Photo: “State building in San Miguel de Allende,” by Lisette Leballif licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. Hue modified from the original.
Behrend, Jacqueline, and Laurence Whitehead. “Mixed messages about democratization in the many Mexicos.” Latin American Policy 12, no. 2 (2021): 369-384.
Abstract
The subnational variations within a country as diverse as Mexico can be as strong as the variation in democratic quality between different countries. In this article we present Mexico as an exemplary case study and build an analytical framework aimed at capturing the complexity of subnational democratization processes. The article argues that in a process of democratization, different structures and practices coexist—they mix, or become entangled. The entanglement of political structures and practices in a context of electoral democracy produces different configurations of subnational politics. The framework we propose seeks to identify the liberal and illiberal structures that are entangled in each state, through the examination of 12 dimensions that, based on previous studies, are considered relevant for Mexican subnational politics.
