The Difficult Transition from Clientelism to Citizenship: Lessons from Mexico

Author(s): Jonathan Fox

Source: World Politics , Jan., 1994, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Jan., 1994), pp. 151-184
Published by: Cambridge University Press

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 THE DIFFICULT TRANSITION
FROM CLIENTELISM TO
CITIZENSHIP
Lessons from Mexico
By JONATHAN FOX*

E LECTORAL competition is necessary but not sufficient for the

liconsolidation of democratic regimes: not all elections are free and
fair; nor do they necessarily lead to actual civilian rule or respect for
human rights. If there is more to democracy than elections, then there is
more to democratization than the transition to elections. But in spite of
the rich literature on the emergence of electoral competition, the dynam-
ics of political transitions toward respect for other fundamental demo-
cratic rights is still not well understood.
Political democracy is defined here in classic procedural terms: free
and fair electoral contestation for governing offices based on universal
suffrage, guaranteed freedoms of association and expression, account-
ability through the rule of law, and civilian control of the military.' Al-
though analyses of democratization typically acknowledge that these are
all necessary criteria, most examine only electoral competition.2 This
study, however, develops a framework for explaining progress toward
another necessary condition for democratization: respect for associational

* Field research for this project was partially funded by a grant from the Howard Heinz
Endowment. A preliminary version of this paper was first presented at "Mexico's National
Solidarity Program: A Preliminary Assessment," Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, Univer-
sity of California, San Diego, February 25, 1992. Thanks to Josefina Aranda, Suzanne Berger,
Joshua Cohen, Denise Dresser, Manuel Fernandez, Paul Haber, Luis Herndndez, Kevin
Middlebrook, Julio Moguel, Frances Fox Piven, Pablo Policzer, Jennie Purnell, Richard Sa-
muels, Jonathan Schlefer, Ben Ross Schneider, Miguel Tejero, and John Waterbury, as well
as many indigenous leaders, government officials, and NGO activists who remain anonymous.
I In Karl's terms, this is a middle-range definition of democracy, in that it falls between
the narrow Schumpeterian range of contestation needed for strictly intraelite competition
and approaches that depend on particular socioeconomic or participatory outcomes. See
Terry Lynn Karl, "Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America," Comparative Politics
23 (October 1990).
2 Democratization is defined here as the process of movement toward these conditions,
while the consolidation of a democratic regime requires fulfilling all of them. Regimes can
therefore be in transition to democracy-further along than liberalization-but still fall short
of a democratic threshold. For further discussion, see Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo O'Don-
nell, and J. Samuel Valenzuela, eds., Issues in Democratic Consolidation (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1992).

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 152 WORLD POLITICS

autonomy, which allows citizens to organize in defense of their own in-

terests and identities without fear of external intervention or punish-
ment.3
Most analysis of the emergence of electoral competition concentrates
quite appropriately on high politics-on the pacts that define the rules
of contestation and the founding elections that shape much of national
politics. But to analyze the effective extension of the full range of citizen-
ship rights throughout a society involves studying how most people are
actually represented and governed-before, during, and after the his-
toric turning points of high politics. In this process, intermediate associ-
ations are crucial complements to political parties because they are poten-
tially more responsive to the inherent diversity of societal interests.
Increasingly, political scientists are stressing the Tocquevillian idea that
democratic governance depends on the density of associational life in
civil society.4 However, rather than attempt here to explain the empow-
erment of autonomous organizations in civil society (which often both
predates and encourages electoral competition), this study focuses on the
empirically related but analytically distinct question of how regimes be-
gin to accept the right of citizens to pursue their goals autonomously.
As authoritarian regimes give way to electoral competition, the degree
to which the full range of citizenship rights becomes respected varies
quite widely both across and within national political systems.5 For ex-
ample, a wide range of political systems, including many that hold reg-
ular elections, oblige the poor to sacrifice their political rights if they
want access to distributive programs. Such conditionality interferes with

I On associational autonomy as a democratic right, see Robert Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist

Democracy: Autonomy vs. Control (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). Note that au-
tonomy is inherently relational and is therefore a matter of degree. On the difference between
autonomy and capacity, see Jonathan Fox, The Politics of Food in Mexico: State Power and
Social Mobilization (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992), chap. 2.
4 See, e.g., Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, "Secondary Associations in Democratic Gover-
nance," Politics and Society 20 (December 1992), on the U.S.; Robert Putnam, Making De-
mocracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992),
on Italy; Jonathan Fox and Luis Herndndez, "Mexico's Difficult Democracy: Grassroots
Movements, NGOs and Local Government," Alternatives 17 (Spring 1992), on Mexico; and Kay
Lawson and Peter Merkl, eds., When Parties Fail: Emerging Alternative Organizations (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1988), on broader problems of party representation. This
paper treats intermediate associations as broadly representative though not necessarily dem-
ocratic. On the problem of internal democracy within such organizations, see Jonathan Fox,
"Democratic Rural Development: Leadership Accountability in Regional Peasant Organi-
zations," Development and Change 23, no. 2 (1992). Note also that intermediate associations
in developing countries often do not appear as formal organizations; they may be kinship or
religiously based community associations, for example, as in many African or Middle Eastern
societies.
I The guaranteed rights of political citizenship in a democracy include basic civil and
political freedoms, majority rule with minority rights, and the equitable administration of
justice, as well as respect for associational autonomy.

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 153

the exercise of citizenship rights and therefore undermines the consoli-

dation of democratic regimes.6 These relations of domination can be
broadly understood in terms of clientelism, a relationship based on polit-
ical subordination in exchange for material rewards.
It is, however, undeniably risky to use the concept of political clientel-
ism to frame the study of the construction of the right to associational
autonomy. Because analysts have found elements of clientelism in an
extraordinarily wide range of hierarchical power relations, the usage can
become so broad as to encompass almost any reciprocal exchange be-
tween actors of unequal power. Hence, it is difficult to distinguish what
is specific to clientelism from most political bargaining more generally.
But since its core notion captures the exchange of political rights for
social benefits, it is worth trying to sharpen its boundaries.
How do subordinated people make the transition from clients to citi-
zens? This study analyzes how less-than-democratic regimes come to
respect autonomous, representative societal organizations as legitimate
interlocutors. It draws on the Mexican experience to illustrate one im-
portant indicator of this transition: the process by which poor people gain
access to whatever material resources the state has to offer without hav-
ing to forfeit their right to articulate their interests autonomously.
Since clientelism is a form of bargaining, some degree of autonomy
between the parties is inherent to it; yet its distinctive meaning derives
from the significantly unequal constraints on that autonomy. For the
purposes of this argument, the working definition of political clientelism
is deliberately narrow, to highlight the process of transition from clien-
telistic to other kinds of unequal exchanges that permit somewhat
greater associational autonomy. The focus here is on specifically author-
itarian clientelism, where imbalanced bargaining relations require the
enduring political subordination of clients and are reinforced by the
threat of coercion. Such subordination can take various forms, ranging
from vote buying by political machines, as under semicompetitive elec-
toral regimes, to a strict prohibition on collective action, as under most
military regimes, to controlled mass mobilization, as in communist or
authoritarian populist systems.7

6 Associational autonomy is an especially vital right for the poorest members of society,
for two main reasons. First, they are usually the most vulnerable to state-sanctioned coercion
should they express discontent. Second, their survival needs make them especially vulnerable
to clientelistic incentives. Together, these threats and inducements inhibit autonomous col-
lective action. See Ruth Collier and David Collier, "Inducements versus Constraints: Disag-
gregating 'Corporatism,' " American Political Science Review 73 (January 1979).
7The appearance of subordination should not be confused with actual submission, how-
ever; see James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); and idem, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (New

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 154 WORLD POLITICS

POLITICAL CONFLICT AND THE EROSION OF CLIENTELISM:

AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

Although most studies of clientelism focus on how the relationship

works rather than on how it changes, one group of analysts does show
how political entrepreneurs build clientelistic systems, emphasizing the
transition from patrimonial patronage to mass political machines.8 The
role of political action in explaining the breakdown of clientelism has
received less attention, however. Most analysts explain the erosion of
clientelism in terms of either gradual social changes, such as urbanization
and education, or structural economic shifts, such as the commercializa-
tion of agriculture. But these secular trends are not sufficient explana-
tions, since political action can either inhibit or accelerate the weakening
of clientelism. Thus, where "traditional" patterns of deference erode, the

Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). Others stress the subjective importance of "trust" in
such dependent relationships; see Luis Roniger, Hierarchy and Trust in Modern Mexico and
Brazil (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1990). For a view that stresses the role of coercion, see
Peter Flynn, "Class, Clientelism, and Coercion: Some Mechanisms of Internal Dependency
and Control," Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 12, no. 2 (1974). For over-
views of political clientelism, see Christopher Clapham, ed., Private Patronage and Public
Power: Political Clientelism in the Modern State (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982); S. N.
Eisenstadt and Luis Roniger, "Patron-Client Relations as a Model of Structuring Social Ex-
change," Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (1980); S. N. Eisenstadt and Ren6
Lemarchand, eds., Political Clientelism, Patronage and Development (Beverly Hills, Calif.:
Sage Publications, 1981); Ernest Gellner and John Waterbury, eds., Patrons and Clients in
Mediterranean Societies (London: Duckworth, 1977); Robert R. Kaufman, "A Patron-Client
Concept and Macropolitics: Prospects and Problems," Comparative Studies in Society and His-
tory 16, no. 3 (1974); Alain Rouqui6, "Client Control and Authoritarian Contexts," in Guy
Hermet, Richard Rose, and Alain Rouqui6, eds., Elections without Choice (New York: John
Wiley, 1978); Steffen W. Schmidt et al., eds., Friends, Followers and Factions: A Reader in
Political Clientelism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); Arnold Strickon and
Sidney Greenfield, eds., Structure and Process in Latin America: Patronage, Clientage and Power
Systems (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972). Note that the literature on
political clientelism virtually stopped over a decade ago, long before the flowering of analysis
of regime change. Few analysts explore how the persistence of machine politics affects the
nature of transitions to civilian rule. For exceptions, see Frances Hagopian, " 'Democracy by
Undemocratic Means?' Elites, Political Pacts and Regime Transition in Brazil," Comparative
Political Studies 23 (July 1990); idem, "The Compromised Consolidation: The Political Class
in the Brazilian Transition," in Mainwaring, O'Donnell, and Valenzuela (fn. 2); and Guil-
lermo O'Donnell, "Challenges to Democratization in Brazil," World Policy Journal 5, no. 2
(1988).
8 On the construction of political machines, see, among others, Luigi Graziano, "Patron-
Client Relationships in Southern Italy," in Schmidt et al. (fn. 7); James C. Scott, "Corruption,
Machine Politics, and Political Change," American Political Science Review 63 (December
1969); idem, Comparative Political Corruption (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972);
Martin Shefter, "The Electoral Foundations of the Political Machine: New York City, 1884-
1897," in Joel Silbey et al., eds., The History of American Electoral Behavior (Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1978); Steffen W. Schmidt, "The Transformation of Clientelism in
Rural Colombia," in Schmidt et al. (fn. 7); Sidney Tarrow, Peasant Communism in Southern
Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967); and Myron Weiner, Party Building in a New
Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967).

