TWELVE STEPS TO RESTORATION OF THE REPUBLIC THE 2012 ELECTION AND BEYOND

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Democratizing Mexican Politics, 1982–2012

In many ways, it was. The drip feed unfolding of the eurozone crisis gave the issue of Europe an especially high profile in the election. The most important, substantive and divisive policy theme consisted of Hollande's and Sarkozy's contrasting assessments of the eurozone's predicament, the French economy and France's appropriate response to the crisis.

Indeed, one argument was whether there still was a crisis. Sarkozy sought to present the eurozone crisis as largely resolved and afforded himself considerable credit for the mooted resolution in initiatives such as the Fiscal Compact. The construction of fiscal rectitude has become a major battleground in French politics and beyond in the wake of the GFC.

There are two dimensions, one national, the other European. Although the two are deeply intertwined, in this section and the next they are separated for analytic purposes. At the domestic economic policy level, the key dissonance between Hollande and Sarkozy surrounded their contrasting plans to restore the public finances and secure financial credibility. Sarkozy's scare tactics tried to sow the seeds of doubt about the economic rectitude of Hollande within the French electorate. Evoking the prospect of capital flight and adverse market reaction similar to , Sarkozy's speeches during April mobilised Greek myths.

Sarkozy equated the future trajectory of France under Hollande's presidency with Spain's travails within the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis. The left's questionable economic credibility has been a standard trope of mainstream right and conservative candidates and parties across the advanced democracies. Sarkozy's and Fillon's warnings of economic crisis and profound loss of market confidence greeting a Socialist victory were over-blown, but preyed effectively upon the huge uncertainties surrounding the eurozone crisis.

Given Hollande's key role in EU-wide debates about recalibrating crisis responses, his anti-finance propositions and discourse doubtless did little to assuage concerns amongst financial market participants about his fiscal and economic rectitude.

Thus, the right's claims to superior economic credibility were dubious. Furthermore, the eurozone crisis has shifted the tectonic plates of the politics of fiscal policy for eurozone countries with high debts and high deficits, drastically narrowing the scope for substantive distance between left and right on the public finances. Hollande's campaign committed to erase the deficit and restore the public finances to balance by , just one year later than Sarkozy promised. Overall, the projected total tax take under Hollande's programme was only very slightly higher than Sarkozy's.

Thus, the shape and size of the French state under each would have been broadly similar. Where contrasting constructions of fiscal rectitude did feed through into significant differences of analysis was over the route to fiscal consolidation and divergent strategies for the restoration of public finances. This was a central theme of the economic policy discussion during the presidential debate. It is revealing of the inglorious debt and deficit position and the parlous state of the French public finances that there is a discussion about constitutional balanced budget rules at all.

Sarkozy's advocacy of stricter fiscal discipline and tighter and more binding rules is surprising given the strength of the State tradition of interventionism dirigisme in France, which attaches great importance to discretionary interventions by political leaders. The early Sarkozy presidency — continued this established dirigiste practice, prioritising discretionary over rules-based economic policy and overstepping SGP debt and deficit targets in order to fund favoured economic policies.

Sarkozy's macroeconomic stance subsequently underwent a damascene conversion to neo-liberal budgetary orthodoxy and rules-based policy-making as Europe's sovereign debt crisis loomed. The shift recalls the traditional ordo-liberal German model of economic governance, with its sound money, anti-inflationary bias and its rules-based market order. From onwards Sarkozy committed France to a hugely ambitious fiscal consolidation programme, detailed in the Stability Programme for — and submitted to Brussels in April Interestingly, Hollande's case against the balanced budget rule accepts the need for fiscal rectitude and pledges to restore the public finances to balance not things all on the French left or in the PS have always accepted in the past.

2. The PS and the French party system: a presidential party?

The argument is about the best way to secure that fiscal rectitude and credibility with financial markets. More fiscal credibility can be secured, Hollande argues, by not signing up to a balanced budget rule which could lock France into a low or no growth scenario, leading to a further deterioration of the debt position and increased borrowing costs.

Hollande's case for re-balancing policy priorities in support of growth critiqued Sarkozy's plans to further cut taxes on the wealthy at the expense of greater austerity for the rest. This, Hollande argued, would undermine the growth and the recovery so crucial to successfully putting the nation's finances back on an even keel.

Hollande's position—that growth must be secured in order to achieve debt and deficit reduction and that fiscal consolidation must be recalibrated in such a way that it does not choke off any prospect of growth—follows the same logic as the ratings agency Standard and Poors' rationale for their downgrade assessment.

