.249) (0.264) -0.010 -0.515* -0.533* Fox (0.372) (0.308) (0.321) -2.659*** -2.471*** -2.475*** Constant (0.53) (0.415) (0.442) N 1043 1043 1043 Penalized likelihood -214.75496 -287.02523 -257.311163

Also, these results hold in different model specifications, which means that when

analyzing individual party behavior, parties do not show specific candidate selection patterns.

While this result does not show how good or bad a candidate is, this result shows that party

leaders do nominate candidates who have experienced in upper political spheres. This provides

additional evidence to the main finding of this chapter. Violence does affect the candidates’

profiles at the municipal level and how party leaders recruit candidates. As violence increases

party leaders are more likely to select and recruit candidates with experience at either the state or

the national level. As I argue previously, national and state party leaders have an important role

at the municipal candidate selection in high violence municipalities. Nominating a candidate who was a state or national politician before, increases the likelihood that she is well know by the

73 state and national party leaders. Furthermore, if the national or state party leaders directly choose the candidate, then she would be accountable to them and will “own” them her candidacy. This may reduce the candidates’ autonomy but may increase the control and power that state and national party leaders have over the candidate. Having this type of candidate may reduce uncertainty and information asymmetry between the local level and the state and national party leaders.

Table 3.7: Rare Events Model Effect of Violence on PRI Candidates’ Political Profiles DV Political Dynasty Regidores/ Síndicos Mayor 0.007 0.004 -0.012 Violence concentration (t-1) (0.009) (0.013) (0.016) -1.243 2.053 2.25* Electoral competitiveness (1.255) (1.28) (1.29) 1.618 -1.993 1.281 Vote share (t-1) (1.079) (1.742) (1.841) 0.032 0.166 0.689** Border municipality (0.259) (0.315) (0.339) 0.149 0.218 -0.215 Municipality incumbent (0.344) (0.425) (0.451) -0.035** -0.023 -0.036** Marginalization index (0.016) (0.017) (0.0178) 0.435 0.09 0.016 Calderón (0.315) (0.366) (0.377) -0.010 -0.538 -0.477 Fox (0.372) (0.455) (0.461) -2.659*** -0.942 -2.041** Constant (0.53) (0.726) (0.757) N 354 354 354 Penalized likelihood -101.21888 -119.7359 -111.62584 ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.10. Results are from Firth Logistic regression. Multicollinearity test was run after each model and the VIF and the Tolerance coefficients were close to 1, suggesting that there is not multicollinearity.

Table 3.8: Rare Events Model Effect of Violence on PAN Candidates’ Political Profiles DV Political Dynasty Regidores/Síndicos Mayor 0.009 0.01 0.008 Violence concentration (t-1) (0.019) (0.014) (0.016) 3.016 0.023 1.26 Electoral competitiveness (2.427) (1.612) (1.914) -0.052 2.935* 5.817** Vote share (t-1) (2.833) (1.704) (2.098)

(table continues)

DV Political Dynasty Regidores/Síndicos Mayor 0.06 -0.050 -0.579 Border municipality (0.601) (0.382) (0.486) 0.525 0.276 -1.397* Municipality incumbent (0.872) (0.51) (0.713) -0.127** -0.017 -0.007 Marginalization index (0.058) (0.021) (0.024) -0.163 0.4 -0.404 Calderón (0.773) (0.451) (0.501) 0.827 -0.305 -1.393* Fox (0.771) (0.537) (0.741) -1.848 -3.095*** 3.598** Constant (1.356) (0.801) (0.959) N 348 348 348 Log pseudolikelihood -33.636353 -85.30603 -54.725775 ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.10. Results are from Firth Logistic regression. Multicollinearity test was run after each model and the VIF and the Tolerance coefficients were close to 1, suggesting that there is not multicollinearity.

Table 3.9: Rare Events Model Effect of Violence on PRD Candidates’ Political Profiles DV Political Dynasty Regidores/ Síndicos Mayor 0.016 -0.03 -0.022 Violence concentration (t-1) (0.17) (0.026) (0.024) -1.021 -1.56 -1.186 Electoral competitiveness (2.53) (2.509) (2.437) -0.377 2.491 1.26 Vote share (t-1) (2.003) (1.834) (1.734) 0.020 0.329 -0.291 Border municipality (0.519) (0.489) (0.467) 1.037 0.899 0.126 Municipality incumbent (0.813) (0.705) (0.764) -0.017 -0.055* -0.051 Marginalization index (0.03) (0.032) (0.032) 0.501 -0.804 -0.227 Calderón (0.649) (0.537) (0.555) 0.227 -1.015 0.035 Fox (0.742) (0.658) (0.588) -2.909** -1.614* -1.394 Constant (0.956) (0.871) (0.836) N 341 341 341 Pseudo R2 -49.419505 -52.515455 -60.507899 ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.10. Results are from Firth Logistic regression. Multicollinearity test was run after each model and the VIF and the Tolerance coefficients were close to 1, suggesting that there is not multicollinearity.

3.9 Discussion

In this chapter I propose a theoretical argument to study the effects of violence on

candidate selection at the municipal level. I argue that parties are multi-layered organizations with different levels of decision-making and with several intra-organizational interactions. I argue that contrary to the subnational authoritarianism literature, in high violence regions party leaders want to reduce information asymmetry and minimize the principal-agent problem between the national and the regional party branches weakening local bosses and selecting state and national politicians. Because of criminal violence and the strong presence of DTOs, parties recruit candidates who have a political career not just at the local level but also at the state and national level. This finding reveals that the municipal level is quite important for state and national leaders and as a municipality becomes more violent, it also increases its importance for both party leaders and public opinion.

Furthermore, I show that, contrary to the expectation that democratization changed the agency of state and national leaders in local politics, the municipal candidate selection is a niche for the nomination of politicians who are closer to the state and national levels of decision- makers.

There are several reasons to explain this behavior. While state and national party leaders may want to reduce the influence of local bosses, who could be more likely to be in collusion with DTOs, it could be the case that the interactions between DTOs and municipal officials are still controlled and scrutinized by the state and national party leaders. This has important consequences in the study of democratization and party behavior. If in high violence regions, state politicians have more likelihood of getting the nomination, this could mean that DTOs may seek to influence local politics establishing pacts and agreements at either the national or state

levels of government or both. Likewise, the reason to nominate state and national politicians

instead of local politicians can be a response to the citizens’ perception of corruption.

Nominating a local politician may increase the likelihood that these candidates are involved in corruption scandals, or at least the perception of involvement.

My results provide evidence to argue that the state and national party leaders are not strangers in the municipal candidate selection. Contrary to other cases like Brazil, where elections are candidate centered and candidate switching is quite common (e.g. Carey and

Shugart 1995; Desposato 2006), in Mexico candidate selection is still highly controlled by party leaders and in most cases internal discipline is high. In the interviews I conducted with three national party leaders, all of them explained that while the party has specific selection mechanisms, party leaders have an important role in the nomination of candidates and they can always decide to chose direct designation46 as the formal selection mechanism, especially in

cases where the nomination is highly problematic, as in regions with high levels of violence of

high levels of party divisions.

Finally, while this work shows that violence affects the type of candidates that parties

select and recruit, more qualitative evidence at the municipal level is needed to further

understand and unpack the mechanism at work. Interviews with municipal party leaders and

candidates could increase the robustness of these results.

46 This implies that state or national party leaders formally established the direct designation as the formal mechanisms. This means that party members are not part of the selection process.

CHAPTER 4

THE SERPENT’S EGG: SUBNATIONAL PARTY CAPTURE

We are not Intelligence Agencies, our job is not to know whether or not our candidates have crime connections. PRD National Leader

In 2004, Miguel Ángel Beltrán Lugo aka “el Ceja Güera” was assassinated in the prison of Altiplano47. El Ceja Güera worked closely with Héctor Palma Salazar, aka “El Güero Palma”

and Joaquín Archibaldo Guzmán Loera, aka “El Chapo” (Letras Libres 2007). Interestingly, in

the Altiplano Benjamin and Francisco Arellano Félix, leaders of the Arellano Organization, were

serving their sentences too. Likewise, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, aka “el mata amigos,” ally of the

Arellano-Félix Organization and former leader of the Gulf Cartel, was also apprehended at the

same prison. According to some newspaper reports, some weeks before Beltrán’ assassination,

the fight between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Arellano- Félix Organization got worse, and his

death was an act of revenge against el Chapo. Blancornelas (2005) offers a different explanation

of el Ceja Güera’s assassination. According to Blancornelas (2005), Osiel Cárdenas ordered el

Ceja Güera’s assassination because he tortured his brother, Mario.

Still, the story did not end with Ceja Güera’s assassination. At the funeral of el Ceja

Güera, two candidates from the National Action Party (PAN) showed up to express their condolences to the Beltran Lugo family. Saúl Rubio Ayala, PAN state deputy candidate and

Wilfredo Veliz, PAN mayoral candidate in Culiacán, Sinaloa publically aknowledged their attendance at the funeral and asked the Attorney General, Rafael Macedo de la Concha, to investigate their presumed crime connection (El Siglo de Torreón 2004). The investigation

47 The Federal Social Readaptation Center No.1 “Altiplano” is a maximum security federal prison located in Almoloya de Juárez, México.

78 however was halted in the Federal Attorney General’s Office, and it was never clear whether or

not these two candidates had crime connections. One year later, Rubio Ayala was assassinated by

a group of gunmen who shot him and his driver on the road to Guasave, Sinaloa (Los Angeles

Times 2005). While there is no official evidence about the criminal connections between these

two PAN candidates and criminal organizations, this anecdote demonstrates the close relations

that some political candidates keep with organized crime.

Stories about collusion between politicians and criminal organizations are widely

reported in the Mexican and international media outlets. Figures such as Mario Villanueva

Madrid48, Tomás Yarrington49 and Eugenio Hernández,50 to mention a few, are internationally

noteworthy in part because of their performance as governors but also because of their

connections with organized crime. In 2017, the Human Rights Clinic published a report in which

former members of the criminal organization Los Zetas provided testimony about the atrocities

committed by this criminal organization. In the same report, there were testimonies about the

collusion between political candidates, police forces and public servants in the states of Coahuila

and Veracruz. According to one of the declarations, Efraín Torres who was one of the founders

of los Zetas, provided large amounts of money to the PRI gubernatorial candidate in the state of

Veracruz, Fidel Herrera in the 2004 campaign (Human Rights Clinic 2017). This was not an isolated event.

These two cases exemplify the extent of collusion between organized crime and political

48 Mario Villanueva Madrid was governor of Quintana Roo from 1993 to 1999, and currently, he is jail because of his collusion with the drug-trafficking leader Amado Carrillo as known as “el Señor de los Cielos” (Excelsior, 2017) 49 Tomás Yarrington was governor of Tamaulipas from 1999 to 2005. He was accused of organized crime and money laundry (El Universal 2017) 50 Eugenio Hernández was governor of Tamaulipas from 2005 to 2011. He was extradited to the US for collusion with the Gulf Cartel (New York Times 2015)

candidates and this collusion extend to all of the major parties, different levels of government

and various regions. As Enciso (2015) notes, Melesio Cuen Cázares51, who was mayor of

Badiraguato, Sinaloa between 1948-1950, owned poppy plantations and was involved in the

opium and cannabis trafficking.

While there are several anecdotes about collusion between politicians and organized

crime, there is not much in the way of systematic analysis about this phenomenon. We know

little about the extent to which criminal organizations have “captured” political parties via their

impact on candidate selection. In this chapter, I analyze this question by first building a

theoretical argument about party capture, arguing that violent non state actors (VNSAs) such as

DTOs, seek to influence the candidate selection process. I argue that party capture is a strategy

that DTOs use as risk-neutral and revenue-maximizer actors. In the first section of this chapter, I review the literature about state capture and the candidate quality literature. Then, I introduce my theoretical argument about party capture by a specific type of VNSA, which is the DTOs. In the

third section, I explain the research design that I use to test my theory. Finally, I analyze the

results and provide some conclusions.

4.1 State Capture and Political Ties: A Framework to Understand Party Capture

Economists have primarily discussed the literature on state capture and the importance of

political connections for private firms (e.g. Stigler 1971; Bardhan and Mookherjee 2000;

Hellman, Jones and Kaufmann 2003). These two theoretical frameworks focus on the

importance that political connections have in the development and rise of private firms interests.

51 Héctor Melesio Cuén Ojeda, who was mayor of Culiacán between 2011-2012, is his grandson. Several journalists had documented the connections between the Sinaloa cartel and Cuén Ojeda (Aristegui Noticias 2016; El Imparcial 2016)

Stigler (1971) argues that private industries seek to influence the state and the decision-making

process to obtain favorable regulations such as price-fixing and to reduce state subsidies to competitors. Stigler provides an intriguing theoretical argument to understand the relationship between the state and private industries. The author posits that political parties are state actors that can influence the decision-making process as well. In return, private companies will provide votes: “the industry which seeks regulation must be prepared to pay with the things a party needs: votes and resources (Stigler 1971, 12). Likewise, Ferguson and Voth (2008) analyze the

effect of political connections in Nazi Germany. They find that those firms with political

connections with the Nazis experienced share-price increases than others. Firms that provided

financing support to the NSDAP experienced better economic performance. Ferguson and Voth

(2008) show that political connections can have important implications for private entities. While

neither Stigler (1971) nor Ferguson and Voth (2008) refer to state capture as a theoretical notion,

they describe and analyze situations where private entities seek to influence the state. Garay-

Salamanca and Salcedo-Albarran (2012, 178) conceptualize state capture as ” situations in which

external agents capture institutions of the State. It is also possible that agents inside of the State,

like political candidates, establish agreements or cooperate with unlawful agents to promote

private interests, including criminal ones.”