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 155

political effectiveness of clientelistic controls can be bolstered by threats

of violence.9 Note, for example, the extraordinary resilience of violent
electoral machines in the backlands of Brazil, the Philippines, and Co-
lombia in the 1980s.10 And as the Mexican case shows, political entrepre-
neurs can replace rigid, antiquated controls with new, more sophisticated
clientelistic arrangements without necessarily moving toward demo-
cratic pluralism. Nevertheless, the main point here is that if political ac-
tion can create (or revive) clientelism, it can also undermine it.l
In developing a framework for analyzing the transition from clientel-
ism to respect for citizenship rights, one can draw lessons from the inter-
active approach to the study of the transition to competitive electoral
regimes."2 For example, many authoritarian regimes became electorally
competitive only after extended periods of repeated semicompetitive
contests that strengthened democrats and weakened autocrats; this oc-
curred in the 1980s in Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, and Korea. Sim-
ilarly, the right to associational autonomy, too, is constructed gradually
and unevenly through cycles of conflict that leave nascent democratic
forces with political resources to draw on in successive rounds. In con-
trast to cycles of semicompetitive electoral contests, however, the move-
ments to broaden the political terms of access to social entitlements often
unfold on extrainstitutional terrain (political parties, for instance, may
not be the key actors), and their periodic cycles are certainly not regularly
scheduled. Furthermore, the right to associational autonomy does not
simply follow from national electoral change; the opening of political

9 For discussions of how clientelism can evolve from patrimonial to repressive, increasing
the role of coercion, see Anthony Hall, "Patron-Client Relations: Concepts and Terms," in
Schmidt et al. (fn. 7); and James C. Scott and Benedict J. Kerkvliet, "How Traditional Rural
Patrons Lose Legitimacy: A Theory with Special Reference to Southeast Asia," in Schmidt
et al. (fn. 7).
10 See the following essays in Jonathan Fox, ed., The Challenge of Rural Democratisation:
Perspectives from Latin America and the Philippines (London: Frank Cass, 1990) (also published
as Journal of Development Studies 26 [July 1990]): Candido Grzybowski, "Rural Workers and
Democratization in Brazil"; Francisco Lara, Jr., and Horacio Morales, Jr., "The Peasant
Movement and the Challenge of Democratization in the Philippines"; and Leon Zamosc,
"The Political Crisis and the Prospects for Rural Democracy in Colombia."
11 Revolutions are the most obvious examples of political processes that can sweep away
clientelistic systems, but they are rarely followed by respect for associational autonomy. New
webs of clientelism can emerge in their wake, especially in rural areas. See, e.g., Jean C. Oi,
"Communism and Clientelism: Rural Politics in China," World Politics 37 (January 1985).
On the tensions over associational autonomy between peasant movements and left-wing po-
litical parties that claim to represent them in Latin America, see Jonathan Fox, "New Terrain
for Rural Politics" Report on the Americas 25, no. 5 (1992).
12 See Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian
Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, 1986); and Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991).

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 156 WORLD POLITICS

access to state entitlements can precede electoral competition, as in Mex-

ico, though it is often encouraged by it."3
The causal argument here is that the right to associational autonomy
is politically constructed through iterative cycles of conflict among three
key actors: autonomous social movements, authoritarian elites reluctant
to cede power, and reformist state managers-the latter defined as those
willing to accept increased associational autonomy.14 The argument is
based on the assumption that as long as authoritarian elites remain
united, there is little room for the construction of citizenship rights. If
faced with legitimacy problems, however, authoritarian political eiltes
sometimes split over how to respond-whether with repression or con-
cessions.15 In the first instance reformists, defined by their greater con-
cern for political legitimacy and resulting preference for negotiation over
coercion, may conflict with hard-line colleagues over whether and how
to cede access to the state.16 Second, if and when such cracks appear in
the system, social movements often attempt to occupy them from below,
demanding broader access to the state while trying to defend their ca-
pacity to articulate their own interests. Third, once triggered, these re-
cursive cycles of bargaining between ruling hard-liners, reformist elites,
and social movements can gradually increase official tolerance for auton-

13 Note that the political terms of access to social entitlements are distinct from the levels
of benefits, which are sometimes referred to as "social citizenship" rights. The argument
here does not attempt to explain the determinants of the levels of material entitlements; they
are logically and historically distinct from regime type in general and from the right to
associational autonomy in particular. Democratic regimes, for example, may offer access to a
narrow range of social rights without attaching political conditions (food stamps in the U.S.),
whereas authoritarian regimes may offer a broad range of material entitlements in exchange
for deference (as in communist and populist regimes). Analysts of the construction of rights
have tended to focus either on electoral enfranchisement or on the extension of social welfare
benefits, but not on the political terms of access to the latter. See, e.g., J. M. Barbalet, Citizen-
ship (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).
14 Note that this argument does not attempt to account for the emergence of each of these
three actors but rather shows how certain patterns of interaction among them can explain
the construction of respect for associational autonomy. On cycles of social mobilization and
reform, see Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People's Movements: How They
Succeed and Why They Fail (New York: Pantheon, 1977); and Sidney Tarrow, Struggle, Pol-
itics and Reform: Collective Action, Social Movements and Cycles of Protest, Occasional Paper
no. 21, Western Societies Program (Ithaca, N.Y.: Center for International Studies, Cornell
University, 1989). To frame the issue of associational autonomy as broadly as possible, this
discussion does not detail the diverse range of repertoires of action and forms of representa-
tion among poor people's movements.
15 For the purposes of this discussion, the trigger for division within authoritarian regimes
is considered here to be contingent. Possible causes include economic crisis, international
pressures, military defeat, and the "excessive" use of repression.
16 When reformists deliberately encourage social mobilization to offset hard-line authori-
tarian rulers, they can be said to be pursuing a "sandwich strategy" for political change. See
Fox (fn. 3). Other examples include the U.S. federal government's antipoverty and civil rights
efforts in the early 1960s, Colombian agrarian reform policy in the late 1960s, and Gorba-
chev's glasnost policies of the late 1980s.

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 157

omous social organizations, often following a pattern of"two steps for-

ward, one step back."'17
Even though societal actors often fail to win their immediate de-
mands, they may manage to conserve some degree of autonomy in the
troughs between cycles of mobilization, a resource to be deployed at the
next political opportunity. This process is highly uneven within nation-
states. Societal groups gain legitimacy and leverage at very different rates
and in different bargaining arenas."8 This iterative framework suggests
that the transition from clientelism to citizenship involves three distinct
patterns of state-society relations within the same nation-state: redoubts
of persistent authoritarian clientelism can coexist with new enclaves of
pluralist tolerance, as well as with large gray areas of "semiclientelism"
in between.19 The analytical challenge is to explain changes in the relative
weights of each of these distinct "subnational regimes."
The authoritarian and pluralistic poles of this proposed continuum
from clientelism to citizenship are easily defined; but it is the multiplicity
of political relationships in between that challenges analysts to develop
categories appropriate to systems in transition (especially since many re-
gimes in transition tend to get stuck somewhere short of a democratic
threshold). This framework suggests that semiclientelism is a useful cat-
egory for an exploration of those state-society relationships that fall in
between authoritarian clientelism and pluralist citizenship rights.
If the authoritarian-clientelist combination of material inducements
and coercive threats is to be effective, elites need to appear to be able to
enforce compliance. If instead they lack the means to uncover, oversee,
and punish noncompliance, then the deals they strike with their subor-
dinates are much less enforceable. Semiclientelist power relations induce
compliance more by the threat of the withdrawal of carrots than by the
use of sticks.20 Semiclientelism differs from authoritarian clientelism be-

17 Note that in this argument, mass mobilization alone cannot win citizenship rights. If
authoritarian elites remain united, they can simply respond with coercion rather than con-
cessions. Even when reformists are present within the state, they can lose; cycles of bargain-
ing may well fail to build democratic rights. If hard-liners prevail, they will repress social
movements and purge reformists from the state (as in the downward spiral that followed El
Salvador's 1979 reformist coup).
18 In Mexico, for example, citizen's groups from the north have had much greater success
at winning official respect than in the much poorer, largely indigenous southern states. Even
within the south, results vary greatly across bargaining arenas; winning access to social pro-
grams is much easier than ending impunity for violent officials. Similarly, even in relatively
democratic Brazil, official respect for human rights varies directly by the victims' race and
region.
'9 Though analytically distinct, these categories often overlap in practice.
20 Seen from the receiving end, the differences between the withdrawal of benefits and the
threat of coercion are quite significant. Both can discourage autonomous collective action,
but only one is potentially permanent in its effects.

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 158 WORLD POLITICS

cause it relies on unenforceable deals, while it differs from pluralism

because state actors still attempt to violate the right to associational au-
tonomy.2"
The differences between these categories can be illustrated by the ex-
ample of vote buying, a practice widely considered to violate basic dem-
ocratic rights. To understand how the balance of power between patrons
and clients can shift toward the client, one must examine the differences
between authoritarian and semiclientelist vote buying. There is a quali-
tative difference between having the coercive capacity to require proof
of compliance (such mechanisms abound) and using less violent electoral
inducements that "trust" the voter to go along with the bargain. In some
contexts cultural norms are sufficient to guarantee compliance, but polit-
ical culture can change as regimes become more competitive.22 The pol-
itics of trust is shaped by institutions. Ballot secrecy, for example, is one
of those democratic formalities that is especially important to the weakest
members of the polity those most vulnerable to reprisals for voting the
wrong way.23 If civic mobilization and/or institutional change increases
the actual secrecy of the ballot, then citizens can avoid the reprisals as-
sociated with rejecting authoritarian vote buyers and vote their con-
science.

The Mexican experience is useful for exploring the transitions from

clientelism to semiclientelism and citizenship, even though the political
system is still largely dominated by an authoritarian corporatist brand of
electoral machine politics. First, the Mexican state's hegemony has long

21 The term pluralism refers here to respect for associational autonomy rather than to the
political system as a whole. Access to social programs can be considered pluralistic when it is
not conditioned on political subordination.
22 Taiwan is a case where political attitudes and opportunities are changing quickly, show-
ing how political action can undermine clientelism. Vote buying is still pervasive in Taiwan,
and traditional norms of gratitude used to be sufficient to produce compliance. In the last
several years, however, partly as the result of effective civic education campaigns, increasing
numbers of voters accept the money and only comply symbolically. According to a recent
study by the Center for Policy Studies at Sun Yat-Sen University, 44.8% of the population of
Taiwan's second largest city were given money for their vote, but only 12.7% of them said
they would actually vote for the candidate who bribed them; see Robin Herr, "A Call for
Independence in Taiwan," Christian Science Monitor, March 5, 1993. Reportedly, one member
of the family may return the favor with a vote for the ruling party while the rest feel free to
vote their preference.
23 In Colombia, for example, an apparently small change in ballot procedures after 1990
significantly weakened clientelistic bosses. Until then separate ballots were cast for each
party, allowing bosses to check how people were going to vote while they waited in line.
After 1990 the system was changed to a single ballot, which greatly increased ballot secrecy.
Even where individual ballots might be secret, however, communities that are united in
voting for the democratic opposition still reveal their dissent to authoritarian elites. In the
key 1987 congressional elections in the Philippines, for example, government military units
regularly assembled farmworkers to threaten them with reprisals should their villages vote
for pro-land-reform candidates (author's field interviews).

