Another Stripe on the Tiger

 Another Stripe on the Tiger

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Mexico is at a breaking point institutionally. The most recent report from the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg, one of the most respected global authorities in measuring political systems, has reclassified our country. Mexico is no longer considered a democracy, but an electoral autocracy. This diagnosis coincides with the warnings that political scientist José Antonio Aguilar Rivera has issued regarding the erosion of Mexican liberalism. The decline is not an isolated event, but a seven-year process.

According to the assessment, the deterioration began after the 2018 elections and has accelerated under the current administration. The data is conclusive: Mexico now ranks below nations like India, Peru, and Senegal in its democratic standards. The world, in general, has regressed to levels of freedom comparable to 1978, but the Mexican case stands out for the speed of its transformation.

An electoral autocracy is a regime where elections are still held, but the playing field is so skewed that competition is artificial. Recent reforms are blamed for this regression. The reform of the judiciary to elect judges by popular vote is seen by experts as the capture of the last independent check on power.

By politicizing the courts, the balance of power disappears.The report details that freedom of expression is the first domino to fall.

Harassment of the press and attempts at censorship place the government among the top global offenders of the last decade. Differences and conflicts with civil society are also included in this category of curtailment of freedoms. The absolute control that Morena exercises over the executive and legislative branches has allowed it to dismantle the institutional framework that took decades to build.

In the words of experts like Aguilar Rivera, we are not returning to the hegemonic party system of the last century, but rather facing a new model that uses the legitimacy of the ballot box to suppress pluralism.V-Dem's warning is clear: when a democracy begins to autocratize, it is far more likely to collapse completely than to survive.

The perspective of autonomous and decentralized organizations in the 4T

 The perspective of autonomous and decentralized organizations in the 4T

Diego Martin Velazquez Caballero

The history of the neoliberal era in Mexico could have a prologue that states: "Once upon a time there was a State...,". As much as liberal democrat political scientists raise the issue of transparency, civil society, public sphere and human rights, etc.; as a conquest of the neoliberalist stage, the truth is that the indicators and the popular conscience do not allow them to lie anymore. The international organizations that measure the quality of democracy, governance and human development have been there for more than a decade. The destruction of the State in Mexico corresponds to neoliberalism. David Collier, Menno Vellinga and Guillermo O'Donnell each built compilations during these decades to talk about the paradigm shift that the state conception of the neoliberals meant.

When President Vicente Fox pointed out that the country could be managed like a company, this reflected the managerial and economic vision that was adopted to build public policies from the vantage points of the new public administration (for example: Ramón Muñoz Gutiérrez, Eduardo Sojo and Ernesto Derbez). The managerial perspective, like the technocratic one, was a resounding failure. The Mexican State cannot be rebuilt if the intention is to destroy it.

In accordance with the basic notes of constitutional law and political science, the government headed by Morena and the Fourth Transformation are rebuilding the State, although due to the historical gap this is a setback for some clueless people, or else, the consolidation of Bolivarian Chavismo.

The State is the legal, political, economic and even ideological configuration; that a society chooses to coexist and govern itself. Autonomous organizations and civil society do not appear anywhere in the classical theory of the state. The islands that the neoliberals developed to maintain an influence do not protect society at all, they only constitute a distinctive element of the Welfare State for the oligarchy that the members of the red circle and organic intellectuals of the business and religious right yearn for.

The social doctrine of the Catholic Church must be put into dialogue with Carl Schmitt, who they love. Is that the State that PRIANRD wants?

The Mexican State has faced its enemies since the Constitution of 1857 and, mainly, the Constitution of 1917. Neither the INE nor the INAI are indispensable for the Mexican State. Defending the juarista and revolutionary spirit of the positivist constructs that give us homeland and freedom, is the task that deserves to be highlighted.