Mexico's Democratic Challenges

Mexico's Democratic Challenges PDF Author: Andrew D. Selee
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
"This book broadens our understanding of democracy in Mexico beyond the electoral arena and identifies some of the main challenges for defending and expanding democratic rights."--Neil Harvey, New Mexico State University.

Mexico's Democratic Challenges

Mexico's Democratic Challenges PDF Author: Andrew D. Selee
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
"This book broadens our understanding of democracy in Mexico beyond the electoral arena and identifies some of the main challenges for defending and expanding democratic rights."--Neil Harvey, New Mexico State University.

Police Reform in Mexico

Police Reform in Mexico PDF Author: Daniel Sabet
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804782067
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
The urgent need to professionalize Mexican police has been recognized since the early 1990s, but despite even the most well-intentioned promises from elected officials and police chiefs, few gains have been made in improving police integrity. Why have reform efforts in Mexico been largely unsuccessful? This book seeks to answer the question by focusing on Mexico's municipal police, which make up the largest percentage of the country's police forces. Indeed, organized crime presents a major obstacle to institutional change, with criminal groups killing hundreds of local police in recent years. Nonetheless, Daniel Sabet argues that the problems of Mexican policing are really problems of governance. He finds that reform has suffered from a number of policy design and implementation challenges. More importantly, the informal rules of Mexican politics have prevented the continuity of reform efforts across administrations, allowed patronage appointments to persist, and undermined anti-corruption efforts. Although many advances have been made in Mexican policing, weak horizontal and vertical accountability mechanisms have failed to create sufficient incentives for institutional change. Citizens may represent the best hope for counterbalancing the toxic effects of organized crime and poor governance, but the ambivalent relationship between citizens and their police must be overcome to break the vicious cycle of corruption and ineffectiveness.

Two Nations Indivisible

Two Nations Indivisible PDF Author: Shannon K. O'Neil
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199898340
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Five freshly decapitated human heads are thrown onto a crowded dance floor in western Mexico. A Mexican drug cartel dismembers the body of a rival and then stitches his face onto a soccer ball. These are the sorts of grisly tales that dominate the media, infiltrate movies and TV shows, and ultimately shape Americans' perception of Mexico as a dangerous and scary place, overrun by brutal drug lords. Without a doubt, the drug war is real. In the last six years, over 60,000 people have been murdered in narco-related crimes. But, there is far more to Mexico's story than this gruesome narrative would suggest. While thugs have been grabbing the headlines, Mexico has undergone an unprecedented and under-publicized political, economic, and social transformation. In her groundbreaking book, Two Nations Indivisible, Shannon K. O'Neil argues that the United States is making a grave mistake by focusing on the politics of antagonism toward Mexico. Rather, we should wake up to the revolution of prosperity now unfolding there. The news that isn't being reported is that, over the last decade, Mexico has become a real democracy, providing its citizens a greater voice and opportunities to succeed on their own side of the border. Armed with higher levels of education, upwardly-mobile men and women have been working their way out of poverty, building the largest, most stable middle class in Mexico's history. This is the Mexico Americans need to get to know. Now more than ever, the two countries are indivisible. It is past time for the U.S. to forge a new relationship with its southern neighbor. Because in no uncertain terms, our future depends on it.

Waking from the Dream

Waking from the Dream PDF Author: Louise E. Walker
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804784574
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
When the postwar boom began to dissipate in the late 1960s, Mexico's middle classes awoke to a new, economically terrifying world. And following massacres of students at peaceful protests in 1968 and 1971, one-party control of Mexican politics dissipated as well. The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party struggled to recover its legitimacy, but instead saw its support begin to erode. In the following decades, Mexico's middle classes ended up shaping the history of economic and political crisis, facilitating the emergence of neo-liberalism and the transition to democracy. Waking from the Dream tells the story of this profound change from state-led development to neo-liberalism, and from a one-party state to electoral democracy. It describes the fraught history of these tectonic shifts, as politicians and citizens experimented with different strategies to end a series of crises. In the first study to dig deeply into the drama of the middle classes in this period, Walker shows how the most consequential struggles over Mexico's economy and political system occurred between the middle classes and the ruling party.