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 159

been based on the successful clientelistic incorporation of the poor; un-

derstanding how respect for pluralism can be extended in this especially
difficult case can shed light on the dynamics of change under less insti-
tutionalized regimes. Second, Mexico's two decades of stop-and-go polit-
ical openings since the dramatic legitimacy crisis of 1968 make it possible
to examine the ambiguous relationship between the liberalization of as-
sociational autonomy and increased electoral competition.
The empirical discussion begins with an analysis of Mexico's cycles of
societal mobilization from below, openings from above, conflict, and
backlash within both state and society. This interactive approach is then
applied to an analysis of the determinants of respect for associational
autonomy in the case of indigenous peoples' access to rural development
programs.24 The empirical analysis combines change over time in the
course of three successive generations of targeted rural development pro-
grams with an explanation of the range of outcomes across a develop-
ment policy that was especially promising in terms of increased respect
for associational autonomy.

FILLING THE CRACKS IN THE MEXICAN SYSTEM

Ever since the legitimacy crisis that followed the harsh repression of the
1968 student movement, Mexico's ruling political class has sought ways
to accommodate change without ceding power. The result has been re-
current cycles of conflict over the terms of state-society bargaining rela-
tions. From below, organizations of civil society have pushed the state to
respect associational autonomy. From above, reformists have sought to
displace machine-style authoritarian brokers whose intransigence pro-
voked opposition and unrest, by creating alternative bargaining channels
that bypassed parties-both official and opposition.
In Mexico machine-style political brokers play the key role in medi-
ating state-society relations, both within and without the corporatist ap-
paratus.25 The classic political bargain required official incorporation of
24 Classic individualistic ideas of citizenship may be inappropriate for non-Western social
actors. For a critique of the imposition of foreign notions of citizenship on indigenous soci-
eties, see Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, "Liberal Democracy and Ayllu Democracy: The Case of
Northern Potosi, Bolivia," in Fox (fn. 10). In part for this reason, this study analyzes associ-
ational autonomy in terms of the state's respect for ethnic and community-based groups
rather than in terms of individual members of those communities.
25 New historical research stresses that the coverage of Mexico's well-known corporatist
organizations was partial rather than complete; see Jeffrey W. Rubin, "Popular Mobilization
and the Myth of State Corporatism," in Joe Foweraker and Ann Craig, eds., Popular Move-
ments and Political Change in Mexico (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1990). On rural bosses,
see Roger Bartra, ed., Caciquismo y poder politico en el Mexico rural (Mexico City: Siglo XXI,
1975); and Fox (fn. 3). On elite political clientelism, see Roderic A. Camp, "Camarillas in

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 160 WORLD POLITICS

social groups under state tutelage in exchange for access to social pro-
grams. Mass protest that was strictly "social" was sometimes tolerated,
but if it was perceived as "political" (that is, as challenging the hegemony
of the ruling party) the usual mix of partial concessions with repression
shifted toward the latter. Movements were more likely to be labeled as
political if they expressed their autonomy by publicly rejecting official
subordination.26
The pyramid of brokers managed challenges to stability for decades,
but as they became increasingly ossified and provoked growing resent-
ment, social groups sought greater autonomy. By the 1980s ascendant
technocrats who viewed the old-fashioned brokers as both expensive and
politically ineffective moved social policy away from reliance on tradi-
tional patronage and generalized subsidies toward measures that osten-
sibly targeted the poor directly. This process favored a mix of official and
nonpartisan social movements. In contrast to the repression of the past,
this new bargaining style recognized autonomous movement leaders as
legitimate interlocutors as long as they steered clear of overt political
opposition.

This new approach shifted the mix of clientelistic carrots and sticks
faced by social movements. Where state managers replaced their tradi-
tional crude insistence on ruling party control with more subtle forms of
controlling access to the system, one can speak of emerging semiclientel-
ist relations. Such relationships are not pluralistic, however, because they
still discourage any questioning of the government's broader socioeco-
nomic policies and its controversial electoral practices. Thus, while the
transition from clientelism to semiclientelism may look like a step in the
direction of responsive government, the erosion of strict controls on voter
compliance may also increase the incentives for state managers to rely on

Mexican Politics: The Case of the Salinas Cabinet," Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 6
(Winter 1990); Miguel Angel Centeno and Sylvia Maxfield, "The Marriage of Finance and
Order: Changes in the Mexican Political Elite," Journal of Latin American Studies 24 (Feb-
ruary 1992); Susan Kaufman Purcell and John F. H. Purcell, "State and Society in Mexico:
Must a Stable Polity Be Institutionalized?" World Politics 32 (January 1980); and Peter Smith,
Labyrinths of Power: Political Recruitment in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1979).
26 This dichotomy of "official versus independent" social movements was especially pro-
nounced in the 1970s and 1980s, as collective resistance to the state grew. By the 1990s social
movements increasingly stressed autonomy from political parties in general, since contesta-
tional "independence" had often involved subordination to opposition parties. See Jonathan
Fox and Gustavo Gordillo, "Between State and Market: The Campesinos' Quest for Auton-
omy," in Wayne A. Cornelius, Judith Gentleman, and Peter H. Smith, eds., Mexico's Alter-
native Political Futures (La Jolla: UCSD, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, 1989); Foweraker
and Craig (fn. 25); and Judith Adler Hellman "The Study of New Social Movements in
Latin America and the Question of Autonomy," in Arturo Escobar and Sonia Alvarez, eds.,
The Making of Social Movements in Latin America (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992).

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 161

electoral fraud to minimize uncertainty. This may be happening in Mex-

ico.27
It is important to point out that Mexico's postrevolutionary political
class has a long tradition of mobilizing contending social groups to settle
its own internal conflicts. With the 1970s and 1980s social movements
were better able to retain some degree of autonomy in their bargaining
with the state. Insofar as movements could conserve these small increases
in tolerance for autonomy in the troughs between waves of mobilization,
they could increase their capacity to take advantage of the next political
opportunity.

These conflict cycles led to three distinct patterns of interaction be-

tween the state and social movements: continued clientelism, modern-
ized semiclientelism, and more pluralistic bargaining, distributed un-
evenly both geographically and socially. As the autonomous
organizations of civil society broadened and deepened their still-nascent
roots, the relative weights of these patterns changed and the pluralist
enclaves grew over time. The following analysis traces this process in the
Mexican environment most hostile to the consolidation of autonomous
representative organizations: the poorest, largely indigenous rural
regions.28

OPENINGS FROM ABOVE MEET MOBILIZATION FROM BELOW

Since the early 1970s reformist policymakers have promoted three suc-
cessive rural development programs that bypassed and competed with
the rest of the state apparatus. These reformists never fully controlled
policy implementation, but they were sometimes sufficiently influential
to open up alternative channels to antipoverty programs for the rural
poor, allowing them to bypass authoritarian bosses. The first cycle of
reform was launched during a wave of nationalist populism in the early

27 Distributing patronage through semiclientelistic means (i.e., nonenforceable deals) can

also make fraudulent electoral outcomes seem more politically plausible to the electorate,
since even individuals who accepted the incentives but voted their conscience anyway cannot
be sure how many others did the same. This in turn undermines the potential for collective
action in defense of clean elections.
28 Although similar cycles of social mobilization can also be found in Mexican urban pol-
itics, their emergence in remote rural areas as well shows that the erosion of clientelism can
be encouraged by strategic political action and is not driven exclusively by secular socioeco-
nomic trends such as urbanization. On urban politics and the poor, see Vivienne Bennett,
"The Evolution of Urban Popular Movements in Mexico between 1968 and 1988," in Escobar
and Alvarez (fn. 26); Wayne Cornelius, Politics and the Migrant Poor in Mexico City (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1975); Susan Eckstein, The Poverty of Revolution, 2d ed.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Fox and Hernindez (fn. 4); and Peter Ward,
Welfare Politics in Mexico (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986).

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 162 WORLD POLITICS

1970s, in the wake of the student movement and in response to growing

rural protest. The second was initiated in 1979 from above; social pres-
sures had ebbed, but the preemptive goal was to create channels to con-
tain future waves. The third targeted reform responded to the regime's
first national electoral challenge in decades, extending into urban areas
and building on the policy lessons and organizations left by the previous
cycles. In each cycle of distributive reform, high-level, moderate reform-
ists tried to offset more authoritarian elites by recruiting radical reform-
ists at lower levels to promote contained social mobilization. They at-
tempted to create counterweights to displace more rigid elites, though
not to share power with the opposition. The goal was to induce and
channel conflict in the short run in order to make the regime more stable
in the long run.
In practice, most of these distributive programs were either captured
by traditional authoritarian elements or delivered through semiclientel-
istic channels, yet each also involved small but significant openings to the
autonomous organizations of civil society. Since this inquiry focuses on
the opening of pluralistic access, the discussion concentrates on the dy-
namics of those exceptional programs that permitted the creation of new
political space. The first two rural development reform cycles are re-
viewed briefly to show how mobilization from below interacted with
openings from above. This is followed by an analysis of Mexico's most
recent antipoverty strategy, the National Solidarity Program (PRONASOL).

THE RURAL INVESTMENT PROGRAM (PIDER)

Mexico launched the Program for Rural Development Investments

(PIDER) in 1973. After decades of antipeasant policies, rapidly growing
social pressures overwhelmed the official corporatist organizations in-
herited from the land reform of the 1930s. Waves of radical direct action
swept the countryside, and guerrilla movements emerged in the most
polarized regions. Reformists gained leverage within the state and ad-
vocated recognition of some dissident movements as a way of channeling
their mobilization. Large-scale World Bank funding for PIDER made this
task easier.
PIDER claimed to target the rural poor, rather than the powerful elites
who had captured most of the benefits of previous development pro-
grams. In practice, however, community participation was largely
nominal29-except where reformists controlled actual project implemen-

29 According to one PIDER official: "If participation is stimulated too much it gets out of
PIDER's control and brings political problems. It becomes a political problem for PIDER when

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 163

tation. They targeted investments to political hot spots as concessions to

independent mass movements. The Community Access Road program,
for example, created employment and increased freedom of movement
in some of the poorest and most isolated regions, undermining both tra-
ditional authoritarian bosses and incipient guerrilla groups. In some ar-
eas CPIDER Brigades" successfully organized peasant protest against re-
gional bosses for broader distribution of credit and fertilizer.30 However,
some reformists (including a future president) concerned with restoring
the system's legitimacy in the longer run. concluded that they needed to
open up broader channels of participation and thereby weaken en-
trenched rural bosses more systematically.3'

THE VILLAGE FOOD STORE PROGRAM (CONASUPO-COPLAMAR)32

The national crisis surrounding the 1976 presidential succession was fol-
lowed by an emphasis on restoring investor confidence. The partial po-
litical opening of antipoverty policy closed up. Reformers then tried to
channel dissent by liberalizing electoral politics. As the oil boom revived
the economy in the late 1970s, the president's concern shifted to legiti-
mation, which allowed for the creation of a more open channel for deliv-
ering resources to the very poor. The National Plan for Depressed Zones
and Marginal Groups (COPLAMAR), together with the National Basic
Foods Company (CONASUPO), organized an extensive network of village
food stores designed to weaken local monopolies over staples in remote
rural areas. As with PIDER, the degree to which the CONASUPO-COPLAMAR
village store program actually encouraged or tolerated autonomous mo-

it begins to break up or threaten commercial interests"; quoted in Merilee Grindle, "Official

Interpretations of Rural Underdevelopment: Mexico in the 1970s," Working Papers in U.S.-
Mexican Studies 20 (1981), 43. See also Michael Cernea, A Social Methodology for Community
Participation in Local Investment: The Experience of Mexico's PIDER Program, World Bank Staff
Working Paper no. 598 (Washington D.C.: World Bank, August 1983); and Daniel Noah
Lindheim, "Regional Development and Deliberate Social Change: Integrated Rural Devel-
opment in Mexico" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1986).
30 In one notable case, the PIDER Brigade was so effective at encouraging autonomous mo-
bilization that the governor expelled it from the state; see Fox (fn. 4).
31 Notably, Carlos Salinas de Gortari's dissertation concluded that because of the ineffec-
tiveness and corruption of the conventional state apparatus, the regime lost the political pay-
off associated with increased antipoverty spending: "The State [must] rely on a corps of
leaders of local development programs who will be attentive to the problems encountered in
the delivery of development projects to targeted communities.... They must lead, not in
the hierarchic sense of demanding obedience, but in the sense of coordinating and ori
a decision-making process in which the members of affected communities participate." See
Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Political Participation, Public Investment, and Supportfor the System:
A Comparative Study of Rural Communities in Mexico, Research Report Series 35 (La Jolla:
UCSD, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, 1982), 41-42.
32 This section draws from the more detailed discussion in Fox (fn. 3).