The notion of state capture implies that external actors, such as firms, influence the

policymaking design and implementation in order to maximize their goals.52 Hellman et al.

(2000,4), also explain how different actors (especially firms) seek “to shape and influence the

underlying rules of the game through private payments to public officials.” State captors have a

52 One remarkable example of state capture is the ongoing scandal of Odebrecth, a Brazilian company that bribed and provided illegal donations to public servants from different countries in Latin America (New York Times, 2017).

81 variety of strategies to influence the state, such as vote manipulation (e.g. Stigler 1971). Firms can manipulate their workers’ electoral preferences, through threats about losing their jobs or wage raise promises. While these scholars look at the extent to which private entities seek to capture the state to maximize their gains, the theoretical framework is helpful for understanding the influence of VNSAs in politics, especially in candidate selection and recruitment. For the purposes of this work, it is crucial to discuss the distinction between the State and political parties and whether or not that distinction exists. As Strøm and Muller (1999) argue

“government decisions and party decisions are often intimately linked”(1). Following Katz

(1986), elected party officials are responsible of make government decisions and design and implement public policies, In summary, elected party officials are the main actors within government and therefore they are essential part of the state. While the literature on state capture refers to a state in general terms and without offering much of a detail about its definition, I argue that party capture is an essential component of state capture. State capture begins within political parties. The mechanism is the following. Political parties are responsible for the nomination of officials who will be in charge of government making. These elected officials are the visible component of the State. Here is where the importance of understanding party capture fails.

Then, like firms, one would expect that VNSAs seek to influence the state, and while they may have several strategies to be successful in this task, I argue that political parties are their primary targets. They capture parties to capture the state. It is in this early stage of the political process where VNSAs will seek to reduce uncertainty and maximize their own goals.

Both VNSAs and firms have private interests. The difference between these two types of actors is the illegality of their economic activity and the use of violence. On the one hand, firms

are legally established entities with specific financial goals; on the other hand, VNSAs are

violent actors that may have financial goals, but they can also have different motivates that are

ideological or religious. In the Mexican case, the criminal organization, the Zetas, has been

conceptualized as a criminal corporation, with a well-defined hierarchy and with “operating

structures that are very similar to those of any legal business” (Correa-Cabrera 2017, 62).

Although some VNSAs may have similar hierarchical and business structures as franchises and firms, they distinguish themselves by the use of violence. In the case of the Zetas and other criminal organizations, they use brutal violence to pursue their marketing goals. As Correa-

Cabrera (2017,67) points out “the Zetas use fear as a tactic for marketing purposes through its

mass assassinations, decapitations, narco-blockades and display of narco-messages.”

While some criminal organizations, may be more sophisticated than others in their formal structure, one could argue that all criminal organizations want to influence politics to maximize their economic gains. Contrary to rebel groups, criminal organizations do not seek to take over the government (Kalyvas 2015); however, they want to influence the decision-making process.

Candidate selection is the first arena where they can shape electoral politics. In the study of

political parties, little attention has been given to the influence of VNSAs on the internal life of

parties, however. For example, the primary goal of rebel groups may be to become part of the

state. To achieve this goal, they would seek to form of a political party once the civil conflict

ended53. Contrary, criminal organizations do not seek to become a formal political actor.

However, criminal organizations may look more like private firms in the way they try to

influence politics to reduce uncertainty and maximize their profits. Because of the illegality of

53 Some examples of rebel groups that became political parties are the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in el Salvador and Sandinista national Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua

83 their activities and their goals which are merely economic, they do not want to become formal political actors. Instead, criminal organizations may build political connections at different levels of government. In Mexico, one remarkable example of the political-criminal connections in

Mexico is the Partido Sinaloense (PAS). The PAS is a regional party in Sinaloa that emerged in

2013. Melesio Cuén Ojeda, a former PRI member, created this party. According to some journalists, family members of Cuén are close to el Ismael Zambada, aka el Mayo, who is one of the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel (El Imparcial 2016).

In sum, while the literature on state capture focuses its attention on how and why firms and legal franchises capture the state to maximize their private economic gains, I argue that

VNSAs, such as Drug-Trafficking Organizations and criminal organizations also seek to capture the state. They may capture the state at several moments and to do so they use several mechanisms such as violence, threats, and infiltration of the bureaucratic apparatus. However, I posit that candidate selection may be the first opportunity in which VNSAs can shape politics.

4.2 Candidate Quality and Party Responsiveness in Violent Countries

In the study of accountability and quality of democracy, there is a growing number of scholars who examine the factors that predict the quality of candidates (e.g. Acemoglu et. al

2004; Besley and Reynal-Querol 2011). Ashworth (2012) and Besley and Reynal-Querol (2011) argue that having more educated candidates or good candidates may have significant implications concerning policymaking, economic performance and citizens’ civic engagement.

Furthermore, democracies are more likely to select better-educated leaders than autocracies

(Besley and Reynal-Querol 2011). Ashworth (2012) posits that in systems with reelection, leaders are accountable and this may be correlated with better performance while in office.

While one could argue that the candidate quality literature implies that political parties

select candidates as a response of the citizens’ demands, it is not clear how parties respond as a

function of violence. The party responsiveness literature (e.g. Spoon and Klüver 2014), looks at

how parties respond to different actors adjusting their policy preferences. For example, Stimson

et al. (1995) look at how party policy positions change as a function of the changes in public

opinion. Likewise, Spoon and Klüver (2014) find that political parties take into consideration

voters’ demands more in national elections than in the elections to the European Parliament.

What this literature shows is that in Western Europe, political parties do care about voters’

preferences. However, how can we answer this question in countries that are experiencing

criminal and political violence? We know little about how parties behave in violent

democracies54. While in established democracies, parties respond to voters’ preferences and

public opinion, it could be the case that in counties with ongoing violence, parties respond to a

new actor that is VNSAs. Neither of the candidate quality literature nor the party responsiveness

literature take into consideration other factors such as the influence of external actors, like

private firms and VNSAs, in the candidate selection process. However, candidate selection can

also be an arena to analyze the question of to whom parties respond.

In the previous section, I discuss the influence that external actors have within the state.

To more fully understand the candidate selection process, I posit that the candidate quality

literature and the state responsiveness literature need to take into account the influence of

external actors and consider the phenomenon of state capture. While we can assume that citizens

prefer better-qualified candidates (Besley and Reynal-Querol 2011), there are other variables that

54 One exception is the work of Casas-Zamora (2013). However he just looks at party financing and the influence of organized crime.

85 play an essential role in the candidate selection. As Acemoglu et. al (2013) show, in Colombia, paramilitary groups often seek to influence party leaders’ decision to select candidates who will play on their side. Likewise, Desmond (2017) posits that armed organizations want to influence the political nomination putting the name of someone who has direct connections with them.

While the state capture literature argues that political connections are quite relevant for external firms, the quality of candidate literature has focused its attention on understanding the variation in demographics across candidates. However, to what extent does having connections with external actors affect the quality of candidates? If candidates are accountable to private interests and not the collective will, then we faced with a scenario in which the state is captured to maximize the benefits of a few. In the case of private firms and enterprises, one could argue that they would want to influence the state in all possible ways. However, when we talk about criminal organizations, the story could be quite different. The primary distinction between private firms and VNSAs is the legality of their activities. Although criminal organizations are violent and sometimes they are in the public eye, they also want to be discrete in their modus operandi. Furthermore, they may not necessarily want to influence the state equally across the country.

Around the world, scholars have pointed to examples of close relations between political parties and criminal organizations, still, there is not a systematic and empirical analysis to understand this phenomenon. Skaperdas (2001) provides interesting examples of the politics of crime. Close relations between politicians and criminal organizations are not exclusive to

Mexico. Skarpedas (2001) mentions that in the 1980’s, US mayors from cities like Boston,

Philadelphia and New York were connected with local mafias.

Likewise, in Japan, the criminal organization Yakuza maintained close ties with members

86 of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). For example, the Central Intelligence Agency (1969) reported that Yoshio Kodama who was a prominent Yakuza leader, by the mid-1950’s

“maintained close connections with a variety of influential leaders from the Liberal Party.”

However, the LDP was not the only party involved with Yakuza. In 2012, former Justice

Minister Keinshu Tanaka resigned because of his ties to Yakuza (Adelstein 2012). What these stories tell us is that the politics of collusion are widespread. From Asia to Latin America,

VNSAs have had some connections with political parties affecting the quality of candidates.

While journalists have done extensive and outstanding research on this relationship, sometimes risking their own lives to report this type of stories, we have little academic research about the motives and incentives that VNSAs have to capture political parties.

Like private firms, VNSAs want to maximize their gains capturing the state and reducing uncertainty about their short and long-term business. I argue that party capture reduces the quality of candidates. Having a candidate who has criminal connections directly affects the quality of democracy and the rule of law. In this section, I expand my argument about party capture arguing that criminal organizations seek to influence political selection at the state and municipal level because they want to reduce uncertainty. Candidate selection is the earliest stage in the political process to achieve this goal. In the next section, I propose a theoretical argument about party capture by criminal organizations, arguing that uncertainty drives the decision of criminal organizations of when, where and how they would seek to capture candidate selection.

4.3 Party Capture: Uncertainty, Collusion, and Democracy

Why do criminal organizations seek to influence political selection? While the literature of state capture provides theoretical insights to answer this question, there are two alternative

explanations. The first one is the state- protection approach and the second one is related to the effect democratization has on the long-established criminal-political alliances.

Tilly (1985) introduces the idea of States as protection agencies: “governments’ provision of protection, often qualifies as racketeering” (171). He also mentions that states may use both legitimate and illegitimate violence, especially in war times where states would seek to hire illegitimate actors such as pirates and bandits to fight the state’ enemies. However, these illegitimate actors may also seek state protection to raid their competitors. Tilly’s work is essential to understand the state-protection approach, which has been largely discussed in the criminal-political nexus literature. In the state-protection approach, several scholars argue that

VNSAs, such as paramilitary groups and criminal organizations, need state protection to operate

(e.g. Bailey and Godson 2000; Snyder and Durán-Martínez 2009; Desmond 2017). In the study of political conflict in Colombia, for example, there is an interest among scholars to explain the interaction between paramilitary groups and politicians. Acemoglu et. al (2013) analyze the influence of paramilitary groups on electoral politics in Colombia. They show that paramilitary groups may coordinate with the executive to deliver votes in regions where they have a strong presence and where the executive is not electorally successful. They find that small parties tend to have better electoral outcomes in areas with strong paramilitary presence. Furthermore, they also show that besides the exchange of votes, paramilitary groups capture the candidate selection process for both small and large parties, such as the liberal and conservative parties. Candidates from regions with a strong presence of paramilitary groups are more likely to have connections with paramilitary groups. From these findings, the interaction between paramilitary groups and political parties looks like a quid pro quo where paramilitary groups provide votes and parties payback with nominations. However, the costs that parties may be willing to pay are scandals

reported in the media and the persecution of politicians. In related work Desmond (2017)

illustrates with the cases of Medellin, Colombia, Kingston, Jamaica and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,

that armed organizations influence the candidate selection processes: “the degree of influence

over nomination can run from putting the name of an armed leader on a major party’s ballot to

having some influence over who among a group of candidates receives a nomination” (176). The

central assumption in this scholarship is that VNSAs, especially violent actors that are profit-

oriented like criminal organizations, need protection and cooperation of state institutions to keep

their illegal business. I focus my attention on one type of VNSAs which are DTOs55 such as the

Zetas and Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG)56. Their goals are merely economic and they need some sort of complicity from the state to keep their illegal business (Trejo and Ley 2016).

Snyder and Durán-Martínez (2009), introduced the notion of state-sponsored protection to explain the variation in levels of violence across countries. As they point out, not all the illegal markets with a presence of criminal organizations are violent. They explain this variation with the different protection rackets models. They define state-sponsored protection rackets

as: “informal institutions through which public officials refrain from enforcing the law or

enforce it selectively against the rivals of a criminal organization in exchange for a share of the

profits generated by the organization" (254). From this perspective, violence is a function of the

combination of the number of protectors and organizations. When colluding with state officials,

criminal organizations can also increase violence against their rivals. According to Snyder and

55 Recently, some DTOs in Mexico, such as los Zetas, are involved in other kinds of trafficking such as oil theft. Another remarkable example of oil theft is rebel groups in Nigeria (The Guardian 2017). 56 There are other examples of VNSAs that are economically driven, such as paramilitary groups in Colombia. While rebel groups may be involved in drug-trafficking and other types of illegal activities, they do so to fund the group activities. Criminal organizations, however, do not have ideological goals as their primary goals. Thus, some criminal organizations may have an ideological component such as los Caballeros Templarios in Michoacán, México, but their primary goal is to maximize their economic gains.

Durán-Martínez (2009), in regions with one protector and one organization, violence is less

likely to emerge since uncertainty is low. In addition to the state- protection approach, several scholars have argued that the end of the dominant party regime led to violence in Mexico (e.g.

Dell 2014). However, democracy did not end the criminal-political alliances. What democracy did change was how criminal organizations seek to influence the state. Under the dominant party regime, DTOs operated under a one protector, many organizations model (Snyder and Durán-

Martínez 2009). Although there were several DTOs, state officials offered protection rackets in exchange for economic incentives from these organizations. Furthermore, under the dominant party regime, DTOs used violence in a discriminate way and as a last resource. However, this does not mean that violence was utterly absent. Osorno (2009) provides a remarkable example of a political assassination. In 1944, former governor of Sinaloa, Rodrigo T.Loaiza was assassinated because he broke the deal he had with the opium traffickers of the region. However, the levels of violence that we see since democratization are not comparable with the levels of violence under the dominant party regime. Snyder and Durán-Martínez (2009) argue that four factors change the protection rackets in Mexico: political competition, reforms to reduce corruption within the

Attorney General's Office (PGR), the influx of Colombian cocaine traffickers, and the change in criminal dynamics and coordination issues. With a similar argument, Bailey and Godson

(2000,3) argue that under the PRI rule the criminal- political alliances were “centralized- systemic.” The criminal-politics nexus was controlled from the upper political levels. Criminal organizations did not need to rely on local officials because top political leaders protected them.

