Mexico's Ongoing Political Party System Realignment and Its Implications

The CSIS Mexico Project held an interactive discussion with two of Mexico’s leading intellectuals, Jorge Castañeda and Sergio Sarmiento, on Friday, February 23, 2007. 

Many casual observers in Mexico and abroad prematurely presumed that the 2000 election victory of Vicente Fox signaled the instantaneous arrival of electoral democracy and democratic governance in Mexico. If anything, Fox’s election victory, and more importantly the end of 71-year hegemony by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), set in motion a subtle realignment within Mexico’s political party system.  A realignment that is still ongoing six years later and which will continue to have profound implications for the prospects of democratic governance for the Calderón Administration and Mexico’s 60th Congress.

The resurgence of the left-of-center Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) has in many ways intensified the trend towards a three-party system. Yet, it has also accentuated the ideological differences between moderate and more radical left-leaning perredistas. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) continues to grapple with the intra-party division between two ideologically distinct party factions; each seeking control over the party’s future direction. Similarly, the National Action Party (PAN) is still striving to come to terms with the type of relationship that the party should have with a President of Mexico belonging to its own party. Further complicating the political party evolution is where and how the other five political parties fit in within the broader realignment. While it is still too early to know how this political realignment will end, we think this event will be extremely insightful as two of Mexico’s foremost thinkers—Jorge Castañeda and Sergio Sarmiento—analyze this phenomenon.