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 164 WORLD POLITICS

bilization varied greatly in practice, but the creation of political space

was much more systematic. Radical reformist organizers deliberately en-
couraged the creation of democratic regional consumer organizations to
challenge corrupt private and bureaucratic elites.
The program provided three key resources for community organiz-
ing. First, the offer of cheap staple foods created a material incentive for
participation to ensure its delivery to the villages. Second, the program's
official legitimacy limited the violent repression often directed against
autonomous grassroots mobilization. The regional elites whose political
and commercial monopolies were threatened did fight back and most of
the reformist organizers were eventually purged. The program survived
nevertheless. Third, the program gave the community access to trans-
portation, which had formerly been tightly controlled by rent-seeking,
often violent elites. With over three thousand trucks, the program could
both stock more than twelve thousand village stores and regularly bring
together large numbers of otherwise dispersed local delegates to create
regionwide community food councils. As one might expect, elites often
captured the official channels for poor people's representation: most
community food councils were at best consultative and failed to play
their intended role as autonomous, "coresponsible" partners in food dis-
tribution operations. But unlike previous populist reforms, CONASUPO-
COPLAMAR did not systematically make political subordination a condi-
tion of material benefits.
While participatory traditions had survived at the village level, espe-
cially in indigenous areas, only rarely had isolated communities been able
to overcome the powerful obstacles to regionwide organization. Regional
peasant organizations are especially important in representing the inter-
ests of the rural poor because they have the potential to combine the clout
of a larger group with the responsiveness of smaller associations. Village-
level groups are easily isolated by their enemies, while national peasant
organizations are usually democratic only insofar as they are made up of
representative regional building blocks. In areas where loyalties rarely
extended beyond family and village, the warehouses and food councils
encouraged the emergence of regional collective identities. This targeted
social program survived Mexico's post-1982 economic crisis; it had gen-
erated an organized, relatively autonomous constituency, which greatly
raised the potential political cost to the state of reneging on its commit-
ment to the program. By the time the rural consumer movement peaked
in 1985, more than one-fourth of community food councils had gained
the capacity to articulate their interests autonomously, as evidenced by
their willingness to join a national network to protest corrupt and au-

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 165

thoritarian policy implementation. For one to two million of Mexico's

most impoverished rural people, the food councils were among the first
genuinely mass-based, regionwide representative organizations of any
kind.33
Thus, the community food councils became a new, two-way bridge
between state and societal actors. From above, state reformists structured
new patterns of representation within rural society. From below, these
new channels offered opportunities for autonomous interest articulation
in some regions, which in turn left an imprint on the state. This "objec-
tive alliance" between social movements and reformists within the gov-
ernment food distribution company permitted the consolidation of effec-
tive mechanisms of citizen oversight, making it the first national
experience with what would later be called concertaci6n social.34 This new
bargaining relationship moved away from traditional forms of subordi-
nation to a mix of semiclientelism and respect for autonomy.

REVITALIZING SINGLE-PARTY RULE: THE NATIONAL SOLIDARITY PROGRAM

After the 1982 collapse of the oil/debt boom, social spending was reduced
by cutting generalized programs and clientelistic patronage while
strengthening the more targeted programs.35 By the mid-1980s, with the
ruling party under unprecedented electoral pressure from the Right,
some federal-level reformists ceded new space to the Left in the nonelec-
toral arena. Where autonomous social organizations were sufficiently
powerful, reformists sometimes stopped requiring overt political subor-
dination in exchange for material concessions, as in the case of Mexico
City's housing movements in the aftermath of the earthquake. The re-
formists were still overshadowed, however, by the technocrats who made
macroeconomic policy, the "dinosaurs" in the corporatist sectors of the
party, and the government "alchemists" who continued to handle elec-
tions. Then, in the 1988 presidential election, Mexico's dominant party
was shaken by a surprise challenge from the voters.
After a hotly disputed race marred by widespread fraud, President
Carlos Salinas took office declaring the end of the one-party system. He
promised a new relationship between state and society, seeking to revive
citizen confidence by bypassing both the opposition and the traditional

33 For the geographic distribution of autonomous Food Councils, see Fox (fn. 3).
34 Concertacion in the Mexican context has been translated in a variety of ways, ranging
from "social dialogue" to "corporative agreements."
35 This shift was especially clear in the area of urban consumer food subsidies, which
supported a wide range of staples until the mid-1980s. Then the government began limiting
food subsidies to tortillas and milk for means-tested low-income city dwellers.

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 166 WORLD POLITICS

corporatist apparatus. The traditional bureaucratic and corporatist chan-

nels were too inefficient to buffer the social costs of austerity that had
fueled the 1988 opposition. Social spending would be increased, but tar-
geted through new, less leaky channels that would have the largest pos-
sible positive impact on the president's public image. Social spending was
brought under the umbrella of the National Solidarity Program
(PRONASOL), which claimed to shift the balance of power away from the
bureaucracy and toward organized citizens.36 The impact on poverty was
debated, but it worked politically; the president and Solidarity both had
very high 1991 opinion poll ratings, much higher than those of the offi-
cial party.37
Solidarity was clearly politically motivated in that it skillfully allocated
disproportionate amounts of resources to recover areas of strong center-
left electoral opposition. For example, 12 percent of Solidarity's entire
1992 budget went to the relatively small state of Michoacan, the main
base of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), just
before the heated gubernatorial elections.38 One-fourth of the twenty-five
hundred Solidarity promoters nationally were deployed there. The geo-
graphical targeting of spending to swing districts does not necessarily
mean that access to the program's benefits was systematically conditioned
on traditional forms of subordination, however.39

36 Solidarity proclaimed that its "new dynamic ... breaks with bureaucratic atavism and
administrative rigidity. Public servants increasingly share a vocation for dialogue, agreement,
concertacion and direct, coresponsible work with the citizenry, which also assumes an increas-
ingly active and leading role in the actions intended to improve their standard of living." See
Carlos Rojas et al., Solidaridad a Debate (Mexico City: El Nacional, 1991), 23.
For comprehensive overviews of PRONASOL politics, see Denise Dresser, Neopopulist So-
lutions to Neoliberal Problems: Mexico's National Solidarity Program, Current Issues Brief no.
3 (La Jolla: UCSD, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, 1991); idem, "Pronasol: los dilemas de
la gobernabilidad," El Cotidiano 49 (July-August 1992). See also the Los Angeles Times poll,
October 22, 1991. Solidarity spending rose sharply just before the 1991 midterm elections and
was widely credited with helping to revive the official party's electoral fortunes, although its
impact is difficult to disentangle from reduced inflation and the beginnings of economic
growth. For journalistic accounts of direct electoral use of Solidarity funding, see Pascal
Beltrdn del Rio, "Solidaridad, oxigeno para el PRI, en el rescate de votos," Proceso 718 (August
6, 1990); idem, "El memorandum de Pichardo, prueba de que el Pronasol es para servir al
PRI," Proceso 730 (October 29, 1990); Guillermo Correa, "EL PRONASOL, que nacfo como espe-
ranza, ha generado corrupci6n y protestas," Proceso 727 (October 8, 1990); and Ciro G6mez
Leyva, "Solidaridad gratuita en todas las pantallas," Este Pat's 7 (October 1991).
38 Tim Golden, "Point of Attack for Mexico's Retooled Party Machine: The Leftist
Stronghold," New York Times, July 12, 1992. See also Jesuis Cantui, "Solidaridad, adem
electorero, se manej6 en Michoacan coercitivamente," Proceso 819 (July 13, 1992). In addition,
the governor's election campaign expenses reportedly topped U.S. $30 million, almost $80
per vote officially cast for the PRI; see Elias Chavez, "Michoacan: cada voto cost6 239,188
pesos; cada voto del PRD cost6 6,916 pesos," Proceso 821 (July 27, 1992). For a state-level
statistical analysis of electoral targeting, see Juan Molinar and Jeffrey Weldon, "Electoral
Determinants and Consequences of National Solidarity," in Wayne Cornelius, Ann Craig,
and Jonathan Fox, eds., Transforming State-Society Relations in Mexico: The National Solidarity
Strategy (La Jolla: UCSD, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, forthcoming).
39 So far, much of the debate surrounding Solidarity's political character has been based

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 167

Solidarity officially targets the urban poor, peasants, and indigenous

peoples, with various programs for sewage and potable water, health,
education, food distribution, electrification, street paving, housing, and
soft loans for low-income rural producers.40 Its early accomplishments in
building physical infrastructure were dramatic, delivering services to
thousands of communities. At the receiving end, Solidarity usually re-
quired beneficiaries to form local Solidarity committees, which in turn
could choose from a fixed menu of public works (for example, electrifi-
cation, paved roads, school repair).
Although Solidarity's official discourse stressing participation and co-
responsibility was drawn from earlier PIDER and village food-store pro-
grams of the 1970s and 1980s, four differences were especially notable.
First, Solidarity responded directly to an electoral challenge. Second, it
focused on the municipality, not just federal agencies, for delivery of
services. Third, it concentrated on the urban poor, using lessons from
rural development. Fourth, its ideological thrust was much more prom-
inent, promoting the idea of a partnership between state and society.
Most Solidarity funding was distributed through targeted grants to
state and municipal governments.4' The actual degree of public account-
ability and antipoverty targeting depended in part on whether local gov-
ernments were democratically elected. Even where majority rule pre-
vailed, however, there was no guarantee that Solidarity funding would

more on ideological polemic than on empirical evidence, but the most plausible hypothesis is
that, on balance, most of the electorally targeted spending was probably delivered through
semiclientelist means. The basis for this general proposition, which will not be tested here, is
that since most Solidarity programs were delivered from outside the community, they lacked
the official party's once-powerful capacity to monitor and punish noncompliance at the in-
dividual level. As long as fraud remains an option for the regime, however, it can reduce the
importance of individual compliance. Recently, most electoral manipulation appears to have
occurred before election day. For example, over one hundred thousand likely opposition
voters were allegedly "shaved" from the registration rolls in Michoacin, especially in urban
PRD strongholds. See Ted Bardacke, "The Lion Learns New Tricks," El Financiero Interna-
cional, July 20, 1992. It must also be noted that the regime still uses sticks as well as carrots;
selective political violence against the Left also continues with impunity. The PRD reported
that 230 of its members had been killed for political reasons since 1988 (La Jornada, May 11,
1993). See also America's Watch, Human Rights in Mexico: A Policy of Impunity (New York:
America's Watch, 1990); idem, "Unceasing Abuses: Human Rights in Mexico One Year after
the Introduction of Reform" (New York: America's Watch, September 1991); and PRD Hu-
man Rights Commission, The Political Violence in Mexico: A Human Rights Affair (Mexico
City: Human Rights Commission Parliamentary Group, April 1992).
40 In addition to provision of public goods, this wide range of programs also included
many with benefits that were much more divisible and therefore more vulnerable to local
elite diversion (for example, soft loans for peasant producers). This distinction is central to
the analysis of targeting. See Judith Tendler, Rural Projects through Urban Eyes: An Interpre-
tation of the World Bank's New-Style Rural Development Projects Working Paper 532 (Wash-
ington, D.C.: World Bank, 1982).
41 Solidarity spending is allocated at the president's discretion, as distinct from Mexico's
official revenue-sharing, which is allocated according to technical formulas. See John Bailey,
"Centralism and Political Change in Mexico: The Case of National Solidarity," in Cornelius,
Craig, and Fox (fn. 38).