Under the dominant-party regime, lower levels were highly controlled by politicians at the upper level, and collusion was not an option, but a command from the top level.

From these two approaches, one could argue that with power juxtaposition and power

90 alternation, uncertainty increased and criminal organizations react by seeking new ways to maximize the likelihood of attaining their goals and to reduce risks. While the argument is that democracy changed the protection rackets, increased uncertainty and led to an explosion of violence, we still do not know how criminal organizations adapted their behavior and tactics in the new democratic configuration. Furthermore, there is the assumption that criminal organizations collude with politicians, but we do not what factors influence party capture by criminal organizations. This is reflected by the work of Bailey and Godson (2000, 4), who suggest that since the late 1990’s, when Mexico started transitioning to democracy, it has experienced “multiple fragmented-contested criminal subsystems.” In this new situation, criminal leaders may establish pacts at different levels, at the national, state and municipal levels.

DTOs new strategies to keep their illegal business; they need to adapt to the new situation created by the democratization process. In this chapter I argue that criminal organizations collude with politicians by first influencing the candidate selection within political parties.

Criminal organizations have two ways to influence the state: confrontation and cooperation (Jones 2016). Confrontation involves the use of discriminate and indiscriminate violence, such as candidates and politicians’ assassinations. However, cooperation requires some degree of state tolerance with criminal organizations and its illegal activities. Having a candidate who has connections with criminal organizations reduces uncertainty in the short and long-terms for criminal organizations. As the example of Fidel Herrera’s campaign and the Zetas’ funding shows, influencing candidate selection allows criminal organizations to “invest” money in campaigns to increase the likelihood of electoral success. Furthermore, influencing political candidate selection, criminal organizations may supply demand of ambitious politicians. For politicians, having connections with criminal organizations may increase the economic resources

that candidates can spend in the campaign. Money can increase vote-buying strategies and

clientelistic practices. In emerging democracies, such as Mexico, several gaps in the electoral

law regulates party financing.57 Therefore, candidate selection may be the first political sphere

where criminal organizations seek to influence politics. It is quite hard to know whether or not

party leaders know about their candidates’ criminal connections. In interviews with national

party leaders from the PAN and PRD,58 party leaders accepted that criminal organizations

influence their candidate selection process infiltrating or supporting individual candidates.

However, they justified these cases arguing that they are not responsible for knowing who their

candidates are: “we are not intelligence agencies, the Attorney General Office (Procuraduría

General de la Justicia) should investigate candidates and gives us the information”59.

It is quite difficult to know the precise moment when connections between politicians and

criminal organizations are established. However, if a candidate is selected and she was accused

of having criminal connections, then that might suggest that candidate’s selection is affected by

these organizations. However, not all candidates who have some relationship with criminal

organizations necessarily win. From the mayoral candidates that I collected information about to

test the theoretical arguments of this dissertation, I find that from all the candidates who have

criminal connections, 22.7% of them did not win the elections. One example is Francisco Rafael

Torres Marmolejo, who was a mayoral candidate in 2015 for the alliance between the PAN-PRD

in the municipality of Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. According to newspapers reports,60 Torres-

Marmolejo received one million Mexican pesos on a monthly basis to bring protection to the

57 The Mexican NGO Mexicanos contra la corrupción had identified the case of ASISMEX. A ghost enterprise that financed political campaigns in 2012 in Veracruz, Mexico: https://contralacorrupcion.mx/red-fantasma-2012/ 58 Interview in Mexico City on August 23, 2016. 59 Interview in Mexico City on August 26, 2016. 60 http://www.proceso.com.mx/105843/diputado-del-pan-en-jalisco-acusado-de-proteger-a-los-zetas

Zetas when he was mayor in 2006. The PAN-PRD coalition selected Torres-Marmolejo as a mayoral candidate again in 2015. He did not win.

However, party capture is a phenomenon that is quite heterogeneous. Based on the data set that I collected, I find that there is a great deal of variation on party capture across electoral cycles, political parties and states. In the mayoral elections that were held between 2006-2009,

30% of candidates, from the total number of candidates who have crime connection of my data, were selected in that period of time (Figure 4.1). The PRI is the party with the largest number of candidates with criminal connections, however the period between 2006-2009 was the one where all parties have the largest number of candidates with criminal connections (see Figure 4.2). This could be related to the so-called war on drugs that former president, Felipe Calderón started.

Likewise, there is a lot of variation across states and parties. Both the PRI and PRD selected more mayoral candidates with crime connections in the state of Guerrero than in the rest of states

(see Figure 4.3). These descriptive statistics tell us that criminal organizations do not capture candidate selection equally across regions and political parties. In this chapter, I see to explain these differences.

Figure 4.1: Percentage of candidates with criminal connections: municipal level.

Figure 4.2: Number of candidates with criminal connections by party: municipal level.

Figure 4.3: Number of mayoral candidates with criminal connections by state: 2003-2016.

Then, what incentivizes criminal organizations to capture political parties? From interviews with state party leaders from seven states of Mexico, we can see the differences in the

perceptions of criminal organizations’ influence over candidate selection. In Puebla, for example,

a state that had a homicide rate of 8 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012 compared to the national

homicide rate that was 22 per 100,000 inhabitants in the same period of time, a PAN party leader

mentioned that criminal organizations do not represent a threat in this state.61 However, he

mentioned, “it is a threat in other states like Sinaloa and Chihuahua to mention some.” On the

other hand, a PRD leader in the state of Jalisco,62 a state with a homicide rate of 20 per 100,000

inhabitants for the same year, mentioned that criminal organizations seek to influence the

candidate selection process by imposing names, but according to others, this did not happen in

his party but in the other political parties. Likewise, a PRI party leader from the state of Sinaloa63 responded similarly: “cartels affect candidate selection, but not in the PRI. Other parties do collude with them, not us.” From the interviews, there is the notion that it is always the other parties, the ones which have connections or allow criminal organizations to influence their candidate selection. State party leaders did not assume responsibility in this problem that threats democracy and representation. Rather, they accuse “other” parties of being responsible about

criminal infiltration in the candidate selection process. Party capture is the elephant in the room.

It is interesting that the answers of the national party leaders had a different rhetoric. For

example, the national party leader of the PRI mentioned, “there are several factors when

considering the influence of illicit actors. First, there are territories with a defined and clear

presence of DTOs. These DTOs use violence to protect interest and to influence in candidate

selection.” She accepted that their candidate selection processes are influenced by DTOs,

however she justified the party, “we are not the Center for Investigation and National Security

61 Interview in Puebla, Puebla on July 20, 2016. 62 Interview in Guadalajara, Jalisco on August 8, 2016. 63 Interview in Mexico City on August 26, 2016.

(CISEN) we are just party leaders.” In both answers, denial is the main response to party

capture.64

While party leaders do not take responsibility in party capture, I argue that criminal

organizations do capture candidate selection. It is quite hard to know to what extent party leaders

have agency in party capture, however I offered a theoretical argument about the incentives that

DTOs have to capture political parties. Then, what factors influence party capture? The main

theoretical argument of this chapter is that criminal organizations are risk averse and utility

maximize actors that seek to reduce uncertainty as much as they can. They seek to influence

candidate selection to reduce uncertainty, ensure state protection and shape electoral outcomes.

The decision to capture political selection is a function of the probability of losing the plaza65 or turf and the probability of a government crackdown. The value of the plaza is given by the amount of drugs that criminal organizations can accommodate and the importance that the region has regarding production and drug-route transportation. Therefore, the decision to capture political parties can be exemplified with the following equation:

If a criminal organization does not capture political selection then:

(1 )(1 ) ( ) ( )

𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝 If a criminal organization− does𝛾𝛾 capture− 𝑞𝑞 𝛿𝛿 political⋅ 𝑋𝑋 − selection𝐶𝐶 then:

(1 ) (1 ) ( )- ( )- 𝛾𝛾 𝑞𝑞 𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝 𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐 where: − 𝑒𝑒 − 𝑒𝑒 𝛿𝛿 ⋅ 𝑋𝑋 𝐶𝐶 𝐶𝐶

(0,1) - Probability of government crackdown

𝛾𝛾 𝜖𝜖 (0,1) - Probability of losing the plaza

𝑞𝑞 𝜖𝜖

64 Interview in Mexico City on July 6, 2016. 65 Plaza is “any defined drug marketplace, such as a smuggling point” (Los Angeles Times 2009).

– Economic gains (cocaine/heroine/meth x quantity)

𝛿𝛿 ⋅ 𝑋𝑋 - Costs of drugs’ production and transportation

𝐶𝐶𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝 - Cost of government capture

𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐 𝐶𝐶 - Success of government capture

Based𝑒𝑒 ∈ ℝ on the above, I argue that criminal organizations will capture candidate selection as a function of uncertainty over the plaza. I argue that as the region becomes more violent, uncertainty increases. Then, levels of violence can signal two things: how many groups are seeking to control the turf and how much force the government is using to fight criminal organizations. Based on these reasons, my first hypothesis is this:

H1: As violence increases, gubernatorial and mayoral political candidates are more likely to have crime connections.

However, levels of violence may not be the only variable that measures how competitive the plaza is and how many criminal actors are seeking to dominate the region. As the civil wars literature argues, the number of actors matters in several ways (e.g. Cunningham 2006;

Akcinaroglu 2012). Cunningham (2006) shows that as the number of veto players increases so does the duration of the civil wars. The number of criminal organizations operating in a given region, I argue, also influences party capture. In some cases, a state or municipality can have high levels of violence with just one criminal organization operating. According to NarcoData, in 2010, one of the most violent years in Chihuahua with a homicide rate of 126 homicides per

100000 inhabitants (INEGI 2017), only two criminal organizations were fighting over territorial control. Contrary, in Jalisco in 2006, five organizations were operating in this state. However, the homicide rate in Jalisco in 2006 was 6.5 per 100000 inhabitants (INEGI 2017). Therefore, while some regions experienced high levels of violence, the number of criminal organizations may not be correlated with levels of violence. Likewise, in areas with low levels of violence,

97 several criminal organizations may want to control the territory creating incentives to influence candidate selection. I argue that the as the number of DTOs increases, parties are more likely to be captured and will nominate candidates with crime connections. My second hypothesis is thus:

H2: As the number of DTOs increases, gubernatorial and mayoral candidates are more likely to have crime connections.

Besides the effect of violence and presence of criminal organizations, I also look at the impact of electoral performance. While several scholars argue that the PRI is the political force that historically colluded with criminal organizations (e.g. Bailey and Godson 2000; Astorga

2012), there are examples of how other political parties collude with criminal organizations as well (Blancornelas 2002). Likewise, as I mentioned previously, from the interviews with different party leaders from the PRI, PAN and PRD all agree that DTOs do seek to influence candidate selection, however they accused the “other” parties denying their own responsibility.

From these interviews, one could argue that other political parties have been captured by criminal organizations.

Since criminal organizations want to reduce uncertainty, I argue that criminal organizations seek to capture parties that have more chance of winning the election. Criminal organizations would not invest their money and efforts in candidates from parties that do not have any chance of winning the elections. In high violence regions, criminal organizations will be more likely to capture parties that won the previous elections. Furthermore, I argue that parties’ performance in the previous election also affects the likelihood of being captured by criminal organizations. Thus, my third and fourth hypotheses are:

H3: Candidates from incumbent parties are more likely to have crime connections than candidates from non-incumbent parties.

H4: The better the previous electoral performance of a party, the more likely candidates will have criminal connections.

4.4 Data and Methods

To test the argument of party capture, I assembled an original dataset on the gubernatorial and mayoral candidates' profiles for the PRI, PAN and PRD from 2003 to 2016. For the gubernatorial dataset, the only years between 2003 and 2016 without gubernatorial elections were 2008 and 2014. However, the dataset includes at least one election before and one election after 2007, the year when the so-called war on drugs started in Mexico. The total number of candidates is 244; however, there are only 235 observations in the dataset. I could not find complete information for nine of the candidates. For the municipalities, I collected information for mayoral candidates from a random sample of municipalities in Mexico from these states:

Chihuahua, Durango, Guanajuato, Guerrero Hidalgo, Jalisco, Mexico, Puebla, Sinaloa and

Quintana Roo. These states were chosen based on their levels of violence. The dataset has three low violent states, three medium violent states, and four high violence states. The three low violent states were Guanajuato, Puebla, and Hidalgo; the three medium violent states were

Jalisco, Mexico and Quintana Roo and the four high violence states were Chihuahua, Durango,

Guerrero and Sinaloa.

To classify the states, I calculated the national average of homicides in the six years before the nomination. For example, for states that had elections in 2006, I first calculated the national homicide mean and the standard deviation from 2000 to 2005. Then, I calculated the homicide average for each state for the same period. I use the same measure for every state in every period. Since the elections are not concurrent, I calculated the national average of homicides in the six years before the nomination in each state. Those states that were one standard deviation above the national mean were considered high violence states. Those states that were one standard deviation below the national mean were considered low violent states. In

the medium category, are those states that are in between. I sampled 10% of the one third most

populous municipalities of the aforementioned states (see Appendix D for full description of the

sampling strategy).

For the dependent variable that captures candidates’ crime connections, I collected

information on whether or not a newspaper reported a candidate to have criminal connections.

For the gubernatorial data set, I use national newspapers. Because of the importance of governors

in the federal system of Mexico, if a gubernatorial candidate has relationship with criminal

connections, it is likely that national newspapers would report that.

