The 2000 Mexican presidential race culminated in the election of opposition candidate Vicente Fox and the end of seven decades of one-party rule. This book, which traces changes in public opinion and voter preferences over the course of the race, represents the most comprehensive treatment of campaigning and voting behavior in an emerging democracy. It challenges the "modest effects” paradigm of national election campaigns that has dominated scholarly research in the field. Chapters cover authoritarian mobilization of voters, turnout patterns, electoral cleavages, party strategies, television news coverage, candidate debates, negative campaigning, strategic voting, issue-based voting, and the role of the 2000 election in Mexico's political transition. Theoretically-oriented introductory and concluding chapters situate Mexico's 2000 election in the larger context of Mexican politics and of cross-national research on campaigns. Collectively, these contributions provide crucial insights into Mexico's new politics, with important implications for elections in other countries.

Tracing the key themes and dynamics of a century of political development in Mexico, David Shirk explores the evolution of the party that ultimately became the vehicle for Fox's success.

This volume captures the essence of the political environment leading up to Mexico's July 2000 presidential election as well as the more enduring lessons learned in relationship to Mexican politics and U.S. Mexico policy.

In this groundbreaking study of Mexican public opinion and elections, Jorge Dominguez and James McCann examine the attitudes and behaviors of Mexican voters from the 1950s to the 1990s and find evidence of both support for and increasing independence from the nation's ruling party. They make extensive use of polls conducted during the 1988, 1991, and 1994 national elections and draw from in-depth interviews with leading political figures, including major presidential candidates. Although the 1994 presidential election showed that Mexican citizens are making their opinions known and felt at the polls, Dominguez and McCann argue that Mexico cannot be considered a democracy as long as party elites fail to ensure truly free and fair elections. Democratizing Mexico makes it clear, however, that Mexican citizens are ready for democratic politics.

Mexico's historical foundations -- The Mexican revolution and its legacy -- Postrevolutionary Mexican politics, 1940-1968 -- Mexican democratization, 1968 to the present -- Government structure and processes -- Political parties and elections in Mexico -- Mexican political culture -- Mexican civil society -- Mexico's political economy -- Poverty, inequality, and social welfare policy -- The rule of law in Mexico -- Mexican foreign policy -- U.S.-Mexico relations.

"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.

Writing about Mexico is seldom easy; the country’s dynamics make it almost impossible to isolate any bit of data without having it grow obsolete in a very short span of time. Sometimes its hard for a Mexican to understand our own cultural idiosyncrasies, it is complex for a person of a different nationality to do so. I began writing my weekly column in a very interesting time for Mexico. The country was passing thru the beginning stages of shedding its inadequate “Third World” status and struggling to evolve and become a modern State. It is very diffi cult for a person unfamiliar with Mexican History or Culture, to judge and at times avoid being prejudicial for the relative slowness of the process toward advance; in an effort to place my readers into a proper frame of mind, I have taken the liberty of borrowing a term not customarily used in political science, I often refer to Mexico’s progression as “Evolution”, this term implies perfectly the three key characteristics of the development process . . . Transformation, Survival and Time. After time some observers have come across another frequent and disconcerting feature . . . . Concurrency; the Mexican theater has many stages and each one has a different drama, author and actors. To make matters more complicated all plays are playing simultaneously in different acts. Explaining the Mexican drama to non-Mexicans is quite a challenge. Trying to translate words from one viewpoint to another only requires language skills (This can be easily accessed with any English-Spanish dictionary); but communicating concepts and ideas if they are to be understood, needs the foundation of what call I “Cultural Interface”. For understanding Mexico, “Cultural Interface” is an essential requirement; Mexican words or expressions although adequately translated seldom mean the same, political terminology never does. Being Mexican and having been raised in the Mexico-U.S. Border I acquired the vantage point of a Bi-cultural perspective. This quality made “Cultural Interface” easy and clear; but understanding is a two way street, it requires knowledge and comprehension by both sides; as a wise old uncle once told me “Manana is never Tomorrow, and next Monday never comes after Sunday” . . . . That’s it in a nutshell!. After years of writings on different topics regarding Mexico, I felt that there was enough material to summarize the political transcripts into an attempt to explain the weekly progressions and retreats that are transforming the Mexican political system into what we hope that in time, will be a modern Democracy. The title (300 WEEKS) does not refer to 300 weekly writings; to be frank I never counted the columns selected for this book. The term loosely refers to a Mexican political benchmark, “The Sexenio” (or “The six years”) which is the duration of a Mexican presidential term (The reader must remember that “No reelection” is one of Mexico’s sacred political commandments). Therefore “300 WEEKS” refers to a particular political era of transformation in which Mexico’s turbulent transition to democracy began and still continues.