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 168 WORLD POLITICS

reach the poorest in society. Even if public works were built in poor
regions, the electoral logic of high-profile bridges, highways, park
benches, and basketball courts had little to do with alleviating poverty.
According to one top Solidarity policymaker, for example, less than 40
percent of its 1991 budget should really be considered antipoverty spend-
ing, since the rest consisted of untargeted public works.
Solidarity's declared emphasis on strengthening the municipality dif-
fered notably from previous reforms of social policy. Where opposition
political parties managed both to win over the majority of voters and to
get their municipal victories recognized, federal funders appeared not to
discriminate, since Solidarity spent money in almost all opposition mu-
nicipalities. But many opposition mayors protested that the program by-
passed them completely, linking the state and federal government di-
rectly to local Solidarity committees in their jurisdictions. The most
notable case was Michoacan's state capital, the largest city with a PRD
mayor.42 Moreover, where democracy did not prevail at the municipal
level and citizens' groups persisted in pressing charges of fraud, they
tended to be excluded from Solidarity.
Overall, Solidarity appeared to centralize power, promoting a sym-
bolic link between the president and the local community, often bypass-
ing both traditional political bosses and the opposition. This provoked
serious subterranean conflicts between "salinistas" at the federal level and
more traditional state authorities in the ruling party.43 Solidarity pro-
claimed the creation of over one hundred thousand local committees,
with an average of about 120 members each, and they became increas-
ingly important as counterweights to the official party apparatus. One
top Solidarity official estimates that as many as 40 percent of the com-
mittees had actually become local actors by 1993. In conflict with the
party's traditional corporatist sectors, the president openly encouraged
the local Solidarity committees to build statewide and possibly national
organizations with what he called the "new mass politics of the Mexican
state. 44

42 See Canti (fn. 38). On the PRD, see Jonathan Fox and Julio Moguel, "Pluralism and
Anti-Poverty Policy in Mexico: The Experience of Left Opposition Municipal Govern-
ments," in Victoria Rodriguez and Peter Ward, eds., Opposition Government in Mexico: Past
Experiences and Future Opportunities (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, forth-
coming); and on the National Action Party state government in Baja California Norte, see
Gerardo Albarrin de Alba, "Con Pronasol, la necesidad de la gente se usa electoralmente:
Ruffo," Proceso, no. 829, September 21, 1992. The pattern was not consistent, since some
opposition municipalities of both Right and Left managed to bargain for control over
PRONASOL resources.
43 See Dresser (fn. 37, 1991 and 1992); and Jorge Fernindez, "El PRI ante su propia tran-
sici6n," Unomdsuno, November 7, 1991.
44 In this context, the president reportedly once told the following to a longtime friend, a

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 169

Solidarity had a mixed record with autonomous social organizations,

recognizing some while challenging others. In some cases, Solidarity
agreements permitted independent poor people's organizations to bypass
hostile governors; this kind of federal-local alliance permitted the Pop-
ular Defense Committee (CDP) to win the mayoralty of the state capital
of Durango, displacing regional PRI elites.45 Where especially authoritar-
ian governors managed to exclude autonomous social organizations,
however, they used Solidarity programs to promote competing develop-
ment and welfare projects and reinforced the most authoritarian ele-
ments within the ruling party (for example, in Guerrero). In many areas
the local Solidarity committees appeared to reflect the "modernization"
of clientelistic control, as poor people in need of basic services shifted
their patrons from regional elites to federal officials.
The broader question is, what exactly was the combination of clien-
telist, semiclientelist, and pluralistic patterns of policy implementation
embedded within Solidarity's "new mass politics"? Because of the ex-
traordinary heterogeneity of the programs under Solidarity's banner, sys-
tematic generalization awaits further empirical research. The remainder
of this essay explains the limits and possibilities for respect for associa-
tional autonomy in a limiting case, one of the most potentially "proplu-
ralism" Solidarity programs.

TARGETING THE POOREST: SOLIDARITY BOLSTERS THE NATIONAL

INDIGENOUS INSTITUTE

The National Indigenous Institute (INI) carries out some of Solidarity's

most innovative development projects. Mexico's fifty-six indigenous
peoples represent 10-15 percent of the nation's population and almost
one-third of the fourteen million Mexicans officially considered to be in
"extreme poverty." With Solidarity, INI's budget increased eighteenfold

historic radical leader of the urban popular movement: "You were my teacher: everywhere
I go I leave a base of support." At a meeting of five hundred representatives of five thousand
urban Solidarity committees, for example, the president called for the creation of a national
neighborhood network outside the ruling party. See Emilio Lomas, "La democracia ya no es
de las cupulas, afirma Salinas," La Jornada, September 13, 1991; idem, "Salinas: nueva rela-
ci6n Estado-sociedad civil," La Jornada, September 15, 1991. Midway through the Salinas
presidency, his advisers secretly debated three options-use the committees to build a new
reform party, fold them openly into the official party, or keep them relatively nonpartisan.
The latter position reportedly won.
45 The CDP won the mayoralty in 1992 without allying with either the PAN or the PRD,
leading some observers to suggest its access to Solidarity resources moderated its approach to
national politics. See Paul Haber, "Collective Dissent in Mexico: The Political Outcome of
Contemporary Urban Popular Movements" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1992); idem,
"Political Change in Durango: The Role of National Solidarity," in Cornelius, Craig, and
Fox (fn. 38).

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 170 WORLD POLITICS

during the first three years of

peoples also happen to live in
provided Salinas with his official margin of victory in the 1988 presiden-
tial elections.47 Most of INI's budget had tended to go to its own staff
rather than to indigenous economic development.48 With Solidarity
funding, however, INI could transform itself from a service provider int
an actual economic development agency.49 But money alone was not
enough; INI's capacity to implement innovative policy also depended on
the role of a reform faction still embedded in the agency since past open-
ings. Since its founding in 1948, INI's history has been shaped by a shift-
ing internal balance of forces among three factions: authoritarian patrons
primarily identified with the ruling party and local elites, semiclientelist
opponents of local elite domination of indigenous peoples who did not
support independent demand making, and pluralists who supported au-
tonomous self-organization for indigenous rights. The latter group has
long provided only a minority of local outreach staff, who rarely man-
aged to have any input into INI policy-making. INI officials stressed that
they could be "faithful" to Solidarity principles of participation, plural-
ism, and transparency because most of their development funds were
distributed directly, bypassing municipal and state authorities that were
often openly racist.50

46 According to INI's annual report, its budget for the 1991 fiscal year was U.S. $140 million.
President Salinas named Arturo Warman, PIDER veteran and one of Mexico's most distin-
guished anthropologists, as INI director. Solidarity's overall coordinator, Carlos Rojas, had
worked for INI in Veracruz.
47 Many Mexican anthropologists see indigenous voting patterns in terms of local "short-
term considerations that have nothing to do with political programs that propose alternative
models for the future. The vote is seen more as a resource for here and now, [for] finishing
a road, building a school or a drinking water system; [the] small benefits that help to resolve
ancestral problems which shape their daily lives"; see Guillermo Bonfil, Mexico Profundo:
Una civilizacion negada (Mexico City: Grijalbo/coNAcuLT, 1990), iii. Indeed, parties are not
present in most indigenous regions (though this began to change after 1988). The analytical
problem is to distinguish cause from effect. If opposition political parties fail to champion
indigenous rights, then isolated villagers have few incentives to take the serious risks inherent
in partisan collective action, especially when it so often appears unviable. As voters, they may
not lack national political preferences as much as they lack meaningful national political
choices.
48 E.g., see Juan Flores, "Proyectos de Etnodesarrollo = los ricos mds ricos y los pobres
mds pobres," Etnias 2 (January 1991); and Alvaro Gonzalez, Teresa Valdivia, and Martha
Rees, "Evaluaci6n de los Programas Agricolas del INI: Chiapas, Puebla y Oaxaca" (Paper
presented at the Society for Applied Anthropology, Oaxaca, April 1987).
49 INI's other new initiatives during the Salinas administration included a human rights
program that released over six thousand indigenous prisoners, as well as promotion of a
constitutional amendment that for the first time officially recognized Mexico as a multicul-
tural society. As of mid-1993 human rights groups campaigned for the freedom of several
thousand indigenous prisoners who remained in jail without due process.
50 One INI official also stressed that his staff was different from that of most Solidarity
programs because they were "usually not in any political party. It's very unusual that INI
personnel are in the PRI-but they aren't in the [opposition] PRD either. They aren't people

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 171

INi had nominally supported the participation of indigenous organi-

zations since the mid-1970s, but for the first time the agency committed
itself explicitly to a pluralistic bargaining process. Now, INI was to

contribute to the strengthening of indigenous organizations, increasing their

autonomy and their capacity for representation and [project] management....
All the representative and legally constituted organizations can be subjects
of these concertacio'n processes, without any political or religious discrimi-
nation.... Public institutions will abstain from intervening in the internal
decisions of the organizations with which INI has concerted actions.51

How did INI put these policy guidelines into practice? This question
is best answered by examining INI's largest economic development pro-
gram, the Regional Solidarity Funds (FRS).52 In principle, these funds
went farther than most other Solidarity programs in developing a plu-
ralist relationship between the state and organized citizens, for two rea-
sons. First, the state devolved regional development decision making to
civil society, rather than micromanaging each local project from above.
Second, the interlocutors were supposed to be systematically made up of
autonomous councils of representative organizations, in contrast to the
ad hoc and discretionary relationships with autonomous groups that pre-
dominated elsewhere.53 Ostensibly, elected officials were not involved,
and government-affiliated organizations participated in the Regional
Funds just like any other producer group.54

who are going to induce [i.e., manipulate] or condition." He claimed that because they work
in such remote regions, "they will work with existing organizations-they can't invent oth-
ers.
51 INI, 1990, 41-42; emphasis added. Participation is limited to policy implementation here.
INI continued to reject the long-standing demands of indigenous groups for greater involve-
ment in the policy process itself. Some of INI'S most reformist policymakers tried this in 1983,
but they were quickly purged.
52 INI's other main economic program was its support for coffee producers after the abrupt
withdrawal of the Mexican Coffee Institute from the market. Two-thirds of coffee producers
are indigenous, accounting for 30 percent of national production and one-third of coffee
lands; see INI, Programa Nacional de Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indigenas, 1991-1994 (Mexico
City: INI, 1990), 17. INI's coffee program involved both pluralistic relations with autonomous
producer organizations and semiclientelist relations with INI-sponsored local Solidarity com-
mittees. See Luis Herndndez and Fernando Celis, "Solidarity and the New Campesino
Movement: The Case of Coffee Production," in Cornelius, Craig, and Fox (fn. 38).
53 INI described the FRS's in explicitly political terms: "The Funds are an innovative process
[to] increase the participatory role of civil society in decision making and in the definition of
policy, which reflects a change in state-society relations. The relationship of coresponsibility
established between the government and the indigenous population implies a turnaround in
the role of [government] institutions to avoid reproducing paternalistic and vertical attitudes
that interfere with indigenous peoples' development"; see INI, "Manual de Operaci6n de los
Fondos Regionales de Solidaridad para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indfgenas" (Unpublished
manuscript, Mexico City, November 1991), 2. This statement was dropped from the version
eventually published for mass distribution in 1993.
54 INI also encouraged the FRS's to go beyond economic support for production projects and