However, for the municipal data, the data collection was challenging. Because of the

variety of different news sources, I could not use a unique source to gather the information.

Using Google, I performed searches entering several combinations such as: “candidates’name +

narco,” “candidates’ name + crimen organizado,”“candidates’name + cartel”66. I assigned a value

of 1 in those cases where the candidate appeared in at least three different sources as having

crime connections. There are different cases in which candidates were considered to have

criminal connections: if they were directly mentioned having a relationship with criminal

organizations; if someone in their family was connected or related to criminal organizations; if

the candidate was mentioned as having some relationship with some family member of some

criminal leader67.

The independent variable for Hypothesis 1 is criminal violence. I use the National

Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) data on homicides. I calculated the percentage of

66 See Appendix E for the entire list of local newspapers where the information was collected. 67 While I am conscious that I may be losing some information this is the best coding strategy that I could envision to capture to the extent to which candidates have connections with criminal organizations. Thus, at best my dependent variable is the best proxy to test the argument about party capture

100 homicides that occur in a municipality over the total number of homicides in the state. The reason to use this measure is that knowing whether a municipality has a disproportionally high level violence acts as a measure of the extent to which a criminal organization views that municipality as important or valuable (since they are willing to fight for that municipality). If the proportion is high, this may be related to the interest that different criminal organizations have in controlling that region.

Likewise, I include a variable that captures the number of criminal organizations that operate in each state. This is the independent variable for Hypothesis 2. The data comes from

NarcoData. A team of journalists from the website Animal Político collected and published this dataset. They use reports from the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) about the presence of criminal organizations in each state. This data is disaggregated to the state level, and it is coded every six years matching every presidential administration since 1994. For the municipal level, I use this data as a proxy; however, there is no variation across municipalities from the same state in a given election year. To account for this possible bias, I measure violence with the percentage of homicides that occur in a municipality over the total number of homicides in the state.

The dependent variable for the third hypothesis is a dichotomous variable that captures if the candidate’s party is the incumbent party at the state and municipal level at the time of the candidate selection process. For the fourth hypothesis, the dependent variable is the vote share that the candidate’s party won in the previous election. I collected these variables from the Local

Electoral Institutes.

I also include several control variables. There are two groups of variables: electoral- political controls and geographical and economic variables. For the first group, I first include a variable that captures how electorally competitive the state or the municipality is. I calculated

101 this variable with the difference of the first and second place in the previous election. As Bruhn

(2014) points out, how the competitiveness of the election may influence candidate selection.

Second, I include a control variable to account for the effects that different presidential terms may have on party capture. Following the argument made by several scholars (e.g. Dell 2011,

Ríos 2012) about the impact of democracy on violence, one could expect that in the period of the so-called war on drugs started by Calderón, criminal organizations were more likely to capture candidate selection. Peña- Nieto’s term is the baseline; therefore I include a dummy variable for the Calderón and Fox presidential terms.

As Jones (2016) argues, criminal organizations have two ways to influence the state: cooperation and confrontation. It could be the case that in those regions where criminal organizations previously killed a mayor, there is more or less likelihood of party capture.

Therefore, for the municipal data, the fourth control variable I include captures whether or not a mayor was killed in the past electoral processes. This data comes from Justice in Mexico

(Calderón and Shirk 2017) and I complemented this with cases that I found in my web search and that Justice in Mexico did not include in their dataset. Finally, I control for party effect, including a dichotomous variable that captures the candidate’s party affiliation. While some scholars have argued that the PRI is traditionally connected to organized crime (e.g. Bailey and

Godson 2000; Astorga 2012), there is evidence that other parties had colluded with criminal organizations as well as I demonstrated above.

For the geographic and economic variables, first I control for whether or not the state shares a border with the United States of America. Border states may be more relevant for criminal organizations because of drug trafficking. The USA is the leading consumer of the drugs that Mexican criminal organizations traffic; therefore, these states may be a jewel in the

102

crown for drug trafficking purposes (e.g. Dube et al. 2013). For the municipal dataset, I also

control for whether or not the municipality shares a border with either another Mexican state or

the US. It could be the case that those municipalities that connect two states may also be relevant

regarding drug-trafficking and illegal operations for criminal organizations. One example is the

Mexican “golden triangle” that connects the state of Durango, Chihuahua, and Sinaloa. These

states are crucial for the operations of the Sinaloa cartel because of the large number of

marijuana and opium farmers that are situated in this geographical region of the Sierra Madre.

Second, I also control for marginalization levels to account for the economic conditions of the

municipality. According to Trejo and Ley (2013), regions with more economic development may

be more attractive for criminal organizations since they may be able to extract rents from the

government68. This data is from the National Council of Population (CONAPO).

Finally, I include a lagged dependent variable as a control variable. This variable could

tell us if party capture follows a pattern in a given region. It could be the case that there is more

likelihood of party capture in regions where the incumbent has criminal connections and is from

the same political party as the candidate.

In the dataset for gubernatorial candidates, just 12.24% (29/235) of the candidates have

connections with criminal organizations. Of these candidates, 65.52% are from the PRI, 24.14%

from the PAN and 10.34% from the PRD. Likewise, in the municipal dataset, just 6% of the

candidates (66/1025) have crime connections. Among the candidates with crime connections,

53.04% are from the PRI, 25.75% from the PRD and 21.21% from the PAN. Having crime

connections is thus a rare event. As King and Zeng (2001) point out, the problem is not the

68 I did robustness check with the same variable that Trejo and Ley (2013) include in their model that is local taxation capacity. The results did not change.

103

“rarity” of events but the possibility of a small number of cases on the rarer of the two outcomes.

Therefore, I run a firthlogistic regression that is a penalized maximum likelihood estimation to

reduce bias that may be the result of rare events. This model specification is comparable to the R

package Zeiling developed by King and Zeng (2001)69. Since my data has a panel structure, I

also run random effects70 logistic regression to have a robustness check of the results with

smallest standard errors. I use three model specifications. The first model includes the levels of

violence, measured with the homicide rate lag for the states and homicides concentration for the

municipalities. The second model tests the second argument of the effect of the number of

criminal organizations on party capture. Finally, Model 3 tests an interaction effect between

being a candidate from an incumbent party and the number of criminal organizations that operate

in a given region. I also run separate models for each party, PRI, PAN, and PRD to see how

parties are individually being captured by criminal organizations.

4.5 Party Capture: The State Level

Table 4.1 presents the results of the party capture at the state level for all three parties.

Interestingly, violence does not affect the likelihood of candidates’ crime connections. However,

as the number of DTOs increases so does the likelihood of party capture. These results support

Hypothesis 2 but not Hypothesis 1. The relationship between violence and party capture is

negative but it is not statistically significant. In states that have a presence of four criminal

organizations, the likelihood of having candidates with crime connections increases by 21.8%,

compared to 3% in those states with just one criminal organization. Figure 4.4 illustrates this

69 I also run logistic and multilevel logistic regressions. The results do not change. 70 Because of the rarity of the dependent variables, running fixed effects logistic model would drop more than a half of the observations.

104

effect. As the number of DTOs increases, the likelihood of nominating candidates with crime

connections increases too, and this result is significant with a 95% confidence interval. Party

capture at the state level does not respond to the number of homicides, but to fights over plazas

or turfs. Having more than one DTO operating in the same region is a good measure to know

how many competitors are fighting to control the plaza. As Valdés (2013) posits, in 2007 the

most powerful DTOs, Sinaloa, Golfo, Zetas and Juárez, met in Cuernavaca, Morelos to establish

a pact in which each criminal organization would operate in their own plaza without interfering

with their competitors. However, this pact ended in the following seven months. Édgar Valdez

Villareal, also known as La Barbie, who was one of the closest men to el Chapo Guzmán,

declared that el Chapo broke this pact. Guzmán Loera betrayed the leaders from other DTOs but

also some leaders from his own organization, el cartel de Sinaloa71. Then, one could argue that

the number of DTOs that operate in a region is an accurate measure to know how contested is a

region. My results show that violence does not increase the importance of the state for criminal

organizations; instead how many criminal organizations are seeking to operate in the

geographical demarcation influences party capture. This finding also provides some clues about

how criminal organizations respond and adjust their behavior when uncertainty is high.

One remarkable example was Sinaloa in 2010. According to NarcoData, four different organizations were fighting over the control of this state. In this election, one gubernatorial candidate had clear connections to criminal organizations. The PRI gubernatorial candidate,

Jesús Vizcarra Calderón who was mayor of Culiacán before the nomination, was accused by several journalists (e.g. El Noroeste) of having some relationship with Ismael Zambada, aka “El

71 There two key events that illustrate el Chapos’ betray. On January 2008, Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, also know as el Mochomo, was apprehended. Then, on December 16, 2009, his brother Arturo Beltrán Leyva, also know as el Barbas, was killed in an operative leaded by the Mexican Marine. According to La Barbie, el Chapo filtrated information to the Mexican authorities about the location of the Beltrán Leyva’ brothers (Río Doce 2018).

105

Mayo,” one of the principal leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel. He appeared in a picture with el Mayo

when he was running for governor. Other newspapers pointed out that Vizcarra Calderón has

family ties to the Quintero family, one of the pioneer families in the drug-trafficking business in

Mexico (Los Angeles Times 2010).

For the state level, I do not find support for hypotheses 3 and 4. Past electoral performance and incumbency do not affect criminal organizations’ calculations to capture candidate selection. Interestingly, in Model 1 sharing a border with the US increases the likelihood of having candidates with crime connections by almost 20%. This result does not hold in Model 2 and 3, however. In the three different model specifications, the PRI is more likely to

select candidates with crime connections. While analyzing this result, one should be aware that

because of the legacy of the dominant party and the long history of the relationship between the

PRI and the DTOs, it could be the case that the political-criminal nexus at the state level is still dominated by the PRI. However, there are examples of candidates from other parties who also have criminal connections. One remarkable example is the PAN gubernatorial candidate in

Sonora in 2009, Guillermo Padrés Elías who according to several newspapers had connections with the Sinaloa cartel (Reforma 2017)72.

Table 4.1: Pooled Model: Gubernatorial Candidates Crime Connections Rare Events DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.007 Homicides rate (t-1) (0.011) 0.794*** 0.962*** No. DTOs in the State (0.203) (0.279) -0.337 State Incumbent * No. DTOs (0.346) 1.324 1.579 1.791 Vote share (t-1) (2.036) (2.116) (2.115) (table continues)

72 As a robustness check, Table C.3 reports the results of the Random Effects Logistic Regression. I also run additional model with the interaction between the number of DTOs and the homicides rate. The results were not statistically significant.

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DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.725 4.015 3.937 State electoral competitiveness (2.396) (2.575) (2.569) 1.316** 0.876 0.895 Border State (0.587) (0.592) (0.590) 0.496 0.7 1.495 State incumbent (0.538) (0.583) (1.025) 0.035 0.048 0.049 Marginalization index (0.036) (0.036) (0.036) -0.169 -1.301* -1.282* Fox (0.616) (0.691) (0.695) 0.237 -0.541 -0.461 Calderón (0.517) (0.585) (0.590) 0.521 0.492 0.462 PAN (0.689) (0.723) (0.715) 1.313* 1.434** 1.302* PRI (0.672) (0.695) (0.705) -0.106 -0.667 -0.548 Crime connections (t-1) (0.726) (0.762) (0.751) -4.586*** -6.184*** -6.652*** Constant (1.131) (1.309) (1.448) N 242 242 242 Penalized likelihood -63.169469 -57.429464 -55.87303

Figure 4.4: Effect of number of DTOs on candidates’ crime connections.

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Tables.4.3, 4.4 and 4.5 show individual models for each of the parties as mentioned

above. These results report that criminal organizations capture political parties equally as a

function of the number of DTOs that operate in a state. This result may show that while

democracy in Mexico could change the pacts between PRI politicians and criminal organizations

(Bailey and Godson 2000), criminal organizations expanded their political networks to other

political parties. As Table 4.2 shows, the likelihood of having PRI candidates with criminal

connections is a function of the number of DTOs that operate in a state. As Figure 4.5 illustrates,

for the PRI, the likelihood of having a candidate with crime connections in a state with the

presence of four criminal organizations is almost 25% more than in a state controlled by one

criminal organization with a confidence interval of 95%. Similarly, Table 4.2 reports that if the

number of DTOs increases, the likelihood of having PAN candidates with criminal connections

also increases, however this result is significant with a 90% confidence interval. As Figure 4.6

shows, for the PAN the likelihood of selecting candidates with criminal connections increases by

16% a region with four criminal organizations than in a state with just one criminal organization

operating. For the PRD, the number of DTOs also increases the likelihood of selecting

candidates with criminal connections. However, like the PAN results, the PRD results are

significant with a 90% confidence interval.

For the control variables, the models for the PRI and PAN demonstrate some significant relationships. In the case of the PRI, electoral competitiveness and being a border state also increases the likelihood of having political candidates with criminal connections. As the state is less competitive, meaning that the difference between the second and the first place in the previous election is larger, criminal organizations are more likely to influence the PRI political selection. Also, being a border state increases the likelihood of having political candidates with

108 criminal connections. In comparison, in the PAN model the only control variable that is negative statistically significant is the Fox term. Compared to the Peñas’ Nieto term, in the Fox term there were less likelihood of nominating a PAN gubernatorial candidate with criminal connections.

This result reveals that being the incumbent party at the national level may increase accountability at the local levels, and the national and state party leaders were more careful about the candidates who were selected.

