THE ADMINISTRATION OF THINGS IN POST-PRI MEXICO: THE VIEW FROM THE MAYOR’S OFFICE
Brian Turner
Randolph-Macon College
Friedrich Engels believed that, once the state withered away all that would be left for government would be “the administration of things” (Engels 1987 [1894]). Politics as class struggle would disappear, to be replaced by technocratic responses to administrative problems. The answers to these problems would be without distributive impact.
The Mexican state of course has not withered away, but there has been a rationalization of administration in the face of the decline of resources to support public services, the diminution of central government control over the corporatist linkage-structures which characterized what Mario Vargas Llosa famously called the “perfect dictatorship,” and the rise of technocratic responses to the problems of management in an increasingly neo-liberal economic environment (Centeno 1997). These changes predate the defeat of the Partido Revolucionary Institucional (PRI) in the presidential elections of July 2, 2000.
At the municipal level, these changes have been profound. Corporatism, which tied various social sectors to the state and guaranteed well-defined benefits to those who played by the rules, provided predictability in the system and encouraged a conservative approach to public administration (Wiarda 1981). The goals were to use federal largesse and the usually minimal local resources to reward regime supporters with patronage, and to avoid mistakes that could embarrass the party (Johnson 1984, 163-167; Morris 1995, 36). Mayors were selected by the famous “dedazo,” with which state governors and national presidents hand picked the PRI’s candidates, who always won the election. There were clear disincentives in this system for municipal authorities to demonstrate to the public their responsible management of public resources, the transparency of their activities, or the fairness with which the opposition was treated. The mayor’s constituency was the local PRI and higher authorities, who would determine the political future of lower-level officials (Rodríguez 1997, 30). The absolute prohibition against re-election enhanced the dependency of mayors (as well as federal and state legislators and town councilors) on governors and federal officials, as building a local base could not be used to maintain oneself in office.
With the exception of the prohibition against re-election, these arrangements have disappeared, to be replaced by competitive multi-party electoral politics (Camp 2003). The PRI has proved resilient in electoral politics, often winning mayoral and gubernatorial races after previous defeats, thus further contributing to the competitiveness of these elections. The uncertainty that is characteristic of pluralism and competitive elections encourages all actors to seek to limit their risks by rationalizing management, creating transparency in public actions, and depoliticizing the provision of basic public services (Dahl 1956).
How have these changes impacted the way mayors preside over the ayuntamientos (municipal governments)? This paper describes how older administrative patterns, termed “obraismo” here, now co-exist with technocratic and, occasionally, radical democratic administrative forms in the state of Morelos in central Mexico. Conversations with three mayors, conducted in January 2002, are discussed to illustrate each of these administrative approaches.
Decentralization and rationalization of municipal administration
The key to authority in any political system is control of resources. Independent capacity to raise and distribute funds is the clearest measure of a government’s autonomy. While Mexico considers the municipality to be a free and autonomous entity (Quintana Roldán 1998), the country has historically been a highly centralized political system (Nickson 1995, 200). Since the early 1980s, however, several reforms have sought to make more effective in practice the idea of the municipio libre. After a series of decentralizing reforms in the 1980s and early 1990s (Rodríguez 1997), municipalities gained at least the possibility of greater fiscal autonomy. Increased electoral competition contributed to a quickening pace of reform. For example, several new federal funds earmarked for municipalities were created as a result of the budget negotiations between President Ernesto Zedillo and the opposition-controlled Congress in 1997 (Shadlen 1999, 413). In exchange for supporting Zedillo’s 1998 budget, the Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN) managed to get U$S 800 million moved from a controversial bank bailout program to the new municipal funds (Dillon 1997; Preston 1997). In this way, the PAN could guarantee funding for the municipal governments, which was the institution most likely to be in its hands. Still, throughout this reform period, the percentage share of the federal budget that went to states and municipalities declined from 27.7% to 14.13% (Andrade García P. 2000, 45).
Electoral competition can also crate new constraints on reform. A new finance law passed since the election of Fox permits states to add their own percentage on top of the national value-added tax. However, according to the mayor of Cuernavaca, no state had done so by 2002, probably because of the political costs inherent in increasing taxes.
Municipalities in Mexico are funded from several different sources. These funds are either obtained locally, through federal revenue sharing, or through earmarked federal transfers. Locally generated revenues come primarily through property taxes, often but not always collected for the municipalities by the states (Rodríguez 1997:133; OECD 1998:30). Other sources of local revenue include a variety of licensing fees, user fees for public services, taxes on entertainment, and the like. The largest share of funding for municipalities in Mexico comes through federal “participaciones” (revenue sharing) and earmarked transfers (Turner 2002).