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 172 WORLD POLITICS

The Regional Funds were launched in 1990. Each INI field outreach
office convened a general assembly of the formal and informal commu-
nity-based social and economic organizations in its area of influence. The
general assembly was to elect a leadership council (LC), which would ac-
tually operate the fund and evaluate project proposals submitted from
the organizations of the region. Loans could be for a single crop cycle or
for as long as several years and could cover a broad range or economic
activities. In theory, those with regionwide multiplier effects were to be
given preference over projects whose benefits were limited to small
groups. In practice, however, projects ranged from tiny family enter-
prises and corrupt clientelistic payoffs to long-term investments in group
marketing that actually had regionwide development impact.
After the first two years INI's internal evaluations found that between
one-fourth and one-third of the Regional Funds were being consolidated
under indigenous organization control, a comparable share were failing,
in part due to capture by authoritarian elites, and a plurality were still
run by INI outreach staff.55 A variety of factors account for the mixed
performance, including continuing INI semiclientelism, uneven levels of
indigenous organizational development, and outright authoritarian ex-
clusion. The most consolidated funds emerged in regions where two fac-
tors came together: first, that indigenous producer groups were already
well organized, and second, that INT officials were either willing or
obliged to cede power over funding.

LEADERSHIP COUNCIL CONSOLIDATION: ARE ADVERSARIES INCLUDED?

The Regional Funds were the most promising "propluralism" case

within Solidarity, but to what degree did the state actually share power
with civil society? The answer requires a detailed study of who was ac-
tually represented by each leadership council and of the extent to which
those that were representative gained autonomy vis-aI-vis INI. Adminis-
trators were to provide technical support for project design but were not
to intervene in the actual decision-making process. Nevertheless, the of-
ficial financial procedures required that local INI directors co-sign project

become advocates for indigenous communities in the broader public investment allocation
process; the effort was largely unsuccessful.
55 The more consolidated Regional Funds were reportedly in Veracruz, Chiapas, and Oa-
xaca, while those in the Huasteca, Chihuahua, and the YucatAn peninsula did poorly. Ta-
basco was especially disastrous: the governor tried to impose a corrupt crony as local INI
director, which provoked a mass protest movement, and then rejected any development aid
that could possibly reach potential opposition sympathizers. Not coincidentally, the state PRD
leader, Manuel L6pez Obrador, had won a broad indigenous following during his tenure as
local INi director in the early 1980s.

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 173

loan checks. This gave each director potential veto power over the deci-
sions of the leadership councils, provoking serious debate between grass-
roots organizations and INI officials.
The field study of the politics of access to the Regional Solidarity
Funds focused on the southern state of Oaxaca, which accounted for
twenty of the almost one hundred Regional Funds in 1992.56 INI's Oaxaca
staff used evaluation categories that paralleled the traditional clientelist,
semiclientelist, and pluralist patterns suggested above. They categorized
the leadership councils as: (1) LCS whose development was blocked by the
intervention of political parties, local economic or political bosses or con-
flicts between local groups, (2) LCs that were INI-run (that is, semiclien-
telist), (3) LCS that gained autonomy from the INI, using the fund to con-
solidate their organizing process and pursue regional development
strategies. According to INI's confidential evaluations, toward the end of
their first year, of the twenty Oaxaca LCS, five were blocked or taken over
by political bosses, ten were still run by the INI, and five were gaining
autonomy. This general pattern was confirmed by the author's direct
field study, together with a survey of independent indigenous leaders
and nongovernmental development experts from throughout the state.
This survey also found a consensus that after the first two years of Re-
gional Fund operations, at least six leadership councils had reached "con-
solidation," meaning that autonomous groups played a leading role in
allocating resources.57 This survey found that only three of the twenty
Oaxaca leadership councils excluded representative indigenous organi-
zations.
Perhaps the single most revealing indicator of relative pluralism was
the presence of affiliates of the nonpartisan Oaxaca State Network of
Coffee Producing Organizations (CEPCO), the most consolidated autono-
mous grassroots economic organization in the state, including over
twenty thousand mainly indigenous producers.58 In most leadership

56 Oaxaca is one of Mexico's poorest states and at least 44% of the state's population speaks
one of the state's seventeen indigenous languages; Rafael Blanco Rivera, "Oaxaca, 1980,"
Cuadernos de Demografia Indigena (Mexico City: INI, Direcci6n de Investigaci6n y Promoci6n
Cultural, 1991).
57 These leadership councils were based in Jamiltepec, Miahuatlin, Huautla, Tlacolula,
Guelatao, and Cuicatlin. It must be stressed that "consolidation" does not imply that all or
even most member groups of an LC were representative grassroots groups. Five of Oaxaca's
twenty LCs were not "test" cases because of the lack of autonomous indigenous producer
organizations in those regions as of mid-1992. For details, see Jonathan Fox, "Targeting the
Poorest: The Role of the National Indigenous Institute in Mexico's Solidarity Program," in
Cornelius, Craig, and Fox (fn. 38).
58 Most CEPCO member groups are nonpartisan or operate within the PRI, although a few
sympathize with the PRD. CEPCO's main activity is buying, processing, and selling coffee, set-
ting a floor price following the withdrawal of the state from the market in 1989, and repre-
senting about one-third of Oaxaca's small coffee producers. Much of the state government

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 174 WORLD POLITICS

councils they shared power (and therefore funds) with both corporatist
and other autonomous organizations, often for the first time. Several
CEPCO members claimed to be underrepresented in the councils, but only
in two LCS out of thirteen were they excluded.59 Overall, the Regional
Funds program constituted a small fraction of overall Solidarity funding,
even in largely indigenous rural areas, but it was unusual because the
pluralistic access was officially supposed to include the entire universe of
representative groups in each region, in contrast to the ad hoc and dis-
cretional entry points autonomous groups faced in other Solidarity pro-
grams.

THE "WAR OF POSITION" FOR PLURALIST INCLUSION

The potential distribution of pluralistic leadership councils depended

fundamentally on the varying "thickness" of Mexico's organized indig-
enous civil society in some regions richly textured, in others quite thin
or still heavily structured by clientelism. Some regions had experienced
two decades of the ebb and flow of protest and mobilization, often begin-
ning with issues of land rights and then focusing on issues of ethnic
identity and human rights.60 Most of the movements that managed to
offset entrenched regional political and economic elites had previously
received some kind of support, or at least toleration, from reformist pro-
grams like PIDER or CONASUPO-COPLAMAR; each brief and partial opening
of political space for new levels of regionwide collective action left the
movements better able to take advantage of future cracks in the system.

and the corporatist apparatus felt threatened by CEPCO's success at providing an alternative.
See Julio Moguel and Josefina Aranda, "La Coordinadora Estatal de Productores de Cafe de
Oaxaca," in Julio Moguel, Carlota Botey, and Luis Hernindez, eds., Autonomia y nuevos
sujetos sociales en el desarrollo rural (Mexico City: Siglo XXI/CEHAM, 1992).
59 A robust notion of pluralism would go beyond this inclusion/exclusion dichotomy and
involve some degree of proportional representation. Funds include groups ranging in size
from tiny kinship groups to producer associations representing thousands of families, yet in
most leadership councils each has the same vote. Some INi directors used their clientele as
counterweights to keep more broadly representative groups in the minority. The Mazateca
highlands leadership council led the first experiment in institutionalizing proportional rep-
resentation in the leadership councils, weighting the number of assembly delegates according
to the membership of each participating organization. The INI convened this process in an
apparent effort to undermine the outspoken cEpco-affiliated leadership of the Mazateca re-
gion's Lc and to strengthen the official corporatist group, but the independent coffee produc-
ers swept the elections.
60 Recent indigenous movements have been most intense in Chiapas, Oaxaca, Hidalgo,
Veracruz, and Guerrero. See Maria Consuelo Mejia Pineiros and Sergio Sarmiento, La lucha
indigena: un reto a la ortodoxia (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1987); Carole Nagengast and Michael
Kearney, "Mixtec Ethnicity: Social Identity, Political Consciousness and Political Activism,"
Latin American Research Review 25, no. 2 (1990); Sergio Sarmiento, "Movimiento indio y
modernizaci6n," Cuadernos Agrarios 2, new series (1991); and the journals Etnias and Ojarasca
(formerly Mdxico Indigena).

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 175

This "accumulation of forces" was very uneven, however, and many

regions still lacked autonomous groups with the necessary bargaining
power and organizational capacity to handle development projects. INI
officials in these regions continued to control the Regional Funds, ac-
cording to both nongovernment development organizations and INI'S
own internal evaluations.
If the map of representative societal groups was uneven, so was INI's
commitment to the program's pluralist principles. The directors of each
of the almost one hundred outreach centers were key actors, responsible
for convening the elections for leadership councils in their region. They
also retained the power to co-sign the development project checks. Ac-
cording to high-level "pro-pluralism" INI stafffewer than half of the out-
reach directors "understood" the goals of the Regional Funds program
(that is, were willing to relinquish their traditional discretional authority
over funding). Both state and societal actors willing to share power were
distributed unevenly throughout the country, and possibilities for respect
for associational autonomy were greatest where they overlapped. Where
consolidated, representative organizations already existed and INI direc-
tors were willing to devolve effective power over Regional Fund re-
source allocation, "virtuous circles" of pluralistic policy implementation
emerged. These nascent processes nevertheless faced two major obstacles
at higher levels in the political system. The first was resistance from more
authoritarian political elites, often entrenched in state governments, and
the second was INI'S own semiclientelistic tendencies.
Governors are strategic authoritarian elements within the regime, in
part because they can resist reform efforts in the name of federalism.6'
In states where indigenous peoples joined the electoral opposition, au-
thoritarian elites usually blocked the Regional Funds program (for ex-
ample, Tabasco, Michoacan, Guerrero). INI may have had more room for
maneuver in Oaxaca in part because the state lacked a statewide electoral
challenge. Yet the most authoritarian response to the program was in a
state with virtually no electoral competition at all Chiapas. Governors
of Chiapas, one of Mexico's most socially polarized states, tend to be
among the most repressive and patrimonial. Indigenous organizations in
Chiapas were nevertheless highly developed in many regions, reportedly
leading to consolidation among almost half of the Regional Funds in the
state, according to INI'S survey. INI and indigenous producer organiza-
tions were sufficiently successful at building tolerant relationships such
that the governor jailed three top INI officials on trumped-up charges of

61 The rate at which presidents remove governors is an excellent indicator of the degree of
intrastate conflict in Mexico. During the first three years of the Salinas administration, nine
of the thirty-one governors had been forced to resign.