Table 4.2: PRI Gubernatorial Candidates Crime Connections Rare Events Model DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 -0.006 Homicides rate (t-1) (0.016) (0.015) 0.548** 0.881** No. DTOs in the State (0.272) (0.418) -0.645 State Incumbent * No. DTOs (0.508) 3.487 5.908* 6.492* State electoral competitiveness (3.031) (3.301) (3.407) -5.466 -6.140 -7.080 Vote share (t-1) (4.024) (4.219) (4.313) 1.931** 1.535* 1.676* Border State (0.889) (0.903) (0.904) 0.953 1.414 2.953* State incumbent (0.747) (0.863) (1.646) 0.049 0.053 0.058 Marginalization index (0.049) (0.048) (0.049) 0.714 -0.023 0.099 Fox (0.858) (0.94) (0.969) 0.785 0.298 0.486 Calderón (0.751) (0.787) (0.814) 0.939 0.271 0.482 Crime connections (t-1) (0.813) (0.862) (0.866) -1.697 -2.511* -3.412** Constant (1.591) (1.718) (1.918) N 85 85 85 Penalized likelihood -30.382423 -30.891969 -29.291393

Table 4.3: PAN Gubernatorial Candidates Crime Connections Rare Events Model DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.004 Homicides rate (t-1) (0.017) (table continues)

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DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.79* 0.871* No. DTOs in the State (0.427) (0.466) -0.600 State Incumbent * No. DTOs (0.969) -2.391 0.417 0.123 State electoral competitiveness (5.713) (6.422) (5.709) 2.22 4.152 4.322 Vote share (t-1) (3.826) (4.862) (4.492) 1.269 0.680 0.646 Border State (1.156) (1.160) (1.127) -1.116 -1.549 0.067 State incumbent (1.113) (1.284) (2.203) 0.028 0.028 0.024 Marginalization index (0.087) (0.099) (0.092) -2.103 -2.925* -2.637* Fox (1.596) (1.633) (1.487) -0.288 -1.215 -1.331 Calderón (0.878) (1.131) (1.116) 0.976 0.987 0.676 Crime connections (t-1) (1.335) (1.341) (1.295) -2.724 -4.469 -4.577 Constant (2.753) (3.776) (3.447) N 82 82 82 Penalized likelihood -14.368614 -15.177768 -14.731192

Table 4.4: PRD Gubernatorial Candidates Crime Connections Rare Events DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.057 Homicides rate (t-1) (0.038) 1.522** 1.446* No. DTOs in the State (0.727) (0.769) -0.111 Incumbent * No. DTOs (0.952) -6.539 -2.745 -2.436 Vote share (t-1) (5.653) (5.581) (5.39) -2.700 4.559 4.668 State electoral competitiveness (9.094) (9.067) (8.747) -1.218 -1.055 -1.087 Border State (2.960) (1.92) (1.866) 2.891 1.761 2.099 State incumbent (1.897) (1.825) (3.015) 0.055 0.102 0.088 Marginalization index (0.068) (0.108) (0.105) 0.921 -2.892 -2.605 Fox (2.01) (2.388) (2.222) 1.212 -1.973 -1.754 Calderón (1.84) (2.323) (2.152) (table continues)

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DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 -1.043 -2.209 -2.082 Crime connections (t-1) (1.718) (2.021) (1.902) -4.152** -6.371** -6.101** Constant (2.037) (2.595) (2.778) N 75 75 75 Penalized likelihood -6.9758258 -6.3928093 -6.2784432

Figure 4.5: PRI candidates’ crime connections: gubernatorial.

Figure 4.6: PAN candidates’ crime connections: gubernatioral.

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Figure 4.7: PRD candidates’ crime connections: gubernatorial.

4.6 Party Capture: The Municipal Level

While for the state, party capture is contingent on the number of DTOs, at the municipal level, I find that levels of violence drive the decision of capturing political selection. However, as

I explained before, the data on the number of DTOs that operates in the municipalities is not desegregated at the municipal level, then I use the state level data as a proxy. It is important to point out that this result may be related to the lack of accurate information about the number of criminal organizations at the municipal level.

At both levels of government, uncertainty is the key element. As Table 4.5 shows, levels of violence do affect the extent of which criminal organizations capture political parties. In municipalities with more violence, candidates are more likely to have crime connections. For example, less than 1% of the homicides in Guanajuato occurred in San Luis de la Paz and the probability of capture was 5.8%. In comparison, around 50% of the total murders in Guerrero occurred in Acapulco, and the likelihood of party capture increased to 15%. As Figure 4.8

112 illustrated, the percentage change is about 10%, and it is statistically significant at p<0.001.

Measuring the percentage of homicides that occur in a municipality can tell us how contested the municipality is for organized crime. Unfortunately, there is no data to estimate the number of criminal organizations at the municipal level for the years of this study, and while I use the number of DTOs at the state level as a proxy, I can be missing valuable information. However, the measure I use provide some clues about the criminal dynamics of the municipality. As the concentration of homicides in the municipality increases, the likelihood of having candidates with crime connections also increases.

One of the most intriguing results is that unlike at the state level, at the municipal level, party captures responds to the past electoral performance of the party in the municipality. In the three models’ specifications, previous vote share is statistically significant. This result supports

Hypothesis 4. If the party did better in the last election, there is a higher likelihood of getting captured by criminal organizations. As Figure 4.9 illustrates, while the probability increases by

6% in a municipality where a party won around 0.40 of the votes, this result is significant at p<0.001. Criminal organizations do seek to capture parties that have the chance of electoral success.

Table 4.5: Pooled Model: Mayoral Candidates Crime Connections73 Rare Events Model DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.022*** Violence concentration (t-1) (0.008) 0.137 0.119 No. DTOs in the State (0.1) (0.135)

(table continues)

73 As a robustness check for the argument about the effect of a possible government crackdown, I ran an additional model that includes a dummy variable that captures whether or not the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA) confiscated marijuana plantations one year before the municipal election. The fact that the SEDENA did this type of operation in the municipality may increase uncertainty and criminal organizations may be more likely to capture political candidate selection. However, the data is only available for the years between 1990-2012. The results did not change, and this variable was not statistically significant.

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DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.039 Incumbent * No. DTOs (0.188) 4.141*** 4.414*** 4.4*** Municipal vote share (t-1) (1.174) (1.174) (1.174) 0.486 0.409 0.403 Municipal electoral competitiveness (1.061) (1.08) (1.086) -0.022 -0.007 -0.008 Border municipality (0.262) (0.260) (0.260) -0.242 -0.28 -0.424 Municipal incumbent (0.356) (0.355) (0.509) 0.117 0.418 0.416 Mayor killed before (0.515) (0.484) (0.484) -0.008 -0.02 -0.02 Marginalization index (0.013) (0.012) (0.013) 0.171 0.074 0.073 Calderón (0.305) (0.317) (0.316) -0.530 -0.62* -0.615 Fox (0.388) (0.4) (0.399) -0.580 -0.615 -0.609 PAN (0.377) (0.376) (0.375) 0.100 0.04 0.042 PRI (0.341) (0.34) (0340) -0.437 -0.397 -0.403 Crime connections (t-1) (0.568) (0.564) (0.565) -3.874*** -3.672*** -3.627*** Constant (0.536) (0.523) (0.56) N 1025 1025 1025 Penalized likelihood -202.28433 -206.61343 -204.90406

Figure 4.8: Effect of violence on candidates’ crime connections: municipal level.

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Figure 4.9: Effect of previous electoral performance on candidates’ crime connections.

Interestingly, when splitting the sample and running the models by party, the political parties that are captured by criminal organizations at the municipal level are the PRI and PRD.

As Table 4.6 and 4.8 show, as the municipality becomes more violent, there is an increased likelihood of having a candidate with crime connections. Contrary to the state level where the three parties are captured by criminal organizations, at the municipal level DTOs are not capturing the PAN. For the PRI, one possible explanation for this result is that criminal organizations seek to influence the party with a long tradition of electoral dominance and also they may develop a more sophisticated network with the PRI. Since the PRI had governed for more than 70 years, it could be the case that criminal organizations are finding it quite complicated to capture other parties with the same chances of electoral winning that some PRI candidates may offer to them. In the case of the PRD, one possible explanation for this result is that the party has shown low levels of internal discipline (Bruhn 1999), which can facilitate the infiltration of criminal organizations within the municipal party political selection. Furthermore, 115

contrary to the PAN, the PRD has been quite ambiguous in its responsiveness to issues like

violence and security. In an interview with a PRD national leader, she told me that “in regions

like Guerrero criminal organizations influence the party, and while the national party leaders care

about the municipal level the party has established internal rules that allows the municipal level

certain level of autonomy in its decisions”74. However, more research is needed to explore the relationship between party responsiveness and criminal violence (e.g. Walgrave et al. 2012;

Spoon and Klüver 2014). As Figure 4.10 shows, the likelihood of having candidates with

criminal connections is higher in the PRI than in the PRD. In a municipality where 40% of the

state homicides occur, a PRI candidate has a 21% probability of being captured by criminal

organizations with p<0.05. On the other hand, as Figure 4.11 illustrates, a PRD candidate in the

same municipality has 12% likelihood of having criminal connections however, the significance

is lower at p<0.10.

For the PRI and PRD, previous electoral performance also predicts the likelihood of having candidates with criminal connections. When the parties had a better electoral performance in the last election, it is more likely that they will be captured by DTOs. As rational and risk averse actors, criminal organizations want to reduce uncertainty. They will choose to capture political selection in regions where parties have a good electoral outcome in the previous election.

It is also quite intriguing that besides the levels of violence, the number of DTOs that

operate in the state also affects the likelihood of PRI capture by criminal organizations.

However, as I mentioned before, this variable captures the number of DTOs that operate at the

state level, but it is not disaggregated to the municipal level. This variable is just a proxy to

74 Interview conducted in Mexico City on August 26, 2016.

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measure the competitiveness of the municipal plaza. This finding should be interpreted as a

robustness check of the argument about uncertainty. At the municipal level, when uncertainty is

high, whether it is measured by percentage of homicides or number of DTOs operating at the

state level, the PRI mayoral candidates are more likely to have criminal connections. As the

results from the rare events model reported in Table 4.6 show, the fact that a mayor was killed

before the municipal election is positive and statistically significant in the PRI model. In those

municipalities where a mayor was killed in the past, there is 29% of likelihood of having a PRI

mayoral candidate with criminal connections. This finding could have several interpretations.

One is that criminal organizations use the strategy of plata o plomo75 with PRI candidates.

Because of the previous violent episodes in a given region, PRI candidates do not want to take

risks, and therefore they are willing to negotiate or collude with DTOs. Following Jones (2016),

it could also be the case that where mayors were killed in the past, criminal organizations collude

with the party to ensure that their chosen candidate will win the election. However, we need

further evidence about the affiliation of the previous mayors who were assassinated to explore

whether or not criminal organizations use both strategies of cooperation and confrontation or if

these two strategies are exclusive to each other.

Table 4.6: PRI Mayoral Candidates Crime Connections Rare Events Model DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.027** Violence concentration (t-1) (0.012) 0.294** 0.425** No. DTOs in the State (0.14) (0.209) -0.228 Incumbent * No. DTOs (0.267) 3.942* 3.5* 3.496* Municipal vote share (t-1) (2.033) (2.056) (2.06)

(table continues)

75 The English translation of this colloquial expression is “silver or lead.” The meaning is that one can either accept bribes or face violence.

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DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 1.249 1.335 1.441 Municipal electoral competitiveness (1.465) (1.518) (1.526) -0.035 -0.000 0.030 Border municipality (0.369) (0.367) (0.368) -0.388 -0.339 0.157 Municipal incumbent (0.487) (0.497) (0.791) 1.179* 1.429** 1.426** Mayor killed before (0.679) (0.642) (0.641) 0.003 -0.009 -0.009 Marginalization index (0.016) (0.016) (0.016) 0.695 0.423 0.459 Calderón (0.461) (0.478) (0.482) -0.175 -0.468 -0.416 Fox (0.579) (0.609) (0.613) -0.694 -0.634 -0.607 Crime connections (t-1) (0.712) (0.705) (0.698) -4.366*** -4.134*** -4.498*** Constant (0.887) (0.861) (0.989) N 354 354 354 Penalized likelihood -89.506686 -91.569141 -89.851374

Table 4.7: PAN Mayoral Candidates Crime Connections Rare Events Model DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.006 Violence concentration (t-1) (0.02) -0.08 -0.043 No. DTOs in the State (0.207) (0.274) -0.036 Incumbent * No. DTOs (0.396) 0.596 0.621 0.638 Municipal vote share (t-1) (2.321) (2.327) (2.321) -1.277 -1.424 -1.456 Municipal electoral competitiveness (2.676) (2.696) (2.713) -0.014 -0.007 -0.006 Border municipality (0.529) (0.528) (0.527) 0.270 0.278 0.346 Municipal incumbent (0.704) (0.707) (0.953) -1.251 -1.150 -1.165 Mayor killed before (1.53) (1.502) (1.501) -0.049 -0.051 -0.049 Marginalization index (0.038) (0.036) (0.036) -0.809 -0.749 -0.753 Calderón (0.623) (0.636) (0.635) -0.605 -0.523 -0.507 Fox (0.651) (0.659) (0.655) -0.130 -0.094 -0.097 Crime connections (t-1) (1.577) (1.574) (1.577) (table continues) 118

DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 -1.534 -1.366 -1.424 Constant (1.143) (1.129) (1.13) N 346 346 346 Penalized likelihood -46.354337 -48.560617 -47.561078

Table 4.8: PRD Mayoral Candidates Crime Connections Rare Events Model DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.027* Violence concentration (t-1) (0.016) -0.048 -0.094 No. DTOs in the State (0.219) (0.463) 0.107 Incumbent * No. DTOs (0.467) 5.479*** 6.066*** 5.956*** Municipal vote share (t-1) (1.982) (1.997) (2.000) 1.254 1.031 0.867 Municipal electoral competitiveness (2.144) (2.244) (2.294) 0.057 -0.045 -0.038 Border municipality (0.513) (0.504) (0.508) -0.392 -0.415 -0.532 Municipal incumbent (0.771) (0.755) (1.08) -0.551 -0.062 -0.049 Mayor killed previously (1.098) (0.989) (0.988) -0.013 -0.032 -0.032 Marginalization index (0.029) (0.027) (0.028) 0.116 0.149 0.151 Calderón (0.572) (0.579) (0.577) -0.867 -0.808 -0.796 Fox (0.807) (0.805) (0.802) -0.251 -0.110 -0.089 Crime connections (t-1) (1.135) (1.154) (1.141) -4.094*** -3.495*** -3.409*** Constant (0.995) (0.922) (1.004) N 325 325 325 Penalized likelihood -46.089944 -49.846295 -49.026517

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Figure 4.10: Effect of violence on PRI candidates’ crime connections: municipal level.