Earmarked transfers from the federal government became an increasingly important source of municipal funds during the Zedillo administration (1994-2000). These transfers were based on formulas established by the federal government, and although passed through the state governments, the states had little say over the distribution of these monies to the municipalities, or how the funds were to be used by the ayuntamientos. Earmarking provides municipal governments with resources but ties their hands regarding decisions about expenditures. Interestingly, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD 1998, 26) finds that Mexican municipalities lack appropriate flexibility in spending, while the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB 1997, 170) finds the revenue sharing system in Mexico to “involve a fair amount of discretionality” in comparison with regional practices. The difference in perspective may reflect the differences in the comparative populations, the developed countries for the OECD and Latin American for the IDB.
Politics and Finance in Morelos
Morelos remained a PRI stronghold almost until the very end of the PRI regime. In 1994, when the PAN and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) were challenging the PRI in state and municipal elections across the country, the PRI won a more traditional share of the vote, 72.9%, in gubernatorial elections in Morelos. In the two election periods from 1991-1997, the PRI governed thirty-two of Morelos’s thirty-three municipalities. The PAN was the third force in the state, trailing well behind the PRD, which even managed to win the 1988 elections for federal deputies in the state (Crespo 1996, 245-247). However, the PAN broke through by winning the mayor’s race in Cuernavaca, the state capital and only large city, in 1997. On the day of Vicente Fox’s historic election, the panista mayor, Sergio Estrada Cajigal, was able to translate his base in Cuernavaca into victory in the governor’s race, unseating the PRI for the first time.
Morelos is among the states most dependent on federal sources of funding. In 1999, only 0.7% of state finances were raised through local taxes; eight states had even lower percentages (compare with Chihuahua, which raised 6.4% of its total budget locally) (El Universal 2002). Cuernavaca however derives 40% of its budget from its own sources. Poorer municipalities across the country are often almost completely dependent on federal transfers (Díaz-Cayeros and Martínez-Uriarte 1997, 8-9).
Miacatlán
Miacatlán is a relatively poor agrarian municipality of 22,333 people located in the warmer regions of the state, one hour south of Cuernavaca. The mayor elected in 2000, Angel Rivero Bello, was the candidate of the PRI. He served previously as mayor from 1988-1991, under the old system. He was elected in 2000 with 36% of the vote, compared to 13% for the PAN and 33% for the PRD-led Alianza para Morelos. The Worker’s Party (PT), finished just behind the PAN, also with 13%.
Rivero’s view of administration is obraista. During our interview, he missed no opportunity to list as many as possible of the 200 projects his administration was working on, concluding each time with reference to “the road you came in on.” The role of the state, in his view, is to provide public works, including everything from roads to neighborhood shrines. The municipal development plan is a catalog of physical projects, developed in consultation with community groups that propose various projects. To Rivero, it doesn’t matter which party governs, as long as these projects are advanced.
Somewhat disingenuously, Rivero claimed that the process by which he was elected in 2000 was the same as in 1988. In each case, there was a “consulta de base.” He appreciated the normalization of revenue sharing, even if he complained of federal earmarking, because he was not denied access to these funds by the panista state and federal governments. In fact, being in the opposition allowed him to focus on his obras rather than having to run to Cuernavaca for the political meetings that were typical for priista mayors before 2000 (Rodríguez 1997, 30).
Tepoztlán
Tepoztlán is a fascinating town of 26,510 just east of Cuernavaca. It is famous for its struggle in the 1990s against the PRI-led state and federal governments in the “No al Golf” campaign. From 1995 to 1997, the town was governed extra-constitutionally by the Comité de Unidad Tepozteca (CUT), which formed what it called the “ayuntamiento libre, popular y constitucional.” The town was cut off from any federal and state assistance, including from its portion of revenue sharing, and constantly threatened with police action against the ayuntamiento libre.
The mayor elected in 2000, Prof. Lázaro Rodríguez Castañeda of the CUT, also served as the mayor in the extra-constitutional government three years previous. In 2000, he ran on the PRD list, as a label of convenience. While serving as mayor, the town hall modeled his administrative philosophy. Rodríguez’s office was open to the public, with no walls between him and the market in the main square in front of the building.
