Mexico and Vicente Fox
Comparative Politics Project
Vicente Fox and Mexico
Comparative Politics Project
The Vicente Fox victory shows that Mexico has accomplished the rare feat of ending an authoritarian regime by voting it out of office. The level of corruption that kept the rich getting richer and leaving the rest to live in poverty was the catalyst to help Fox and the National Action Party, PAN, overcome the long ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI. The countries middle class, entrepreneurs, wealthy and elite all worked together to help Fox move forward to victory. The greatest part of the change is that it came about because the country voted in change and democracy. Mexico should use that change to propel forward with an economically successful and a stable democratic government.
The PRI has been widely described as a coalition of networks of aspiring politicians seeking not only positions of power and prestige but also the concomitant opportunity for personal enrichment. (http://countrystudies.us/mexico/84.htm) The level of corruption and the buying of votes kept the PRI in power for too long. For decades, many successful businesses in Mexico depended on executives' cozy, if not downright corrupt, relations with the state. Successive PRI governments protected Mexican industries with high tariffs, which from the 1940's through the early 1970's produced spectacular growth, averaging about 7 percent annually, although the country's famously low wages remained stagnant. (Dillon, 1999)
In many neighborhoods that long were PRI strongholds, and among working class Mexicans who were its most loyal followers, one theme was recurrent: Mexico had to do something different. ''I've never seen a change, and I have been asking myself, when is it going to happen?'' said Gustavo Sanchez, a 32-year-old auto mechanic in Ecatepec, a huge proletarian suburb of Mexico City where the PRI was once invincible. ''Our leaders need to know that if they don't do the job right, we're going to
Vicente Fox and Mexico
Comparative Politics Project
The Vicente Fox victory shows that Mexico has accomplished the rare feat of ending an authoritarian regime by voting it out of office. The level of corruption that kept the rich getting richer and leaving the rest to live in poverty was the catalyst to help Fox and the National Action Party, PAN, overcome the long ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI. The countries middle class, entrepreneurs, wealthy and elite all worked together to help Fox move forward to victory. The greatest part of the change is that it came about because the country voted in change and democracy. Mexico should use that change to propel forward with an economically successful and a stable democratic government.
The PRI has been widely described as a coalition of networks of aspiring politicians seeking not only positions of power and prestige but also the concomitant opportunity for personal enrichment. (http://countrystudies.us/mexico/84.htm) The level of corruption and the buying of votes kept the PRI in power for too long. For decades, many successful businesses in Mexico depended on executives' cozy, if not downright corrupt, relations with the state. Successive PRI governments protected Mexican industries with high tariffs, which from the 1940's through the early 1970's produced spectacular growth, averaging about 7 percent annually, although the country's famously low wages remained stagnant. (Dillon, 1999)
In many neighborhoods that long were PRI strongholds, and among working class Mexicans who were its most loyal followers, one theme was recurrent: Mexico had to do something different. ''I've never seen a change, and I have been asking myself, when is it going to happen?'' said Gustavo Sanchez, a 32-year-old auto mechanic in Ecatepec, a huge proletarian suburb of Mexico City where the PRI was once invincible. ''Our leaders need to know that if they don't do the job right, we're going to