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 176 WORLD POLITICS

fraud. Autonomous indigenous organizations marched to defend them.

As one leader put it:

Their only crime was to work with everyone, whether or not they are
sympathizers of the government. . . . We demand that they respect us,
now that we're learning [to carry out development projects], that they
don't block our work.. .. This is a political problem-they blame the INI
for everything that happens in Chiapas, but we want to make clear that
these are our decisions.62

The other main threat to pluralistic inclusion of autonomous groups

was INI's political imperative to demonstrate its loyalty to the govern-
ment's broader policy agenda. For example, in the brief period of public
debate before President Salinas announced his historic 1991 privatization
of the land-reform system, INI was perceived as being concerned about
the possible social cost.63 Once the constitutional reform was announced
and the national debate peaked, however, INI's director closed ranks in
support, calling a last-minute national meeting of five hundred Regional
Fund representatives to meet the president. The first reaction of Oaxa-
ca's twenty leadership councils was to reject the "invitation." They felt
that since their membership had not yet had the opportunity to discuss
the proposed reform, they were in no position to go to a national meeting
of de facto acclamation. Some even expressed concern for their physical
safety upon their return to their communities, since they would be per-
ceived as having supported the reform. After an extended open debate a
desperate appeal from INI's Oaxaca state director helped to swing a 14-6
vote in favor of going to Mexico City. If he failed to deliver his ostensible
base in a major INI effort to show the agency's loyalty to this key presi-
dential project, he risked being replaced by a less flexible director. Re-
gardless of their vote, most fund leaders felt the INI had betrayed its
promise to treat them like citizens.
Although this heavy-handed "roundup" for the presidential meeting
resonated with traditional clientelism, it was actually more semiclientel-
ist in content. The reformists attempted to condition access, but indige-

62 Rosa Rojas, "Indigenas de Chiapas piden se libere a 3 funcionarios del INI," La Jornada,
March 21, 1992. Leaders of the Chiapas funds were also involved in the successful Xi 'Nich
human rights protest march to Mexico City in early 1992. The national leader of Mexico's
Independent Front of Indian Peoples (FIPI)-a frequent INI critic-confirmed that the Chia-
pas Regional Funds were remarkably open to independent groups. See Margarito Xib Ruiz
Hernindez, "Todo indigenismo es lo mismo," Ojarasca (February 1993).
63 See Matilde Perez, "El ejido es un sistema equitativo y eficaz: INI," La Jornada, October
23, 1991. For a political analysis of the 1991 reform of Mexico's land-tenure system, see
Jonathan Fox, "Political Change in Mexico's New Peasant Economy," in Maria Lorena
Cook, Kevin Middlebrook, and Juan Molinar Horcacitas, eds., The Politics of Economic Re-
structuring in Mexico (La Jolla: UCSD, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, forthcoming).

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 177

nous leaders freely debated the strategy and tactics of their response.
They faced the threat of the withdrawal of carrots, not sticks. Several
months later, when INI officials asked the same state council of Regional
Fund leaders to meet with the government's candidate for governor of
Oaxaca, they again debated how to respond. Again, the vote was 14 to 6
to invite the official candidate, but on the condition that the statewide
council invite all other candidates for governor as well. INI arranged the
meeting but "forgot" to invite the opposition candidates. The indigenous
leaders proceeded to meet with opposition leaders on their own; this time
they used their autonomy to open new terrain for civic pluralism.
In summary, an important minority of the Regional Solidarity Funds
made progress toward developing more tolerant relationships between
reformist branches of the state and many of Mexico's autonomous indig-
enous organizations. This process also led to new degrees of power shar-
ing between politically and ethnically diverse indigenous organizations
themselves. Nevertheless, this process lagged in much of the country be-
cause of entrenched semiclientelism, authoritarian exclusion and back-
lash, and the uneven degrees of consolidation among autonomous indig-
enous groups themselves.64

TOWARD PLURALISM WITHOUT DEMOCRACY

Since the early 1970s successive waves of rural development reform

opened small but significant cracks in the system, permitting greater
space for more tolerant bargaining relations between the state and society
in some of Mexico's poorest regions. The openings were small because
they were limited to those few regions and policy areas where reformists
effectively intervened in the implementation of rural development pol-
icy. The openings were significant because they offered political and eco-
nomic resources that fostered the consolidation of growing representa-
tive and autonomous social organizations.
Even some of society's weakest actors indigenous smallholder move-

64 As of mid-1993 the future of the Regional Solidarity Fund program was in doubt. The
Social Development Ministry, which controls overall Solidarity funding, had frozen most of
INI's 1992 allocations for the Regional Solidarity Funds, blaming lagging repayment rates.
Difficulties with repayment were not surprising, given the problems of profitability through-
out the agricultural sector; but since the government was very flexible with much larger debts
from other agricultural borrowers, such as owners of large coffee plantations or the buyers
of privatized sugar mills, slow repayment rates alone were not an especially credible expla-
nation for defunding the program. INI had been politically weakened by the transfer of its
influential director to the newly created post of agrarian attorney general. This left INI's
Regional Funds vulnerable to powerful antipluralist elements within the Social Development
Ministry itself, which wanted to take project decision-making power away from the leader-
ship councils.

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 178 WORLD POLITICS

ments-increased their capacity to bargain with the state while retaining

important degrees of autonomy. Some chose to abstain from overt elec-
toral challenges, mainly to avoid losing semiclientelistic access to signifi-
cant resources. But if representative leadership remained in place, they
could then choose to engage in open opposition politics if and when the
political opportunity structure changed. In a gradual "war of position,"
social movements and state reformists pushed back the boundaries of the
politically possible.65 With the National Solidarity Program, political ac-
tion from both above and below further eroded classic clientelism, in
urban as well as rural areas. Semiclientelism largely took its place, along
with enclaves of pluralist bargaining.
Yet the relationship between the distributive and electoral realms of
politics remains problematic. In the electoral arena, Mexico's gradual lib-
eralization began in the early 1970s and was largely limited to the Con-
gress, the weakest branch of government.66 Both the vote-counting pro-
cess and the broadcast media remained virtually closed to independent
scrutiny. Nevertheless, by the early 1990s the regime began an uncertain
process of selective democratization, recognizing some opposition victo-
ries (usually from the Right) but not others (usually from the Left). The
regime began to accept electoral defeats more often, but in response to
mass civic antifraud protests rather than because of actual ballot results.
As of 1992 most contested elections were still settled through protest and
negotiation after the actual voting process was over, a process known as
the "second round."67
One indicator of the ambiguous relationship between distributive and
electoral politics is the uncertain relationship between the liberalization
of access to distributive programs and the limited democratization in the
electoral arena. Was more open access to social programs a substitute for

65 Distributive reform thus became political reform, as Przeworski defines it: "a modifi-
cation of the organization of conflicts that alters the prior probabilities of realizing group
interests given their resources." See Adam Przeworski, "Some Problems in the Study of the
Transition to Democracy," in Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence
Whitehead, eds., Transition from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 58.
66 See Wayne Cornelius, "Political Liberalization in an Authoritarian Regime: Mexico,
1976-1985," in Judith Gentleman, ed., Mexican Politics in Transition (Boulder, Colo.: West-
view Press, 1987); and Kevin Middlebrook, "Political Liberalization in an Authoritarian
Regime: The Case of Mexico," in O'Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead (fn. 65). On electoral
change in the 1980s, see Cornelius, Gentleman, and Smith (fn. 26). For a comparative dis-
cussion of Mexico's transition that explores the distinction between the formal regime and
the actual political system, see Antonio Camou, "Once tesis sobre la 'transici6n' mexicana:
Gobernabilidad y democracia," Nexos 55 (February 1992).
67 The regime was able to manage this uncertain process largely because the most con-
tested races-for governors and mayors-were staggered so that the ruling party faced only
one or two difficult states at a time.

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 179

further electoral democratization, or did it occur in spite of its absence?

Did the relatively open distributive policies analyzed here simply consti-
tute the exception that proves the rule of Mexican authoritarianism, in
that each partial opening of social programs merely bought votes to re-
inforce electoral hegemony? Generalization is difficult because electoral
conflict had a contradictory impact on most of Solidarity's distributive
programs: it simultaneously pressured reformists to encourage the legit-
imacy of pluralism, created an incentive for them to use the programs as
a semiclientelistic mechanism to discourage electoral opposition, and
provoked an authoritarian backlash from clientelistic machine politi-
cians. As a result, implementation of Solidarity involved three concurrent
scenarios: more of the same authoritarian clientelism; modernized semi-
clientelism, involving attempted but unenforceable buying of political
support; and pluralism, where antipoverty resource allocation was not
conditioned on political subordination. The Regional Solidarity Fund
experience showed that the trend for state action to divide into these
three patterns emerged in both regions with and regions without elec-
toral competition.
The clearest connection between distributive and electoral politics in-
volves social spending in opposition voter strongholds, but the actual
electoral impact of such targeting depends on the degree to which clien-
telistic controls have eroded on the ground. In other words, electoral
impact of pork barrel-type spending on potential opposition voters de-
pends not only on the disproportionate amount channeled to a given dis-
trict but also on the degree to which political control mechanisms can
actually enforce compliance in exchange for these resources. One good
indicator of the potential persistence of authoritarian controls is the de-
gree of actual ballot secrecy. The 1992 Michoacan governor's race, for
example, which coincided with massive Solidarity funding, saw the right
to ballot secrecy violated in one-fifth of the polling places, according to
an independent observer group. Ballot secrecy for indigenous people was
especially vulnerable, as it was subject to manipulation under the pretext
of handling literacy and language problems.68
Solidarity's electoral targeting certainly helped to buffer the political
impact of the government's controversial macroeconomic program,
weakening the opposition in the short run in some areas.69 In the longer

68 On the numerous irregularities, including widespread reports of attempts to condition

Solidarity funding on PRI votes, see the election observer report by the Convergencia de
Organismos Civiles por la Democracia, "Informe de observacion electoral," Perfil de la
nada, August 16, 1992.
69 The regime's willingness to cede legitimacy to some autonomous citizens' groups while
continuing to manipulate elections also sharpened divisions within the left-leaning electoral

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 180 WORLD POLITICS

run, however, if the state's mechanisms for enforcing voter compliance

continue to weaken, then more and more citizens may well accept pork-
barrel funding but also still vote their conscience, as civic activism broad-
ens and deepens. Opposition party leaders increasingly urged potential
supporters to accept the inducements from the ruling party, especially
since they were usually paid for with public funds, and then vote their
conscience. Whether this opposition response to official semiclientelism
succeeds will depend largely on whether the share of votes that is depos-
ited secretly and counted fairly can be increased.
Because the relationship between distributive and electoral politics can
be contradictory liberalizing in one arena while remaining closed in
another the erosion of clientelistic controls over distributive politics
will not necessarily lead to electoral democratization. Indeed, it is possi-
ble that the lack of guaranteed enforcement mechanisms inherent in
semiclientelism will increase incentives for hard-liners in the regime to
rely on electoral fraud. The prospects for clean elections are likely to
reflect in part the relative strength of more reformist currents within the
regime that are willing to consider further political change and in part
the efforts of opposition parties and autonomous social actors to broaden
and deepen their still uneven roots in society. The prospects for democ-
ratization in Mexico will thus depend on how conflict between more and
less authoritarian policy currents within the state interacts with growing
civic pressure from below.70