During our interview, Rodríguez emphasized the importance of solidarity in a united, organic community as underlying his administrative philosophy. For every time Miacatlán’s Rivero mentioned public works, Rodríguez mentioned “the famous golf course” and the community’s unity in the fight against this imposition from the outside. Instead of obras, Rodríguez talked about the defense of Tepoztlán’s natural and cultural resources. The fact that Nahautl is still spoken (5.72% of the population is bilingual) is important evidence to him of the community’s distinctive character. Rodríguez also tapped into modern ideas about the environment and the role of “indigenous” people in its protection by claiming, “We are 100% environmentalists here!” The community welcomes its many tourists, as long as they come to see Tepoztecans as they are and not to appropriate the town’s resources and identity for themselves. Among the eco- and ethno-tourists Rodríguez welcomed what I call the “revo-tourists,” those who come to see the town’s radical political practices.
Rodríguez claimed that politics in Tepoztlán are based on “usos y costumbres,” a term used to describe indigenous processes of selecting leadership. Leaders are selected in popular assemblies, through discussion and consensus, rather than through competitive elections. In Oaxaca’s indigenous municipalities, usos y costumbres are constitutionally recognized means for holding elections. In Morelos, they are not. Nevertheless, Rodríguez argued that usos y costumbres were used in the elections for both the ayuntamiento libre in 1995 and for the ayuntamiento constitucional in 2000. However, for the municipal government elected in 2000 to be constitutional, formal elections also were necessary. The CUT ran using the party label of the “Alianza para Morelos,” an electoral alliance led by the PRD, and won with 29% of the vote. This gave the CUT control of the mayor’s office and two of the five council seats, with the PAN (28%), PRI (21%), and the Partido Auténtico de la Revolución Méxicana (16%) each winning one seat. This obvious electoral pluralism presented a challenge to Rodríguez’s ideals of a system based on corporate communal solidarity, so he explained that the members of the ayuntamiento “work with such discipline that none works for their parties, but for the community.” He implausibly suggested that all candidates were chosen through popular assemblies, and simply distributed among the party labels as a necessary evil to comply with state election law.
Rodríguez noted that, as the executive in a legal government, he now has access to federal and state resources. He appreciated that the panista state government was willing to work with the town government, although relations can be “a bit difficult.” However, Tepoztlán has had to struggle to “recover” the self-sufficiency of the 1995-1997 period. “We are not a rebellious pueblo, but we do not want to be manipulated,” Rodríguez explained.
Cuernavaca
The PAN won eight municipalities in Morelos in the 2000 elections, including a repeat victory in the capital city of Cuernavaca, a city of 316,760, with a diverse economy and full array of modern urban services. José Raúl Hernández Ávila won the mayor’s office with 60% of the vote, to the PRI’s 27% and the PRD’s 8%.
Hernández, like many big-city mayors from the PAN (Rodríguez 1998, 183-186; Ward 1995, 141-143), argued for “good government” as the philosophy for urban administration. Administration raises many technical questions, and well-trained technocrats are important for effective governance. However, “good government” is not purely a technocratic response to the problems of public administration. The role of the city government is not only to provide services and public works, but also to promote a positive business climate, fight corruption, improve personal security, and rationalize public services (Tendler 1997). For example, Hernández noted that it costs the city NP $3.50/m2 to provide water, but users pay NP $1.50/m2. The two-peso subsidy comes from municipal coffers at the expense of other public services. Hernández also hoped to encourage a law-abiding culture in the city. If residents can voluntarily comply with laws and pay taxes, the costs of collecting taxes would decline, revenues would increase, and more services could be provided.
Clearly, this type of administration is more complex than the obraista approach, and is politically risky. Especially after many decades of PRI government and several decades of economic crisis and uncertainty, expectations for non-PRI governments to cause change are very high. Changing a political culture does not fit easily into the three-year electoral cycle for local governments. Efforts to rationalize public services can produce powerful and broad-based opposition, especially if popular subsidy programs are ended. Hernández was fully aware of these difficulties, and hoped that honesty in government and efficiency in the provision of basic services would buy support that would permit tackling more complex problems of public administration.
Politically, pluralism and electoral competition are important parts of the “good government” philosophy. However, good government pluralists would argue that there should be some consensus about the goals of the city administration. Electoral competition can then become a question of which party selects the most capable people to provide “good government.” Hernández does not think that is currently the case, though, in Mexico. The PAN is the party of good government, and elections are important in setting the direction for the success of the panista project to create an environment that can sustain this type of limited pluralism.