Figure 4.11: Effect of violence on PRD candidates’ crime connections: municipal level.

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4.7 Discussion

This result supports the argument of this chapter and this whole dissertation about

uncertainty. While party leaders want to reduce uncertainty and the principal-agent problem nominating candidates with a political career at either the state or national level, DTOs seek to influence candidate selection in regions where parties had a higher chance of winning the election. Both DTOs and political parties are rational actors that calculate their strategies in the midst of violence. These strategies have one goal that is to reduce uncertainty.

In this chapter, I test a theory about uncertainty, violence and party behavior. Using an original dataset on candidates’ profiles, I show that in regions where uncertainty is high, political parties are more susceptible to being captured by criminal organizations. I demonstrate that as violence increases and as the number of DTOs that operate in a given region increases parties are more likely to select candidates with criminal connections. Furthermore, I provide empirical evidence that while at the state level all parties are captured by DTOs, at the municipal level not all political parties are equally captured by DTOs.

At the state level, parties are more likely to select candidates with crime connections as the number of criminal organizations that operate in the state increases. The political variable that is positive and statistically significant at the state level are whether or not the state shares a border with the US and whether. This finding has implications for the bilateral relationship between Mexico and the US. In the Border States, candidate selection may have implications at the US side. Having a candidate with criminal connections may increase the amount of drugs that

enter the US and the corruption networks between Mexican and US officials. However, more

research is needed to analyze this issue.

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At the municipal level, however the story is quite different. As the percentage of

homicides that occur in a municipality increases, the likelihood of having candidates with crime

connections increases too. But, the effect is not equal for all parties. The only party that is not

selecting mayoral candidates with criminal connections as a function of violence is the PAN.

However, PRI and PRD political selection is affected by how much violence occurs in a

municipality.

Furthermore, at the municipal level criminal organizations seek to capture parties that

have good chances of electoral victory. The likelihood of having candidates with criminal

connections is also a function of the parties’ past electoral performances. It is quite interesting

that the probability of mayoral candidate selection of the PRI also responds to whether or not a

mayor was killed before the election. However, one should be cautious in interpreting this result.

It could be the case that criminal organizations are using the strategy of “plata o plomo” or it

could be the case that DTOs killed mayors that broke pacts that they established with criminal

organizations before winning the elections.

The findings of this chapter open a new conversation in the study of criminal violence

and emerging democracies. While Mexico is not considered to be experiencing a civil war, the

country has experienced dramatic increases in violence levels. My research shows that criminal

organizations find several ways to capture the state and to shape politics. I demonstrate that

criminal organizations indeed affect the candidate selection processes at the subnational level.

One caveat of this chapter is the assumption that parties are being captured without

having much agency in the process. More research is needed to understand to what extent party

leaders also have agency in the political-criminal nexus. On the one hand, it could be the case that uncertainty also drives the decision of party leaders and political candidates to collude with

122 criminal organizations. On the other hand, it could be the case that political candidates allow being captured because the alternative is having their candidates and elected officials killed.

However, like a serpent’s egg, candidate selection could be the shell to identify the kind of candidates that are selected. If we know that the “kind” is one that has criminal connections,

“therefore think him as a serpent’s egg-which, hatched, would as his kind grow mischievous.

And kill him in the shell” (Shakespeare, 1599: 11.1.28-34).

Another open question is what happens after a candidate with crime connections wins the election. While I show that DTOs indeed capture political parties, we still do not know how they govern and what types of public policies they implement.

I show that criminal organizations seek to reduce uncertainty about their future as illegal enterprises. Influencing candidate selection may maximize their chances of shaping politics.

Second, by capturing candidate selection, criminal organizations seek to ensure or increase state protection, which allows them to keep their illegal activities and reduce competition from other criminal organizations. Finally, by capturing political parties through candidate selection, criminal organizations seek to shape electoral outcomes. Having a candidate that is cooperating with them, allows them to fund the campaigns, and increase the likelihood of the candidate of winning the election. However, this can negatively influence the quality of democracy. The organizations that are responsible for the nomination of candidates who will subsequently govern, sometimes do not respond to citizens’ preferences but the criminal organizations’ preferences. Having candidates with criminal connections can jeopardize the rule of law and the integrity of democracy.

Finally, I show that not all political candidates are connected with organized crime.

While there is a democratic crisis within parties and institutions in Mexico, we need to further

123 question what predicts criminal connections and what is the role of the state in protecting political candidates from criminal organizations. My research speaks directly to the research on candidates’ assassinations (e.g. Ley and Trejo 2017; Calderón 2018). Do criminal organization either confront or capture? Are these two strategies mutually exclusive? The relationship between these two events requires further analysis.

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CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION: PUTTING THE PUZZLE TOGETHER

This dissertation has examined the effects of criminal violence and the presence of DTOs

on political party behavior in the case of Mexico. In particular, I analyze when and how criminal organizations seek to capture political candidate selection to reduce uncertainty. I argue that uncertainty drives both party leaders and criminal organizations behavior in regions with ongoing violence. I develop a theory about strategic party behavior arguing that party leaders will select different types of candidates as a function of violence. I also look at to what extent criminal organizations seek to influence candidate selection and what factors drive this decision.

I argue that as uncertainty increases, criminal organizations attempt to capture political selection to reduce uncertainty and maximize the future of their illegal operations.

In Chapter 2, I find that violence affects the gubernatorial candidate selection of the PRI,

PAN and PRD. In high violence states, parties select gubernatorial candidates with long experience in subnational politics compared to other types of experiences. Experienced subnational politicians may have more knowledge of how to deal with criminal organizations and may be more familiar with the state criminal dynamics.

In chapter 3, however, I also find that at the municipal level not all the parties respond equally to violence. As a municipality becomes more violent, the PRI and PAN party leaders are more likely to select mayoral candidates who were either state or federal deputies or candidates who were both. In contrast, the PRD is likely to recruit state deputies as a function of violence, but not national deputies or candidates who were deputies at both the state and federal level.

Interestingly, I find that as the municipality becomes more violent, party leaders are less likely to

125 recruit inexperienced candidates. This result suggests that parties do indeed respond to levels of violence.

I argue that there are two possible explanations for this finding. The first is that party leaders do prefer to nominate experienced candidates as a function of violence because the job requires capabilities and knowledge to fight the DTOs. However, an alternative explanation is that mayoral candidates with political experience had been longer in politics which increases their exposure to different social and groups, and one of these groups can be the criminal organizations. Having political experience provides mayoral candidates with a more extensive network, and this network could include some connection, direct or indirect, to criminal leaders.

Finally, in Chapter 5, I show that criminal organizations capture candidate selection to reduce uncertainty. As utility-maximizing actors, DTOs seek to influence the selection of candidates as a function of violence. At the state level, criminal organizations are more likely to capture candidate selection in states with the presence of multiple DTOs. Party capture is more likely to happen in states where more than one DTO are fighting to control the turf. I show that criminal organizations at the state level equally capture all parties. This finding reveals that

DTOs are diversifying their political connections. While under the dominant party regime, they colluded with PRI officials, under the new political Mexican democratic configuration, DTOs are establishing other political relationships with different political parties.

It is also important to point out that DTOs had changed in number but also in their internal dynamics. Under the dominant party regime, there were there dominant DTOs: the

Guadalajara cartel, the Juárez Cartel and the Gulf Cartel (Valdés 2011). However, these organizations experienced internal fights. In some cases, criminal organizations split, and new organizations emerged such as los Zetas and Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación. Therefore, this

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proliferation of DTOs can also explain why criminal organizations are capturing other political

parties. At the municipal level, I find that as the municipality becomes more violent, criminal

organizations are more likely to capture candidate selection.

Interestingly, I also find that the party’s previous electoral performance also affects party

capture. As the vote share in the last election increases, parties are more likely to be captured.

Contrary to the state level where all parties are being captured, at the municipal level, the PAN is

the only political party that is not being captured by DTOs. For PRI mayoral candidate selection,

having a previous mayor who was killed increases the chances that criminal organizations will

capture PRI mayoral candidates. I do not find that the number of DTOs affect party capture.

Importantly, this could be related to the lack of accurate information for the municipalities.

5.1 Theoretical and Empirical Contributions

The main theoretical contribution of this dissertation is that it addresses a heretofore

ignored topic in the party literature in emerging democracies-how does violence affect candidate selection, a crucial function performed by the parties. While we know that institutional factors affect the way in which parties select their candidate, we know little about how external shocks shape party leaders decisions on candidate selection. To my knowledge, this is the first empirical and theoretical work that brings together two fields of comparative politics to understand candidate selection-- party politics and political violence. Furthermore, I build a theoretical argument about party strategic behavior in the context of violence and influence of criminal organizations. Party leaders and criminal organizations make decisions in highly uncertain environments, and it would be too simplistic to ignore the fact that violence may shape these decisions and that criminal organizations do attempt to influence candidate selection. My

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theoretical argument has two main actors: political parties and criminal organizations. While

party leaders may be responding to violence in selecting more capable candidates, it could also

be the case that long experienced politicians have better-established connections with criminal

organizations. Thus, it only follows that these two actors work together to select candidates who

were mutually beneficial to both organizations.

I show that candidate selection is the first arena where criminal organizations will seek to

influence politics. One of the theoretical contributions of this work is to show that political

parties are also involved in the criminal-political nexus. To this point, parties have received little

attention in the study of criminal violence and ongoing conflicts. However, it is not entirely clear

whether parties are the victims of criminal organizations or if they have agency in the party

capture phenomenon.

While having a winning candidate with crime connections could have negative implications for democracy and the rule of law, further research is needed to explain the consequences of having a winning candidate who is already a “serpent.” Importantly, not all political candidates who have criminal connections win the elections. From the data that I collected for this dissertation, I find that 33% of the candidates with criminal connections did not win the election and 66% did win the elections. Having 66% of candidates with criminal connection winning the election may have significant implications not just to understand party behavior but to better understand how captured is the state. While homicides and deaths are the visible part of the violence that Mexico is facing, behind each victim and each body there is an extensive network of collusion and corruption between the state and criminal organizations.

The main empirical contribution of this dissertation is the mixed methods approach that I use to test my theory. First, I did extensive data collection. I collected information of 1267

128 gubernatorial and mayoral candidates from the three largest parties in Mexico. While other scholars have gathered information about national deputies and governors (e.g. Langston 2006;

Ai Camp 2012), to my knowledge my gubernatorial data is the first that includes information about candidates’ connections with criminal organizations. Likewise, the mayoral candidate data is the first to study Mexican municipal candidate selection. The municipal data contains detailed information about candidates’ previous political and bureaucratic experience, whether or not they are a member of a political dynasty and whether or not they have some connection with criminal organizations. My dataset could be used to explore new questions about candidate selection patterns at the municipal level in Mexico. In addition to the data collection, I conducted 18 interviews with national and state party leaders from 8 different Mexican states. Unfortunately, I was not able to interviewed leaders from either Chihuahua or Durango. However, the information disclosed in the interviews strengthen the findings and evidence that I provide about the effect of criminal violence on candidate selection.

5.2 Policy Implications

Mexico has experienced high levels of violence but also high levels of targeted violence against political candidates and politicians. In this dissertation, I show that DTOs use candidate selection as a way to seek cooperation from the state and ensure state protection mechanisms.

While party leaders and candidates may be in a complicated situation where their lives depend upon whether or not they choose to cooperate with criminal organizations, we should not ignore the fact that party leaders have the duty of selecting candidates who will represent citizens, and in case of winning elections, will design and implement public policies.

My findings could be used to implement better mechanisms within political parties in the

129 candidate selection process. Party capture is the proverbial elephant in the room. As several party leaders from different states disclosed in the interviews, they know that criminal organizations are influencing their candidate recruitment processes; however, they avoid responsibility arguing that they are neither intelligence agencies nor security entities. Furthermore, while the National

Electoral Institute may resolve internal disputes within political parties, they do not interfere in the parties’ internal life. What we see in the Mexican case is a lack of the rule of law and a lack of accountability in this matter. No one is taking responsibility for the extended collusion networks between politicians and criminal organizations. The National and State Electoral

Institutes do ask for the list of candidates to all the registered parties, but their job ends there.

They did not ask for a CV of all the candidates of which type of selection mechanism they use to nominate their candidates. My research demonstrates that candidate selection is the first sphere where DTOs seek to influence the state to protect their interests, to eliminate their competitors and to maximize their utility. Therefore, candidate selection candidate selection should be an arena with more accountability and where institutions from the state such as the Center for

Research and National Security (CISEN) could contribute investigating candidates. If 66% of the candidates with crime connections win the elections, there should be a more ex-ante investigation about the candidates, who they are and what type of connections they have.