This similarity and overlap are not something common in the history of French Socialist argumentation about economic policy! Yet for all the talk of restoring the public finances, the construction of fiscal rectitude on the left and right of French politics is disingenuous. All this donning of hair shirts and holier than thou professions of faith in balancing budgets are really all smoke and mirrors. Looked at in the cold light of day, neither candidate can make bold claims to fiscal rectitude. Both Hollande and Sarkozy have built their fiscal consolidation strategies on extremely over-optimistic 2—2.

These apparently small differences translate in fiscal consolidation terms into enormous sums. What these deeply flawed assumptions do is assume away all the pain of the cuts in public spending and service provision which will inevitably accompany any attempt to actually restore balance to the public finances within five years. Both programmes were conspicuously light on details about where their cost savings would come from.

In effect, the presidential campaign, although apparently obsessed with fiscal consolidation, in fact revealed an underlying conspiracy of silence between the two main candidates. Cutting public spending and trimming back public service or welfare provision provoked little or no public debate during the campaign.

The politics of fiscal rectitude and the construction of fiscal credibility take a very particular form in France. The age-old gap between rhetoric and reality is reproduced within those very commitments to fiscal consolidation—since they are based on such unrealistic assumptions. Neither Sarkozy nor Hollande came clean with the French electorate about the pain of fiscal adjustment that, in all likelihood, awaits. For example, Hollande's pledge to repeal Sarkozy's pension reform and restore retirement at 60 on full pension for those with 41 years' contributions is symbolic of a refusal to face up to the necessity of painful reform.

The French social model will come under increasing fiscal pressure in the face of the parlous state of French public finances stretching throughout Hollande's five year term and probably decades beyond. Without such additional policy impetus, he argued, both France and the eurozone faced a dark future. Thus, as previously with Mitterrand and Delors, and now with Hollande, French Socialism seeks to pilot the future of the European project.

Ever since it came into being, and indeed for some time before, French Socialist politicians have been calling for the re-orienting of the European Central Bank ECB towards jobs and growth through a change in its mandate. This is reminiscent of Jospin's pledge to revisit the Luxembourg summit. He sought to restore an ambitious Employment Chapter which the Swedish social democratic government had, in September , proposed to add to the Treaty of European Union Lightfoot, The German government initially made some encouraging noises, but clearly Hollande did not receive satisfaction in his early post-victory discussions with Merkel.

He spent May and June finalising his plan for growth, finding common cause with Barack Obama at G8 and G20 meetings along the way. As one might expect, bits of the interventionist domestic industrial policy agenda find their way into the French Socialist bid to reorient European integration.

The vision for European economic policy combines co-ordination of macroeconomic policy and developmental state type industrial policy measures. There are also hints of protectionism, demanding reciprocity of social and environmental standards in the renegotiation of EU trade policy. Hollande's presidential programme included aspirations, again reminiscent of the s vision of Delors and then Jospin, for EU-wide infrastructural projects grands projets to boost growth Hollande, a , pp.

During the campaign, Hollande called for the European Investment Bank to provide loans for development projects. These Euro-bonds are another long-standing feature of French Socialist plans to reform the EU's economic institutions.

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Euro-bonds were a point of dissonance in the presidential debate, with Sarkozy rejecting them on the grounds that enough had already been borrowed. They are, more importantly, a major bone of contention between Hollande and the German government and the ECB. Although ambitious, the reception within Europe was quite warm. Even within EU institutions such as the Commission, economic ideas had been evolving during , and the need for more emphasis on growth had gained wider traction as the downsides of a myopic focus on austerity had become all too evident as the eurozone crisis deepened.

By the summer of Hollande's pro-growth thinking found echoes within major European institutions, as well as with numerous EU member state governments. In general, ongoing opposition from the ECB and German government will likely limit the scale of Hollande's hoped for re-orientation of European economic policies. The great curse of the French left in presidential elections under the Fifth Republic, and especially since the s, has been that pools of staunch mainstream left and far-left voters are not only dwindling somewhat, but are also implacably opposed to each other. The extreme-left in France—deeply divided within itself—has rarely been able to stomach or envisage recommending a transfer of support to the mainstream-left.

Seen in this context, Hollande's presidential victory was a huge, indeed historic achievement. Aided and abetted by the Radicaux de gauche Left Radicals and other smaller affiliated parties, the PS secured a comfortable majority for Hollande with seats. The Front de gauche, in contrast, which had eschewed electoral pacts with the PS, suffered further disappointment, reduced from 19 to 10 seats.

Hollande, then, secured a comfortable majority to enable him to carry out the programme on which he was elected, without the need to rely on far-left deputies for support. Economic policy debates within the campaign were conducted on interventionist, even Socialist policy terrain. This is one reason why Hollande's programme contained precious little ideological innovation. Hollande promised changes in the French and European political economy through more radical policy measures on taxation, regulating finance and reinvigorating industrial policy.