Summary
Three mayors from three different political parties expressed three different philosophies of local government. These philosophies are not mutually exclusive, but do present notably distinct emphases. Angel Rivero (PRI-Miacatlán) is a typical proponent of obraismo. Not all priistas are necessarily obraista, but it is a philosophy that fits the patterns of governance under the PRI in the twentieth century. Obras are visible accomplishments, obtainable in the relative short-term. Completing public works puts people who can be chosen through partisan patronage to work. The works themselves can be divisible public goods, in that a community or neighborhood gets a new schoolhouse, or an improved road, or some such thing. Obras stand as monuments to the efforts of individual politicians, and support the personalist tendencies of Latin American political behavior (Dealy 1977). Obras can also contribute directly to the well being of the inhabitants. No government can ignore them.
Lázaro Rodríguez (PRD/CUT-Tepoztlán) is a modern communitarian drawn from a radicalized social movement. For social movements the process by which decisions are made, and the inclusiveness of these decisions, can be as important as the decisions themselves. This has profoundly shaped the political approach of the CUT. As has often been noted by observers of social movements, the politics of solidarity are more suited to activism on particular issues from outside government, and are difficult to sustain as part of mainstream party politics (Bruhn 1997, 223-227; Williams 2001, 77-81).
José Hernández (PAN-Cuernavaca) represents modern neo-liberalism at the level of an urban administration. His approach reflects both the ideals of his political party and the context of presiding over a large-city government. He is acutely aware of the potential contradictions of governing as a neo-liberal in a competitive electoral environment that lacks consensus about the appropriate role of the state in society.
In all three cases, pluralism presents a challenge. Ironically, the most radically democratic government, in Tepoztlán, is the least comfortable with pluralism. Pluralism there must be hidden to maintain the vision of organic solidarity. Pluralism is also limited by the ideology of good government, in that the voters can choose among parties and individuals, but there is really only one way to “administer things,” to paraphrase Engels. This is the “democracy deficit” often attributed to globalized neo-liberalism (Laïdi 2002). The articulation of the idea of obraismo is similar in this regard to that for good government. The product of government is the same, regardless of which party governs. However, in the practice of obraismo, parties matter greatly because of the distributive consequences of winning elections. This party competition is not pluralistic; rather it is exclusionary. The spoils system is less about accommodating different ideas than it is about determining winners and losers.
Postscript and Conclusion
The elections of July 6, 2003, were widely interpreted as a defeat for President Fox. The PRI strengthened its plurality in the Chamber of Deputies by some sixteen seats, and the PAN lost ground to the PRD, losing some forty-nine seats while the PRD doubled the number of its representatives.
In Morelos, the PAN retained control of Cuernavaca, but with just 37% of the vote. The PRI also lost votes, winning just 22%. The PRD improved notably to 23%, and the Green Party (PVEM) earned 10%.
In Miacatlán, the PRI won 42%, the PRD 27%, and the PAN 22%. In 2000, the combined vote of the left (PRD and PT) was superior to that of the PRI, but the PRI’s victory in 2003 is indisputable. Perhaps this is testament to the appropriateness of Mayor Rivero’s obraismo as an electoral strategy in this town.
In Tepoztlán, the PRI recovered the municipality, once again demonstrating its remarkable tenacity. The PRI won with 36%, to the PRD’s 28%, and the PAN’s 17%. Interestingly, the vote was most dispersed in Tepoztlán, as two small parties did relatively well. These are México Posible, a new progressive party of intellectuals and environmentalists, and the Convergencia. Each of these took just under 7% of the vote. The left vote was badly fractured, giving the PRI the opportunity for victory. Tepoztlán demonstrates that institutional arrangements matter. Pluralism is quite likely to follow from electoral arrangements based on partisan competition. Non-pluralist arrangements are difficult to sustain under such arrangements.
Notes
Vargas Llosa revised the formula to “discreet dictatorship” when comparing Mexico with the Sandinista regime in 1984, and recast it entirely to “difficult democracy” in 2000. See Vargas Llosa (1996, 2000) and Levy and Bruhn (2001, 6).
2 Census data are from Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática (INEGI), Conteo de Población y Vivienda 1995, Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Resultados Preliminares (Aguascalientes: INEGI, 1996).
3 Electoral data are from Instituto Estatal Electoral Morelos, http://www.ieemorelos.org.mx/Paginaweb/index.html.
4 For a complete review and analysis of these events, see Stolle-McAllister (2002).
5 Estado de Morelos, Enciclopedia de los Municipios de Morelos, Municipio de Tepoztlán, Perfíl Sociodemográfico. Accessed at: http://e-municipios.e-morelos.gob.mx/Tepoztlan/tepoztlan3.htm, 31 July 2003.