Another simple measure to make parties accountable for candidate selection is that the parties be asked to provide a resume for each of the candidates. For purposes of this research, I asked through a formal information request, for all the CVs of all the gubernatorial and mayoral candidates from 2003 to 2016 and the selection mechanisms they use to select their candidates of the states and municipalities that are included in my dataset. For the CVs, all the state party committees, except the PAN in Guanajuato and for the electoral process of 2015, responded that

130 they did not have such information in their archives. For the formal selection mechanisms that they use to select their candidates, I find a great deal of variation in the answers. In those states where I was able to have access to the selection mechanisms, they provided information just for the two past elections, arguing that they do not have information that is more than seven years older in their archives. What these answers reveal is that political parties in Mexico lack of transparency and accountability. While by definition they are the channels between citizens and government, in practice there are several gray areas that party leaders use in their favor to deny access to basic information such as the selection mechanisms they use to select their candidates.

However, I demonstrate that indeed party leaders know, who their candidates are. There is an incongruity between the answers I get in the formal information request and the information

I gather for my dataset and from the interviews. Party leaders do pay particular attention to candidate selection in high violence regions. While it is hard to know the real motives that political candidates have to collude with criminal organizations, the state should provide more protection to political candidates and party leaders. While party capture may feed the ambitions of some politicians with money to finance their campaigns and threats against the opposition candidates, it could also be the case that candidates do not have another alternative but to cooperate with DTOs. As I mentioned above, in the electoral process of 2018 more than 60 political candidates have been assassinated. While more research is needed to understand this complex phenomenon, the state should bring more protection to candidates and party leaders, especially in high violence regions.

5.3 Future Research

While this dissertation answers important questions in the study of party politics and

131 political violence, it opens several new questions. First, as the literature argues (e.g. Jones 2015) criminal organizations have two strategies to influence the state: cooperation and confrontation.

My future research will explore if these two strategies are mutually exclusive or if criminal organizations use both strategies in the same region. For this purpose, I would expand my argument to test if having a candidate with crime connections reduce the likelihood of killing political candidates in the same region (cooperation) or if criminal organizations murdered political candidates from those parties that do not have connections with them (confrontation). I am also interested in exploring if high levels of electoral competitiveness affect the decision of criminal organizations in which strategy they choose. It could be the case that in those high violence regions with high levels of electoral competitiveness, criminal organizations use both strategies to reduce uncertainty as much as possible. Also, it could be the case that in high violence regions with low levels of electoral competitiveness, criminal organizations choose the strategy of cooperation through party capture. However, more research is needed to answer these questions.

Second, I would also like to expand my research to understand which types of candidates are being assassinated. There is a great deal of speculation in the media about political killings in

Mexico, and the tendency is to criminalizing all the victims. By criminalizing the victims I mean that there is a dominant narrative in the public opinion of saying that people get killed because they are related to criminal organizations, or because they do something “wrong,” however, we know that this is not always the case. There are multiple examples, as the case of Gisela Mota in

Temixco, Morelos, who was killed because she did not want to cooperate with the criminal organizations. However, we know little about the candidates’ profiles and if what increases the likelihood of having an attack against candidates and politicians. It could be the case that

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institutional factors such as levels of electoral competitiveness increase the likelihood of

candidates’ killings. Likewise, it could also be the case that those killings respond to fights

between DTOS to control a plaza or turf, and not because the victim was in collusion with

criminal organizations. Further empirical research is needed to understand the wave of localized

violence that Mexico now faces.

A third next step in this project is to study how candidates who have criminal connections

behave once in power. It is quite intriguing if in those regions with candidates who have criminal

connections, levels of violence increase or decrease. Furthermore, I would like to expand my

research to understanding the types of public policies those mayors from different parties

implement in high violence regions. Do they invest more money in security policies? Or do they

spend money on infrastructure assigning contracts to random enterprises? It has been

documented (e.g. Correa-Cabrera 2017) that DTOs also seek to get rents from the state. While

they look for state protection, they also try to get money from the state through public contracts.

I believe that this type of research could help us to understand the complex political-criminal nexus in Mexico but also in other countries.

The findings of my dissertation can also be extended to the study of political parties in newer democracies. A fourth next step would be to expand my argument to understand how political violence affects candidate selection in other Latin American countries. I would extend my project to Colombia and Peru. These two countries have important variations regarding institutions and type of VNSAs. Contrary to Mexico, both countries are unitary systems and the types of VNSAs that operate within these countries are different than in the Mexican case.

Colombia has paramilitary forces, guerillas as well as drug cartels. Similar to Colombia, Peru has guerrillas and criminal organizations. Although the activity of Shining Path, Peru’s’ largest rebel

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group, declined after the capture of Abimael Guzmán, this VNSA keeps attacks and has been

linked to drug trafficking. Furthermore, both Peru and Colombia are natural resource-rich countries, which has been an incentive for the emergence of violent non state actors and the intensification of political violence. Finally, there is an interesting variation in the party systems between these countries. The Peruvian party system collapsed in the early 1990s with Fujimori’s autogolpe and a candidate-centered system emerged. In Colombia, while violence has threatened the democratic stability, the party system has been stable. Therefore, expanding my theoretical argument and empirical strategy to these two countries will allow me to test the effect of three variables on candidate selection in countries with ongoing conflict: type of government (federal vs. unitary); party systems’ institutionalization; different types of VNSAs (guerrillas, drug- cartels, etc).

Finally, while my dissertation seeks to understand how political parties behave in high violence regions, it also attempts to contribute to have a broad explanation of how and why criminal organizations seek to capture the state. Understanding the relationship between criminal organizations and political parties may not solve violence, but my work will contribute to fighting more efficiently a conflict that has caused irreversible damages in Mexico. Behind each victim, each massacre and each homicide’s statistics there is an extensive network of collusion between state actors and criminal organizations.

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APPENDIX A

EXTRA TABLES AND FIGURES FOR CHAPTER 2

135 Table A.1: Descriptive Statistics N Mean St. Dev. Min. Max. Politician 242 0.38 0.26 0 1 Subnational Politician 242 0.23 0.21 0 1 Previous mayor 242 0.42 0.49 0 1 Crime Connections 242 0.12 0.32 0 1 Violence level Medium 242 0.19 0.39 0 1 High 242 0.28 0.45 0 1 State competition 242 0.11 0.08 0.0055 0.36 Marginalization 242 19.53 7.42 7.97 41.42 Selection mechanism 232 0.35 0.48 0 1 Dummy PRI 242 0.35 0.48 0 1 Dummy PAN 242 0.34 0.47 0 1 Winning lag 242 0.34 0.48 0 1

Table A.2: States and Violence in Mexico Election Year State Violence level 2003 Campeche Medium 2003 Colima Medium 2003 Nuevo León Low 2003 Querétaro Low 2003 San Luis Potosí Medium 2003 Sonora Low 2004 Aguascalientes Low 2004 Chihuahua High 2004 Durango Medium 2004 Hidalgo Low 2004 Oaxaca High 2004 Puebla Low 2004 Quintana Roo Medium 2004 Sinaloa High 2004 Tamaulipas Low 2004 Tlaxcala Low 2004 Veracruz Low 2004 Zacatecas Low 2005 Baja California Sur Low 2005 Coahuila Low 2005 Guerrero High 2005 Estado de México High 2005 Nayarit High 2006 Chiapas Low 2006 Distrito Federal High 2006 Guanajuato Low 2006 Jalisco Low 2006 Morelos High 2006 Tabasco Low

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Election Year State Violence level 2007 Baja California High 2007 Michoacán High 2007 Yucatán Low 2009 Campeche Low 2009 Colima Low 2009 Nuevo León Low 2009 Querétaro Low 2009 San Luis Potosí Low 2009 Sonora High 2010 Aguascalientes Low 2010 Chihuahua High 2010 Durango High 2010 Hidalgo Low 2010 Oaxaca High 2010 Puebla Low 2010 Quintana Roo Medium 2010 Sinaloa High 2010 Tamaulipas Medium 2010 Tlaxcala Low 2010 Veracruz Low 2010 Zacatecas Low 2011 Baja California Sur Low 2011 Coahuila Low 2011 Guerrero High 2011 Estado de México Medium 2011 Nayarit Medium 2012 Chiapas Low 2012 Distrito Federal Medium 2012 Guanajuato Low 2012 Jalisco Medium 2012 Morelos Medium 2012 Tabasco Low 2012 Yucatán Low 2013 Baja California High 2015 Baja California Sur Low 2015 Campeche Low 2015 Colima High 2015 Guerrero High 2015 Michoacán Medium 2015 Nuevo León High 2015 Querétaro Low 2015 San Luis Potosí Low 2015 Sonora Medium 2016 Aguascalientes Low 2016 Chihuahua High 2016 Durango High 2016 Hidalgo Low 2016 Oaxaca Medium

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Election Year State Violence level 2016 Puebla Low 2016 Quintana Roo Low 2016 Sinaloa High 2016 Tamaulipas High 2016 Tlaxcala Low 2016 Veracruz Low 2016 Zacatecas Medium Source: Number Homicides from INEGI

Table A.3: Effect of Violence on Previous Mayoral Experience DV: Previous mayor Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Medium Violence 0.486 0.714 0.240 (0.369) (0.643) (0.481) High Violence 0.315 -0.48 0.677* (0.319) (0.57) (0.398) State competition 0.633 -4.506 3.040 (1.696) (3.22) (1.959) Marginalization 0.023 0.038 0.031 (0.019) (0.035) (0.030) Selection 0.202 0.629 0.223 (0.291) (0.559) (0.419) Dummy PRI 0.867** 1.451** 0.54 (0.347) (0.627) (0.452) Dummy PAN 0.969*** 1.160* 0.817* (0.36) (0.663) (0.455) Constant -1.775*** -1.991* -1.939** (0.582) (1.082) (0.8) N 232 87 145 Log pseudolikelihood -151.54124 -51.512743 -94.577936 ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.10. Results are from Logistic regression with robust standard errors. Model 1 is the pooled model, model 2 includes observations for 2007 and before 2007 and model 3 includes observations after 2007

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APPENDIX B

EXTRA TABLES AND FIGURES FOR CHAPTER 3

139 Table B.1: Descriptive Statistics: PRI Mayoral Candidates Variable 1 0 Mean SD N Regidor/síndico 47 307 0.1324 0.339 354 Previous mayor 44 310 0.124 0.33 354 Local deputy 66 288 0.186 0.389 354 Governors 0 353 0.003 0.053 354 SMD Deputy 26 328 0.073 0.261 354 PR Deputy 4 350 0.012 0.106 354 SMD Senator 4 351 0.011 0.106 354 PR Senator 0 355 0 0 354 Local bureaucrat 74 280 0.209 0.407 354 State bureaucrat 57 297 0.161 0.368 354 Federal bureaucrat 8 346 0.022 0.149 354 Political dynasty 38 316 0.107 0.31 354 No Political Experience 195 159 0.551 0.498 354

Table B.2: Descriptive Statistics: PAN Mayoral Candidates Variable 1 0 Mean SD N Regidor/síndico 32 317 0.0891 0.285 348 Previous mayor 19 329 0.054 0.227 348 Local deputy 41 307 0.118 0.323 348 Governors 3 345 0.009 0.092 348 SMD Deputy 20 328 0.057 0.233 348 PR Deputy 3 345 0.008 0.092 348 SMD Senator 4 344 0.011 0.107 348 PR Senator 0 348 0 0 348 Local bureaucrat 55 291 0.159 0.366 348 State bureaucrat 21 327 0.060 0.238 348 Federal bureaucrat 8 340 0.023 0.15 348 Political dynasty 11 337 0.032 0.175 348 No Political Experience 218 130 0.627 0.585 348

Table B.3: Descriptive Statistics: PRD Mayoral Candidates Variable 1 0 Mean SD N Regidor/síndico 18 323 0.053 0.224 341 Previous mayor 19 322 0.056 0.23 341 Local deputy 31 310 0.091 0.278 341 Governors 0 0 0 0 341 SMD Deputy 12 329 0.035 0.184 341 PR Deputy 2 339 0.006 0.076 341 SMD Senator 3 338 0.009 0.903 341 PR Senator 0 0 0 0 341 Local bureaucrat 26 299 0.08 0.272 341 State bureaucrat 15 326 0.044 0.205 341 Federal bureaucrat 5 335 0.015 0.120 341 Political dynasty 15 326 0.044 0.205 341 140

Variable 1 0 Mean SD N No political experience 218 123 0.639 0.481 341

Table B.4: Descriptive Statistics: Independent and Control Variables Variable Mean SD Min Max N Violence concentration (t-1) 6.715 12 0 69.68 1043 Municipality competition 0.135 0.12 -0.163 0.6819 1043 Vote share (t-1) 6.715 11.99 0 69.68 1043 Border municipality 0.506 0.5 0 1 1043 Municipality incumbent 0.343 0.475 0 1 1043 Marginalization index 22.21 11.445 6.042 71.72 1043 Calderón years 0.421 0.484 1 0 1043 Fox years 0.309 0.462 0 1 1043

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APPENDIX C

TABLES AND FIGURES FOR CHAPTER 4

142 Table C.1: Pooled Model: Gubernatorial Candidates Crime Connections Random Effects Logistic Regression DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.003 Homicides rate (t-1) (0.014) 0.807*** 1.006*** No. DTOs in the State (0.237) (0.258) -0.406 Incumbent * No. DTOs (0.366) 1.631 1.891 2.073 Vote share (t-1) (1.879) (2.009) (2.00) -0.186 3.559 3.646 State electoral competitiveness (3.082) (3.087) (3.014) 1.647** 1.045 1.06 Border State (0.795) (0.761) (0.811) 0.843 0.926 1.897 State incumbent (0.793) (0.739) (1.195) 0.041 0.057 0.058 Marginalization index (0.042) (0.035) (0.035) -0.038 -1.162 -1.13 Fox (0.701) (0.743) (0.783) 0.510 -0.355 -0.351 Calderón (0.557) (0.589) (0.603) 0.813 0.872 0.848 PAN (0.751) (0.723) (0.733) 1.890** 2.002*** 1.867** PRI (0.759) (0.686) (0.75) 0.218 0.107 0.260 Crime connections (t-1) (1.317) (1.481) (1.523) -5.267*** -6.679*** -7.171*** Constant (1.43) (1.674) (1.901) N 242 242 242 Log pseudolikelihood -75.92454 -68.45606 -67.857054

