Politics of Mexico

Lore & Background

The PRI held near-hegemonic power for over 70 years.

Reader's Guide

The PRI's dominance shaped Mexican politics for most of the 20th century, with the party controlling the presidency and most state governments. The 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre and the fraudulent 1988 election (won by Carlos Salinas de Gortari) eroded public trust. A 2017 survey found 74% of Mexicans distrust the electoral system, though Freedom House noted increased belief in free elections. Key issues remain crime, corruption, and the economy.

Did You Know?

• The 1988 presidential election was regarded as 'the most fraudulent in Mexico's history.'

Defining the Discipline and Its Analytical Scope

Comparative politics stands as a systematic branch of political science dedicated to examining how diverse political systems around the world function, differ, and evolve. Rather than studying a single nation in isolation, scholars in this field seek to identify patterns, trends, and regularities that emerge when political regimes, governance structures, electoral mechanisms, and policy outcomes are placed side by side. The discipline asks fundamental questions about why certain systems share characteristics while others diverge sharply, and how developmental shifts have produced these variations over time. Concrete examples illustrate its reach: researchers might contrast presidential systems with parliamentary ones, analyze the mechanics of multi-party arrangements in countries like Canada against the two-party dynamics of the United States, or trace the trajectories of democratization across regions. The field also engages with broader themes such as globalization and political integration, making it a vital lens for understanding the full spectrum of human governance.

Intellectual Lineage: Two Ancient Roots

The intellectual ancestry of comparative politics stretches back to the ancient Greek philosophers, and scholar Philippe C. Schmitter has mapped this lineage into two distinct traditions. The first, which he terms sociological constitutionalism, traces to Aristotle and encompasses a long chain of thinkers including Polybius, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Pareto. In the twentieth century, this tradition was often labeled historical political sociology and carried forward by figures such as Stein Rokkan, T. H. Marshall, Lipset, Juan Linz, and Harry H. Eckstein. The second tradition, legal constitutionalism, originates with Plato and runs through scholars like Léon Duguit, Georges Burdeau, James Bryce, and Woodrow Wilson. Its twentieth-century heirs include Maurice Duverger, Giovanni Sartori, Carl Joachim Friedrich, and Klaus von Beyme. Harry H. Eckstein himself traced the field's history from Aristotle through Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Mosca, Weber, Pareto, Michels, Bryce, and Friedrich, illustrating how deeply layered and continuous this scholarly conversation truly is.

Methodological Debates and the Shift to Subnational Analysis

A central tension in comparative politics concerns whether the field is defined by what it studies or by how it studies it. Arend Lijphart argues the discipline carries no inherent substantive focus; instead, its identity is methodological, concerned with the how of analysis without prescribing the what. Peter Mair and Richard Rose offer a slightly different framing, insisting that comparative politics is shaped by both a substantive commitment to examining national political systems and a method of identifying and explaining similarities and differences through shared conceptual frameworks. Additionally, the discipline requires that comparisons be made at a fixed point in time, typically the present, since systems cannot be meaningfully compared across different historical periods. In recent decades, a significant methodological shift has occurred: while the field historically relied on broad between-country comparisons, contemporary scholars increasingly turn to subnational analysis. This newer approach contributes important methodological, theoretical, and substantive insights, enriching the overall study of political systems and expanding the discipline's analytical toolkit beyond the nation-state boundary.

Theoretical Renewal and Relevance to Global Affairs

Over the past four decades, comparative politics has fueled a wave of new theoretical approaches that have reshaped political science more broadly. Among the influential frameworks are political culture, dependency theory, developmentalism, corporatism, indigenous theories of change, comparative political economy, state-society relations, and new institutionalism. These tools allow scholars to dissect why politically similar organizations operate so differently in different contexts. A striking illustration involves India and the United States: both are majority-rule democracies, yet the U.S. employs a liberal presidential system with a president as head of government, while India operates under a parliamentary system led by a prime minister, and its decision-making processes differ markedly in diversity. The field also plays a critical role in international relations and conflict resolution, helping clarify global legislative issues and the conditions under which nations navigate their strategies. By examining how worldwide frameworks and approaches influence domestic political conduct, comparative politics bridges the gap between internal governance and external strategy, making it indispensable for understanding the interconnected nature of modern political life.

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