Performing on the Mexican Democratic Stage: New Actors, New Scripts

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s, a single political feature, the electoral process, has dominated the political landscape in Mexico. Given the outcome of the 1994 national elections, and the creation of a more transparent and equitable playing field for parties and candidates, it is no surprise that the structure and process of elections produced a dramatic shift in emphasis in public perceptions. This perception is clearly shared among academic specialists in Mexico and the United States. 1 Mexican academics first made this shift, especially focused on state and local elections, [End Page 195] the initial locus of democratic change throughout the 1990s, and likely to be the most significant source of additional political patterns in anticipation of the 2006 presidential race. 2 Naturally, Vicente Fox's victory in July 2000 established a new benchmark for Mexican politics, and for measuring democratic transformation. 3 The bulk of the six works under review, however, were researched and written before the actual event, even if incorporating its potential consequences in portions of their analysis.