Table C.2: PRI Gubernatorial Candidates Crime Connections Random Effects Logistic Regression DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 -0.009 Homicides rate (t-1) (0.029) 0.071** 1.345*** No. DTOs in the State (0.305) (0.411) -1.127 Incumbent * No. DTOs (0.959) -7.312 -6.990 -10.149 Vote share (t-1) (7.066) (6.059) (7.44) 7.483 8.794** 10.603** State electoral competitiveness (5.381) (4.363) (5.296) 3.238 2.145 2.742 Border State (2.128) (1.754) (2.29)

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DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 1.496 1.785* 4.982* State incumbent (1.201) (0.931) (2.845) 0.028 0.049 0.059 Marginalization index (0.078) (0.049) (0.059) 1.692* 0.307 0.484 Fox (1.018) (1.120) (1.194) 1.393* 0.386 0.756 Calderón (0.759) (0.771) (0.965) 0.245 -0.167 -0.068 Crime connections (t-1) (1.544) (1.116) (1.107) -2.902 -3.701 -5.348* Constant (3.149) (2.665) (3.109) N 85 85 85 Penalized likelihood -36.134485 -34.418488 -33.277327

Table C.3: PAN Gubernatorial Candidates Crime Connections Random Effects Logistic Regression DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Homicides rate (t-1) -0.004 0.428 (0.018) (0.388) No. DTOs in the State 0.715 (0.877) Incumbent * No. DTOs -0.896 (1.108) Vote share (t-1) 3.803 5.982 7.367 (3.372) (6.557) (9.932) State electoral competitiveness -5.139 -3.946 -5.008 (6.814) (6.478) (7.735) Border State 0.958 0.618 0.702 (0.969) (1.172) (1.064) State incumbent -1.355 -1.820 -0.069 (1.613) (1.728) (1.95) Marginalization index -0.035 -0.047 -0.078 (0.114) (0.179) (0.223) Crime connections (t-1) 1.562** 1.290 1.095 (0.695) (0.821) (1.082) Constant -3.247 -4.867* -5.6 (2.175) (2.686) (3.819) N 82 82 82 Penalized likelihood -19.325902 -18.840633 -18.524789

Table C.4: Pooled Model: Mayoral Candidates Crime Connections Random Effects Logistic Regression DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.022** Violence concentration (t-1) (0.009)

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DV: Crime Connections Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 0.132 0.143 No. DTOs in the State (0.115) (0.149) -0.023 Incumbent * No. DTOs (0.200) 4.696*** 4.973*** 4.981*** Municipal vote share (t-1) (1.32) (1.35) (1.33) Municipal electoral 0.504 0.398 0.397 competitiveness (1.135) (1.143) (1.145) -0.012 -0.011 -0.010 Border municipality (0.357) (0.363) (0.366) -0.277 -0.318 -0.275 Municipal incumbent (0.427) (0.42) (0.628) -0.285 -0.063 -0.068 Mayor killed before (0.619) (0.584) (0.582) -0.018 -0.03* -0.029* Marginalization index (0.015) (0.015) (0.015) 0.123 0.035 0.036 Calderón (0.357) (0.371) (0.372) -0.77* -0.861** -0.862** Fox (0.416) (0.436) (0.436) -0.631 -0.674 -0.676 PAN (0.467) (0.485) (0.484) 0.224 0.179 0.179 PRI (0.457) (0.467) (0.468) -1.643* -1.717* -1.719* Crime connections (t-1) (0.972) (0.955) (0.951) -4.358*** -4.2*** -4.226*** Constant (0.579) (0.608) (0.655) N 1025 1025 1025 Log Pseudolikelihood -218.99097 -220.05659 -220.050109

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APPENDIX D

MUNICIPAL SAMPLE METHODOLOGY REPORT

146 I use a non-probabilistic stratified sample to choose 10 Mexican states of which I design a stratified random municipal sample. First, I choose the states based on levels of violence. I calculated the homicide rate mean per 100,000 for the period between 2002-2015 for each of the

32 Mexican states. I use data from INEGI on homicides. The national standard deviation of the

homicide rate for the period between 2002-2015 is 6.22. Therefore, those states with a homicide

rate mean that is one standard deviation above the national homicide rate mean, this means states

with a homicide rate mean higher than 20.82 are classified as high violence states. Those states

that are one standard deviation lower the national homicides rate mean, with a homicide rate mean

lower than 8.38, are classified as low violent states. Finally, those states that have a homicide rate

mean between 8.38 and 20.82 are classified as medium violent states

Homicides rate State level of State Homicides mean mean violence National 16430 14.6 Aguascalientes 46.78 3.98 Low Baja California 734.86 22.07 High Baja California Sur 49.64 7.64 Low Campeche 54.2 6.06 Low Coahuila 358.64 12.9 Medium Colima 106.14 14.92 Medium Chiapas 359.3 7.15 Low Chihuahua 2017.2 57.9 High Ciudad de México 976.64 10.93 Medium Durango 468.78 24.41 High Guanajuato 433.28 7.72 Low Guerrero 1345.9 37.95 High Hidalgo 119.4 4.5 Low Jalisco 826.29 10.95 Medium México 2152.6 13.8 Medium Michoacán 738 16.7 Medium Morelos 316.1 17.3 Medium Nayarit 215.4 19.4 Medium Nuevo León 597.6 13.1 Medium Oaxaca 639.6 16.7 Medium Puebla 403.4 6.9 Low Querétaro 87.7 4.4 Low Quintana Roo 125.3 9.6 Medium 147

Homicides rate State level of State Homicides mean mean violence San Luis Potosí 231.4 8.5 Medium Sinaloa 973.9 34.5 High Sonora 438.7 15.2 Medium Tabasco 174.1 7.6 Low Tamaulipas 568.8 17.3 Medium Tlaxcala 61.9 5.3 Low Veracuz 577.9 7.5 Low Yucatán 43.6 2.2 Low Zacatecas 180.2 12.1 Medium

From the 32 states, I include in my sample the states listed above. I included at least one state for each violent category without alternation in the gubernatorial level. The state of Sinaloa was included during my fieldwork, because I was able to have access to the PRI and PAN state leaders during my fieldwork. These were the only interviews that I had with party leaders from a high violence state. While, I did not randomly choose these states, they represent 41% of the entire

Mexican population and they concentrate

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Average/1000 PRI Municipalitie State Violence level Population 00 dominant s Chihuahua High 57.88 67 3,406,465 Guerrero High 37.95 81 3,388,768 Durango High 28.41 PRI 39 1,632,934 Sinaloa High 34.5 PRI 18 2,767,761 Jalisco Medium 10.95 125 7,350,682 Edo. México Medium 13.82 PRI 125 15,175,862 Quintana Roo Medium 9.59 PRI 23 1,325,578 Guanajuato Low 7.72 46 5,486,372 Hidalgo Low 4.50 PRI 84 2,665,018 Puebla Low 6.96 217 5,779,829 825 48,979,269 Total (33.385%) (44.5%)

From these 10 states, I randomly sampled 10% of their municipalities. However, because the availability of information, I sample among the top third largest municipalities. While this criterion ignores those municipalities that are small in population, I reduce the missing information in the sample. To randomly choose the municipalities I use stata.

My data includes the following municipalities:

Level of Homicide State Election years Municipality Violence rate Batopilas High 122.8 Guazapares High 54.1 2004, 2007, Juarez Medium 19.6 Chihuahua 2010, 2013, Gómez Farías Medium 17.6 2016 Cuahtémoc Medium 12.4 Chihuahua Low 10.6 Ignacio Zaragoza Low 0 Santiago Papasquiaro High 11.7 2004, 2007, Durango Medium 3.8 Durango 2010, 2013, Poanas Medium 2.9 2016 Cuencamé Medium 2.7 Gómez Palacio Low 1.2 Acámbaro High 8.5 Pénjamo Medium 5.5 2003, 2006, San Francisco del Rincón Medium 4.8 Guanajuato 2009, 2012, Silao de la Victoria Medium 4.1 2015 León Medium 3.8 San Luis de la Paz Low 2.6 2005, 2008, Técpan de Galeana High 30 Guerrero 2012, 2015 Coyuca de Benítez Medium 26.5

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Level of Homicide State Election years Municipality Violence rate Teloloapan Medium 26.4 Zihuatanejo de Azueta Medium 20.1 Tlapa de Comonfort Medium 18.7 Acapulco de Juárez Medium 16.4 Chilpancingo de los Bravo Low 9.5 Tixtla de Guerrero Low 8.04 Eduardo Neri Low 5.8 San Bartolo Tutotepec High 29.9 Tezontepec de Aldama High 8.7 Huehuetla High 7.3 Tulancingo de Bravo Medium 6.1 2005, 2008, Hidalgo Tula de Allende Medium 5 2011, 2016 Tepeji del Río de Ocampo Medium 1.9 Progreso de Obregón Low 0 Mineral de la Reforma Low 0 Francisco I. Madero Low 0 Tomatlán High 14.7 Cihuatlán Medium 12.1 Ameca Medium 10.5 Guadalajara Medium 9.9 Puerto Vallarta Medium 6.7 2003, 2006, Zapotiltic Medium 6.1 Jalisco 2009, 2012, Tlajomulco de Zúñiga Medium 5.4 2015 Lagos de Moreno Medium 5.2 El Salto Low 4.8 Arandas Low 4.6 Teocaltiche Low 3.6 Tonalá Low 0 Almoloya de Juárez Medium 15.3 Coacalco de Berriozábal Low 5.6 Chalco Medium 14.1 Chimalhuacán Medium 16.2 Ecatepec de Morelos Medium 13.9 2003, 2006, Ixtapaluca Low 8.2 México 2009, 2012, Ixtlahuaca Low 7.6 2015 La Paz High 18.3 Tecámac Medium 11.1 Toluca High 25.1 Zinacantepec Medium 11.7 Zumpango Medium 11.7 Cuautitlán Izcalli Medium 11.8 Acatlán High 20.5 2004, 2007, Chietla High 15.2 Puebla 2010, 2013 Huauchinango High 14.7 Izúcar de Matamoros High 14.4

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Level of Homicide State Election years Municipality Violence rate Puebla Medium 7 San Martín Texmelucan Medium 5.1 San Pedro Cholula Medium 5.9 San Salvador el Verde Low 1.4 Tezuitlán Medium 7.1 Tlatlauquitepec Low 0.7 2005, 2008, Cozumel Low 3.2 Quintana Roo 2010, 2013, Othón P. Blanco Medium 7.6 2016 Benito Juárez High 13 2004, 2007, Ahome Low 5.7 Sinaloa 2010, 2013, Badiraguato High 75.3 2016 Culiacán Medium 19.4

To illustrate the variation among the sampled municipalities, I calculated the homicide rate mean of each of the municipalities in each state, using data from INEGI. My starting point is the first election of each municipality that I included in the dataset. For example, the first electoral process that I include for the municipalities of the state of Chihuahua is 2003. So, I calculated the homicide rate mean for the previous three years (2000-2003). I use the previous three years because the municipal terms last 3 years. This lag measure allows me to have a diagnostic of violence in the municipality before the first election I include in the dataset. Then, I calculated the homicide rate mean and standard deviation of the state in which the municipalities are situated. For example,

Chihuahua has 67 municipalities, so I included 7 municipalities in my data set. The homicide rate mean for the years between 2000-2003 in the state of Chihuahua is 28.9, and the standard deviation is 33.64. The data about violence tend to be over dispersed, therefore I use the following formula to divided the municipalities into levels of violence:

( )

= Σ 𝑥𝑥−𝑥𝑥� 2 � 𝑛𝑛−1 2 I divided the standard deviation, because𝜎𝜎 if I use one standard deviation as parameter, then the majority of municipalities would fit the normal distribution. Then all the municipalities that

151 have a homicide rate mean higher than 45.72 are classified as high violence municipalities; those that are below 12.08 are consider low violent municipalities, and finally those municipalities with a homicide rate mean between 12.08 and 45.72 are classified as medium violent municipalities.

152

APPENDIX E

MUNICIPAL CRIMINAL CONNECTIONS DATA

153 To test the argument about party capture that is presented in Chapter 4, I used a variety of

different news sources. Using Google, I performed searches entering several combinations such

as: “candidates’name + narco,” “candidates’ name + crimenorganizado,”“candidates’name + cartel.” The following table reports each newspaper that was consulted by state to gather the information about candidates’ criminal connections.

State List of Journalistic Sources El Heraldo de Chihuahua Chihuahua El Diario de Chihuahua El Universal El Siglo de Durango Durango Proceso La Jornada Guanajuato Proceso La Jornada Guerrero Proceso El Sur de Acapulco SDP Noticias Terra Noticias Guerrero Milenio El Universal El Financiero Aristegui Noticias La Silla Rota Proceso Hidalgo Quadrantin Proceso La Jornada Jalisco El Economista Reporte Índigo Proceso La Jornada Reforma El Sol de México El Financiero El Universal Estado de México Ultra Noticias La Crónica Quadrantin Diario Amanecer Sin Embargo Los Angeles Press Puebla La Jornada Talla Política Quintana Roo El Universal

154

State List of Journalistic Sources Sdp Noticias Proceso El Nuevo Diario El País VICE Noticias Sinaloa Milenio LA Times El Universal Noroeste

155

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