The Politics of Crime in Mexico

The Politics of Crime in Mexico PDF Author: John Bailey
Publisher: First Forum Press
ISBN: 9781935049890
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
What kind of democracy will emerge in Mexico when the current levels of violence are brought under control? Will democratic reformers gain strength in the new equilibrium between government and criminal organizations? Or will corruption tilt the balance toward criminal interests? In the context of these questions, John Bailey explores the ¿security trap¿ in which Mexico is currently caught¿where the dynamics of crime, violence, and corruption conspire to override efforts to put the country on a path toward democratic governance.

Party Systems in Latin America

Party Systems in Latin America PDF Author: Scott Mainwaring
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107175526
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 525

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Book Description
This book generates a wealth of new empirical information about Latin American party systems and contributes richly to major theoretical debates about party systems and democracy.

The Oxford Handbook of Mexican Politics

The Oxford Handbook of Mexican Politics PDF Author: Roderic Ai Camp
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195377389
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 839

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Book Description
A comprehensive view of the remarkable transformation of Mexico's political system to a democratic model. The contributors to this volume assess the most influential institutions, actors, policies and issues in the country's current evolution toward democratic consolidation.

Organized Crime and Democratic Governability

Organized Crime and Democratic Governability PDF Author: John Bailey
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822972298
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The United States-Mexico border zone is one of the busiest and most dangerous in the world. NAFTA and rapid industrialization on the Mexican side have brought trade, travel, migration, and consequently, organized crime and corruption to the region on an unprecedented scale. Until recently, crime at the border was viewed as a local law enforcement problem with drug trafficking—a matter of "beefing" up police and "hardening" the border. At the turn of the century, that limited perception has changed. The range of criminal activity at the border now extends beyond drugs to include smuggling of arms, people, vehicles, financial instruments, environmentally dangerous substances, endangered species, and archeological objects. Such widespread trafficking involves complex, high-level criminal-political alliances that local lawenforcement alone can't address. Researchers of the region, as well as officials from both capitals, now see the border as a set of systemic problems that threaten the economic, political, and social health of their countries as a whole. Organized Crime and Democratic Governability brings together scholars and specialists, including current and former government officials, from both sides of the border to trace the history and define the reality of this situation. Their diverse perspectives place the issue of organized crime in historical, political, economic, and cultural contexts unattainable by single-author studies. Contributors examine broad issues related to the political systems of both countries, as well as the specific actors—crime gangs, government officials, prosecutors, police, and the military—involved in the ongoing drama of the border. Editors Bailey and Godson provide an interpretive frame, a "continuum of governability," that will guide researchers and policymakers toward defining goals and solutions to the complex problem that, along with a border, the United States and Mexico now share.

Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico

Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico PDF Author: Wil G. Pansters
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804784477
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Mexico is currently undergoing a crisis of violence and insecurity that poses serious threats to democratic transition and rule of law. This is the first book to put these developments in the context of post-revolutionary state-making in Mexico and to show that violence in Mexico is not the result of state failure, but of state-making. While most accounts of politics and the state in recent decades have emphasized processes of transition, institutional conflict resolution, and neo-liberal reform, this volume lays out the increasingly important role of violence and coercion by a range of state and non-state armed actors. Moreover, by going beyond the immediate concerns of contemporary Mexico, this volume pushes us to rethink longterm processes of state-making and recast influential interpretations of the so-called golden years of PRI rule. Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico demonstrates that received wisdom has long prevented the concerted and systematic study of violence and coercion in state-making, not only during the last decades, but throughout the post-revolutionary period. The Mexican state was built much more on violence and coercion than has been acknowledged—until now.

Democratization and Authoritarian Party Survival

Democratization and Authoritarian Party Survival PDF Author: Joy Kathryn Langston
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190628529
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
By focusing on political institutions to understand the new power-sharing agreement between the national party headquarters and the party's governors, this work explores why Mexico's hegemonic PRI was able to survive out of power after it was ousted from the executive in 2000.