CONCLUSIONS

It is difficult to generalize about how national political change interacts

with the process of extending effective citizenship rights to the entire
population, largely because the analytical categories for "actually exist-
ing" political systems fail to capture important gray areas.7' Many of the

opposition. When the wounds of the 1988 electoral conflict were still fresh, the PRD harshly
condemned social organizations that bargained for Solidarity funds, asserting that they were
implicitly recognizing the president's legitimacy. The PRD's stance later softened, but its re-
lationship with important social movements was damaged. See Dresser (fn. 37, 1991); and
Haber (fn. 45).
70 So far, two scenarios predicted by Cornelius and his colleagues are combining: "mod-
ernization of authoritarianism with selective pluralism" and "limited power sharing," along
the lines of the Indian Congress Party model. See Cornelius, Gentleman, and Smith (fn.
26); and Wayne Cornelius and Ann Craig, The Mexican Political System in Transition (La
Jolla: UCSD, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, 1991), 118-19.
71 As Pye put it, "We need finer shades of typologies of political systems between the
classical polar opposites of authoritarian and democratic. In the wake of the crisis of author-
itarianism we can expect a wide variety of systems that will become part authoritarian and
part free and that will fall far short of any reasonable definitions of democracy." See Lucian

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 181

authoritarian regimes around the world that have now turned to elec-
toral politics are not necessarily in transition to more democratic re-
gimes; they can stabilize far short of democracy.72 Mexico is not the only
country in the early 1990s that holds competitive elections but still fails
to reach a democratic threshold. El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, and
Peru come to mind in Latin America. Asian examples include Taiwan,
Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines; in Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, and
Kenya, among others. Serbia is the most notable case in Europe. Several
of the former Soviet republics may fall into this category as well.
The politics of social policy can tell us a great deal about nonelectoral
dimensions of democratization. Many types of regimes are now experi-
menting with "demand-based" antipoverty funds aimed at making
structural economic adjustment politically viable; Mexico's Solidarity
program is an especially sophisticated version of this much broader
trend. Bolivia's social emergency fund was the first to attract interna-
tional attention in 1986, and similar programs were carried out by Peru,
Chile, Colombia, Zambia, Senegal, Ghana, Poland, El Salvador, and
Honduras. Like Solidarity, some of these new targeted antipoverty pro-
grams created political openings for social movements and nongovern-
mental organizations, while others reinforced partisan clientelistic con-
trols. El Salvador and Senegal used their programs as instruments of
political control, at least until the late 1980s, while in Bolivia, Chile, and
Zambia, transitions to electoral democracy permitted pluralistic antipov-
erty policy. Peru's program largely perpetuated semiclientelism.73 Across

W. Pye, "Political Science and the Crisis of Authoritarianism," American Political Science
Review 84 (March 1990), 13.
72 See Terry Lynn Karl (fn. 1) on "electoralism"; Philippe Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl,
"What Democracy Is . . . and Is Not," Journal of Democracy 2 (Summer 1991); Tina Rosen-
berg, "Beyond Elections," Foreign Policy 84 (Fall 1991); and Guy Hermet, Richard Rose, and
Alain Rouqui6, eds., Elections without Choice (New York: John Wiley, 1978). Stable electoral
competition is sometimes confused with political democracy; see, e.g., John Higley and Ri-
chard Gunther, eds., Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Thus Mexico's ruling party holds the
world's record for stability, having presided over electoral presidential successions since 1929.
Some analysts fall into the opposite trap, assuming that unfair elections are politically mean-
ingless exercises. Note, for example, the surprise military split and subsequent civic uprising
following Philippine president Marcos's fraudulent "snap" elections in 1986. See also the
debate over the relevance of El Salvador's sharply constrained wartime elections of the mid-
1980s in Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead, Demonstration Elections (Boston: South End
Press, 1984); Terry Lynn Karl, "Imposing Consent? Electoralism vs. Democratization in El
Salvador," in Paul Drake and Eduardo Silva, eds., Elections and Democratization in Latin
America, 1980-1985 (La Jolla: UCSD-CILAS, 1986).
73 On social investment funds, see Carol Graham, "The APRA Government and the Urban
Poor: The PIAT Programme in Lima's Pueblos J6venes," Journal of Latin American Studies 23
(February 1991); idem, "The Politics of Protecting the Poor during Adjustment: Bolivia's
Emergency Social Fund," World Development 20 (September 1992); idem, "Mexico's National
Solidarity Program in Comparative Perspective: Demand-Based Poverty Alleviation Pro-

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 182 WORLD POLITICS

this disparate group of countries, the degree of political conditionality

required for access to these new social funds is a key indicator of the
extent of the transition from clientelism to citizenship.
This focus on the politics of social policy shows that the relationship
between electoral competition and the erosion of authoritarian clientel-
ism is not obvious. In other words, electoral competition can either
strengthen or weaken coercive clientelism, which in turn can be either
strengthened or weakened by electoral competition. Each clearly influ-
ences the other, but the direction is politically contingent. For example,
if elections offer voters alternatives, they can increase clients' leverage
over vote-buying patrons (as in Taiwan and Thailand).74 But clientelistic
machines around the world have also shown that the threat of electoral
competition can also create incentives for elites to limit political choices
sharply. Even under ostensibly democratic regimes, the use of violence
with impunity against certain groups or in certain regions can perpetuate
authoritarian enclaves (as in rural areas of Brazil, Colombia, and the
Philippines).75 More generally, clientelistic bargaining relations are most
imbalanced in authoritarian bastions where clients lack the exit options
associated with meaningful electoral alternatives.
Although the spread of seemingly small free spaces in civil society is
widely recognized to weaken dictatorships, there is also a connection
between uneven degrees of freedom at the local level and national poli-
tics a fact rarely considered when analyzing the prospects for demo-
cratic consolidation; that is, the persistence of authoritarian redoubts un-
der competitive electoral systems matters for national politics. The
resilience of local authoritarian enclaves constrains national democratic
consolidation because margins matter for majority rule.76 The exclusion
of potential swing voters from access to associational autonomy and com-
petitive elections can be enough to determine national political outcomes.

grams in Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe," in Cornelius, Craig, and Fox (fn. 38).
One could argue that opposition state governments in India carried out comparable programs
earlier. See Atul Kohli, The State and Poverty in India: The Politics of Reform (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987); and John Echeverri-Gent, "Public Participation and
Poverty Alleviation: The Experience of Reform Communists in India's West Bengal," World
Development 20 (October 1992).
74 See Herr (fn. 23); and Philip Shenon, "It's Business as Usual in Thailand (Votes for
Sale)," New York Times, March 18, 1992; as well as Scott (fn. 8, 1992).
75 Thus, in 1988 Colombia appeared to take a major step toward greater pluralism by
permitting citizens to elect their mayors for the first time. But once elected, many opposition
mayors were assassinated by state-sanctioned death squads. See Leah Carroll, "Repression
and the Limits to Rural Democratization: The Experience of Leftist County Executives in
Colombia, 1988-1990" (Paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association, April
1991).
76 By contrast, some analysts consider elections to be democratic if the bulk of the popu-
lation participates; see, e.g., Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the
Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

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 FROM CLIENTELISM TO CITIZENSHIP: MEXICO 183

There are many examples in the Americas. Even though Chile had
long been considered a consolidated democracy, the national political
equation was skewed through the early 1960s by the disenfranchisement
of the rural poor.77 The same was true in Brazil, where the prospect of
permitting the illiterates to vote contributed to the 1964 coup. Peru's
largely indigenous illiterate population was also denied the vote until the
return of electoral rule in 1980. Regional redoubts of exclusion persist
even after such formal barriers are removed. In Brazil's 1989 presidential
race the candidate of the Left took the large cities, but the Right won
with the hinterland, where authoritarian clientelism and semiclientelism
are still pervasive.78 And rural districts gave Salinas his official majority
in Mexico's 1988 presidential race.79 The general point that "subnational
authoritarian regimes" can tip the national political balance should not
be new to observers of the United States, where the coercive disenfran-
chisement of African Americans and many poor whites in the South
determined national political outcomes for most of the twentieth cen-
tury.
The question of how effective access to citizenship rights is extended
to an entire society requires a framework that differs from most ap-
proaches to national regime change. While transitions to electorally com-
petitive regimes are usually analyzed in terms of movement back and
forth along two dimensions, the erosion of clientelism can evolve in sev-
eral directions simultaneously. Authoritarian clientelism does not neces-
sarily erode in a linear process toward citizenship. The Mexican experi-
ence shows that even as sophisticated state managers can promote
semiclientelism as an alternative to citizenship rights, social movements
can gnaw at small cracks in the system and try to open them further.
The result is a gradual and uneven transition from clientelism to citizen-
ship that involves the coexistence under the same formal regime of three
different de facto political systems: entrenched redoubts of authoritari-
anism, broad swaths of modernized semiclientelism, and enclaves of plu-
ralist tolerance that exhibit elements of citizenship. Where subnational
authoritarian regimes survive within nationally competitive electoral sys-
tems, the transitions can get stuck and fail to cross the threshold to dem-
ocratic governance.

77 See Brian Loveman, "Political Participation and Rural Labor in Chile," in Mitchell A.
Seligson and John A. Booth, eds., Political Participation in Latin America, vol. 2, Politics and
the Poor (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1979).
78 See Fernando Da Silveira Cotrim, A geografia do voto no Brasil: Elei(-oes de 1989 (Rio
Janeiro: IBASE, 1990). On the persistent clout of the traditional political class, see Hagopian
(fn. 7, 1990 and 1992).
79 See Arturo L6pez et al., Geografia de las elecciones presidenciales de Mexico, 1988 (Mexico
City: Fundaci6n Arturo Rosenblueth, 1989).

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 184 WORLD POLITICS

This conclusion implies that the conventional notion of political de-

mocratization as a single regime transition should be-recast as a set of
transitions along the various key dimensions of democracy.80 What, then,
are some of the more general relationships between these different gen-
res of transition? We still lack systematic analyses of the ways in which
electoral competition relates to other, also ostensibly minimum condi-
tions for democracy, such as civilian control over the military, effective
universal suffrage, an end to vote fraud, or ending impunity for state-
sanctioned violence.8' Such transitions may overlap, they may be mutu-
ally dependent in diverse ways, but they are logically and historically
distinct.
In conclusion, this study of the transition from clientelistic subordi-
nation to citizenship rights of access to the state suggests that the rela-
tionship between national electoral competition and the gradual process
of constructing respect for associational autonomy throughout society is
reciprocal. The net effect of this mutual influence is politically contin-
gent, however. Progress along one dimension of democratization may
encourage movement along another, but obstacles in one arena can also
hold back the rest of the process.

80 Because these dimensions evolve along such different paths, Schmitter suggests that it
may be useful to understand democracy as a "composite of 'partial regimes,' each of which
[is] institutionalized around distinctive sites for the representation of social groups." See Phi-
lippe Schmitter, "The Consolidation of Democracy and Representation of Social Groups,"
American Behavioral Scientist 35 (March-June 1992), 427.
81 For general discussions of measurement issues, see Alex Inkeles, ed., On Measuring De-
mocracy (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1991). For new studies of degrees of
civilian control over the military, see David Pion-Berlin, "Military Autonomy and Emerging
Democracies in South America," Comparative Politics 25 (October 1992); and Jorge Za-
verucha, "The Degree of Military Political Autonomy during the Spanish, Argentine, and
Brazilian Transitions," Journal of Latin American Studies 25 (May 1993).

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