Mexico's One-Party System: A Re-evaluation

Because Mexican politics since the Revolution of 1910–17 have operated mainly within the framework of a one-party system and because in the past strong men have sometimes occupied the presidency, writers in the United States have tended to treat the system as authoritarian. Emphasis upon presidential rule and the corollary explanation of the role of the Revolutionary Party as nothing more nor less than an instrument of presidential domination have served to create an oversimplified picture of presidential power. It is the purpose of this paper to outline at least four checkpoints on which the authoritarian interpretation seems to have involved miscalculation of the realities of the Mexican political system. The nature of membership in the “official†party, the degree of centralization within and without the party structure, the threefold role of the party within the political system, and the ideological bias of the political elite all seem to indicate the necessity of a re-evaluation of the politics of the republic on our southern border.