Copyright by David Crow 2009 The Dissertation Committee for David Bradley Crow certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Citizen Disenchantment in New Democracies: The Case of Mexico Committee: ____________________________________ Robert C. Luskin, Supervisor ____________________________________ Kenneth Greene ____________________________________ Raul Madrid ____________________________________ Victoria Rodriguez ____________________________________ Peter Ward Citizen Disenchantment in New Democracies: The Case of Mexico by David Bradley Crow, B.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May, 2009 Dedication To Georgina, Ben, and Danny To Linda Brown, my mother To Brad Crow, my father In memoriam Terry LeRoy Brown, my second father Preface and Acknowledgements Some of the most common fictions of comparative political research concern case selection, descriptions of which almost always have an air of post hoc rationalization. The truth is that all the comparativists I know chose their countries before choosing the subject of their research. I am no exception—though I do believe that Mexico is well- suited to a study of disenchantment with politics in new democracies. I first visited the interior of Mexico in 1992 when in May I went on vacation to Mexico City to visit a friend, Alec Gershberg. Four months later, with my last paycheck from a job at a San Francisco law firm, two suitcases, and a box of CD’s and books, I went down to Mexico for a year to practice Spanish and learn the culture. One thing led to another—I found work, friends, intellectual and cultural stimulation—and a year turned into two, two into three, and three into seven. The 1990’s were extraordinary times in Mexico. It is difficult, especially with the drabness (or worse) presently afflicting Mexican politics, to convey the exhilaration of those days. There was uncertainty—the Zapatista uprising on New Year’s Day in 1994, the assassination of presidential candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) Luis Donaldo Colosio in March of that year—but, at the same time, the promise of long deferred but deeply desired change. I immersed myself in that heady atmosphere, v devouring books about Mexico’s modern history, weekly news magazines, and scholarly articles on politics. Mostly, though, I met people, lots of people, from political parties and civil society organizations (CSOs, though they were called NGOs, non-governmental organizations, when I met those people) who were, in their way, artificers of the change that would culminate the decade: members of the “red set” (as the Chileans call it), supporters of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) who had attended summer camp in Havana and Odessa, joined such earlier incarnations of the left as the Unified Mexican Socialist Party, PSUM, and cut their teeth on the student strike of 1987 in the National University of Mexico (UNAM); National Action Party (PAN) members, committed to the principles of free markets and free elections with equal fervor, heirs to a grand tradition of opposition since 1938; reformers within the PRI itself, who saw internal party democratization as imperative; and, on the civil society side, members of NGOs devoted to labor and free trade, like the Authentic Labor Front ( Frente Auténtico de Trabajo, FAT) and the Mexican Free Trade Action Network ( Red Mexicana de Acción ante el Libre Comercio ), and election reform, like Alianza Cívica and Movimiento Ciudadano por la Democracia (MCD); Jesuits from the Center for Theological Reflection; parish priests and laity alike in the Diocese of San Cristobal’s Mexico City office; and many more. In 1994, some of these friends would invite me to collaborate in the NGO Fronteras Comunes as co-author of a bilingual, weekly electronic column on Mexican politics and society, which we dubbed El Pulso de México / The Heartbeat of Mexico , of which Javier Medina and I published some 200 numbers. The explosion of civic society paralleled, and perhaps precipitated, a similarly seismic shift in electoral politics. In 1997, the PRI lost its stranglehold on the Congress for the first time ever, relinquishing power to a coalition of opposition parties, and in vi 2000 it ceded the presidency for the first time ever, to a plain-spoken rancher from the conservative central Mexican state of Guanajuato, Vicente Fox. Democratization during the 1990’s resulted in a desire to know what people thought on issues of the day, how they evaluated politicians and policies, and, especially, whom they intended to vote for. Correspondingly, public opinion polling got off the ground in earnest. Spearheaded by such pioneers as Enrique Alduncin, Edmundo Berumen, with his Michigan training, and Ulíses Beltrán in the Office of the Presidency under Salinas producing data sets now archived at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), pollsters produced abundant, high quality data, a trend that accelerated during the first decade of this century and shows no signs of slowing down. On the eve of the new decade and of Vicente Fox’s election, I decided to systematize the deep contextual knowledge I had gained and entered the University of Texas at Austin. At UT Austin, I would meet my wife, Georgina Rojas García, of Tulcingo, Puebla, by way of Mexico City, which would ultimately lead to two sons, two compadres , two comadres , a mother-in-law whose mole is incomparable, several brothers- and sisters-in-law, many uncles, aunts, and cousins in Tulcingo, and, of course, even deeper ties with Mexico. As I learned the principles of comparative politics and the techniques of quantitative analysis and survey research at UT Austin, my interest in Mexico and its politics continued unabated. I was an official election observer in both 2000 and 2003, and visited Mexico frequently while in Austin. I moved to Mexico City again in 2004 to join my wife and first-born son, and observed first-hand what I had glimpsed from afar. The effervescence of the 1990’s was fizzling rapidly and the country, settling back into its mold of almost congenital skepticism. vii Why? My attempt to answer that question resulted in this study. Certainly, the Fox presidency had disappointed many. But the disillusionment seemed to run deeper than that which the foibles of one man could produce. Fox had identified himself as the candidate of change (his administration even referred to itself as the “Government of Change” on public works announcements), and those who voted for him did so because they wanted change. But what sort of change? Merely a change of parties in power, or something more profound? I began to intuit that the change to which Mexicans aspired was more than simple turnover in government; citizens invested the concept of change with hopes of betterment—particularly socioeconomic betterment. Disenchantment, it occurred to me, owed to a deep chasm between what people expected of democracy and what it was delivering. This dissertation elaborates on and tests empirically the impression that had gradually formed in me. To the extent the dissertation does so successfully, it is because of the generous support and sage counsel, both professional and personal, I received from many, many people along the way. I extend my most heartfelt thanks to the members of my dissertation committee: my supervisor, Bob Luskin, who has been, by turns, teacher, trusted advisor, employer, and cheerleader, and whose encouragement helped sustain me through the troughs of graduate school; Peter Ward and Victoria Rodríguez, early champions of my work, whose passion for Mexico is as inspiring as their knowledge of it is deep, and whose wry wit and graciousness leavened my time at UT Austin; Ken Greene, who spent long hours critiquing the survey instrument before I went into the field, helping me make sense of numbers when it seemed I was drowning in them, and poring over the dissertation; and Raul Madrid, who prodded me early in my graduate career to switch from Latin American Studies to Government, and whose advice, backing, and big-heartedness have meant much to me. Kurt Weyland also played a major viii role in shaping the dissertation as teacher, critic, and mentor. Mel Hinich, Tse-min Lin, and Dan Powers helped expand and refine my understanding of quantitative methods. Many academics and pollsters in Mexico lent their support to this project. Foremost among them is Edmundo Berumen, of Berumen y Asociados, who gave me work, collected data at a generously discounted price, and, in his endearingly gruff manner, imparted valuable business lessons. The Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores de Antrolopología Social (CIESAS) hosted me for two years as a visiting scholar from July, 2006, to July, 2008, generously offering me office space, a computer, access to its library and, more importantly, to its community of scholarship. In particular, I would like to thank Alberto Aziz Nassif for his sponsorship and critique of my dissertation, and Ernesto Isunza for his sharp observations. In 2004, during the formative stage of the project, I interviewed a number of academicians and public opinion professionals whose insights helped me generate and refine hypotheses. I list them here (with their institutional affiliations at that time): Jacqueline Peschard (UNAM, Ciencias Políticas y Sociales), Yolanda