References
Andrade García P., Graciela. 2000. “El blindaje, paracaidas emergente de la política económica zedillista.” In Ana Alicia Solís de Alba, Enrique García Márquez, and Max Ortega, eds., El ultimo gobierno del PRI: Balance del sexenio zedillista. Mexico: Editorial Itaca.
Bruhn, Kathleen. 1997. Taking on Goliath: The Emergence of a New Left Party and the Struggles for Democracy in Mexico. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.Camp, Roderic Ai.
2003. Politics in Mexico: The Democratic Transformation. Fourth Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
Centeno, Miguel Ángel. 1997. Democracy within Reason: Technocratic Revolution in Mexico. Second Edition. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Crespo, José Antonio. 1996. Votar en los estados: Análisis comparado de Las legislaciones electorales estatales en México. Mexico: Fundación Friedrich Naumann, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Grupo Editorial Miguel Ángel Porrúa. Dahl, Robert A. 1956. A Preface to Democratic Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dealy, Glen C. 1977. The Public Man: An Interpretation of Latin American And Other Catholic Countries. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Díaz-Cayeros, Alberto, and Jacqueline Martínez-Uriarte. 1997. “Towards a Model of Budgetary Allocation and Revenue-sharing in Mexico’s Local Governments.” Paper presented at the 20th annual meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Guadalajara.
Dillon, Sam. 1997. “Mexico Leader Gets His Budget Past Opposition.” The New York Times, Washington Edition, 15 Dec., A7. El Universal, 14 January 2002, D1.
Engels, Friedrich. 1987 [1894]. Anti-Dühring. In Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Collected Works, Vol. 25. New York: International Publishers.
Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). 1997. Latin America After a Decade of Reforms: Economic and Social Progress. 1997 Report. Washington, D.C.: IADB.
Johnson, Kenneth F. 1984. Mexican Democracy: A Critical View. Third Edition. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.
Laïdi, Zaki. 2002. “Democracy in Real Time.” Journal of Democracy 13:1, 68-79.
Levy, Daniel C., and Kathleen Bruhn, with Emilio Zebadúa. 2001. Mexico: The Struggle for Democratic Development. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Morris, Stephen D. 1995. Political Reformism in Mexico: An Overview of Contemporary Mexican Politics. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Nickson, R. Andrew. 1995. Local Government in Latin America. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 1998. Decentralisation and Local Infrastructure in Mexico: A New Public Policy for Development. Paris: OECD.
Preston, Julia. 1997. “The Budget and Mexico: A Vote for Stability.” The New York Times, Washington Edition, 16 Dec., p. A6.
Quintana Roldán, Carlos F. 1998. Derecho municipal. Second Edition. México: Editorial Porrúa.
Rodríguez, Victoria E. 1997. Decentralization in Mexico: From Reforma Municipal to Solidaridad to Nuevo Federalismo. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
_____. 1998. “Opening the Electoral Space in Mexico: The Rise of the Opposition at the State and Local Levels.” In Henry A. Dietz and Gil Shidlo, eds., Urban Elections in Democratic Latin America. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources.
Shadlen, Kenneth C. 1999. “Continuity and Change: Democratization, Party Strategies and Economic Policy-making in Mexico.” Government and Opposition 34:397-419.
Stolle-McAllister, John. “Social Movements and Hybrid Cultural Formations: Tepoztlán’s ‘No Al Golf’.” MACLAS Latin American Essays 25, 11 28.
Tendler, Judith. 1997. Good Government in the Tropics. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Turner, Brian. 2002. “Liberating the Municipio Libre: The Normalization of Municipal Finance in Yucatán.” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 18:1, 101-131.
Vargas Llosa, Mario. 1996. Making Waves. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
_____. 2000. “De la dictadura perfecta a una democracia difícil.” Reforma 2000, 3 July.
Ward, Peter M. 1995. “Policy Making and Policy Implementation Among Non-PRI Governments: The PAN in Ciudad Juárez and in Chihuahua.” In Victoria E. Rodríguez and Peter M. Ward, eds., Opposition Government in Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Wiarda, Howard J. 1981. Corporatism and National Development in LatinAmerica. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
Williams, Heather L. 2001. Social Movements and Economic Transition: Markets and Distributive Conflict in Mexico. New York: Cambridge University Press.