The need for political economic reorientation in response to the Eurozone crisis was the programmatic centre-piece of Hollande's campaign. Twice in his acceptance speech Hollande underlined his commitment to reorient European integration and refocus crisis resolution efforts around securing growth as a counterpoint to the focus on austerity espoused by Sarkozy, Merkel and the ECB.

Hollande's programme suggests a relatively coherent, growth-oriented, activist and interventionist political economic vision. Most glaringly, at the national level, for all this fiscal activism in the short-term and fiscal rectitude in the medium term, serious questions remain regarding the balance between taxing and spending contained in Hollande's political economic programme. In short, can Hollande afford the economic measures in support of growth he has promised? Without more cuts in spending than were announced in the campaign, it is hard to see how President Hollande can balance the books in the medium term in line with his ambitious fiscal consolidation commitments.

The chances for delivering on the programme on which Hollande was elected are improved by the current shape of the French party system, the disarray of the mainstream right and the secure presidential majority delivered in the parliamentary election. The reach of Hollande's civilising mission to re-orient domestic and European economic policy in a more redistributionary, growth-oriented direction in all probability exceeds his grasp.

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Sign In or Create an Account. Close mobile search navigation Article navigation. Hollande's presidential programme of and French Socialist ideology. The PS and the French party system: The eurozone crisis, French public finances and the new politics of fiscal rectitude.

Tackling the eurozone crisis: A correction has been published: French Socialism in a Global Era: The New Political Economy of Dirigisme: Euro Area Summit Statement, 29 June accessed at http: White Paper 93 accessed at http: January 26 accessed at http: Financial Systems and the Politics of Industrial Change. For commercial re-use, please contact journals. Email alerts New issue alert. Receive exclusive offers and updates from Oxford Academic.

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Citing articles via Web of Science 8. To Scrutnise and Protect: However, they were required by the charter to elect five individuals of each of the following classes: These individuals were exempt from the 2 pesos income qualification. The remaining senators were to be former presidents, vice presidents, two-time deputies, ministers, ambassadors, state governors, bishops or division generals.

Santa Anna ruled the country until December , when his government was toppled by a coup orchestrated by disaffected politicians. He, in turn, was ousted in December by Gen. Mariano Paredes y Arrillaga. The war with the United States began in and in April Gen. Likewise, on August 6, Gen. Mariano Salas issued a pronunciamiento in Mexico City. The Plan de la Ciudadela called for the convocation of a new constituent Congress.

Paredes was toppled on August 6, in the midst of the war against the Americans. On August 6, the convocatoria was issued. The electoral law to be used to elect the Congress was the June 17, , with certain amendments idem , p. The broad franchise of the early Federal Republic was reinstated. On August 22, the constitution was restored. Elections to elect an extraordinary Congress were held at the end of The electoral law used was the inclusive December 10, law.

The new constituent Congress restored the constitution. An Act of Reforms amendments was attached to the charter. It established nearly universal male suffrage. All in all, between and income restrictions to voters had been in effect less than nine years Income or property qualifications were never imposed again in the 19th century.

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Yet the condition of "having a known means of subsistence" or an "honest means of subsistence" was not challenged. The constitution enshrined universal male suffrage and provided that the only conditions to citizenship were age 20 years if single, 18 if married and having an honest mode of living Art. In the Constituent Congress there was debate over the proposal of imposing a literacy condition to the right to vote.

Also, indirect elections were challenged by some constitution-makers. The second group prevailed and indirect elections were adopted for representatives, justices and the executive, but with one change: Indirect elections in two stages were in place in Mexico until Thus, for very long time male universal suffrage coexisted with indirect elections. However, interestingly enough, after many state constitutions often provided for direct election: For instance, in the parish of Sagrario of Mexico City 5, citizens voted in the municipal council primary elections while only persons voted in Yet, this quickly changed after In the Mexico City's congressional primary election 30 ballots were cast in.

According to Warren, political ferment, like that of , was "directly related to the organizing initiatives of an aspiring elite faction: It seems that right from the Cadiz experiments mobilization did not depend on the opportunity to vote, in terms of enfranchisement, but was instead triggered by party politics. In Yorkino machinations were extremely successful as an unprecedented number of ballots were counted, and their candidates dominated as primary electors. Opponents claimed the yorkinos purchased votes and used urban mobs for political ends. The game of mobilizing popular support was played by the two major political factions.

This helps to explain the "size and intensity" of popular participation. Factional conflict did no cease after the congressional elections. It deepened and reached a climax two years later, in the presidential elections This election might be considered a "critical juncture". Until that election both factions shared cabinet posts as well as other power positions in the national government of gen.

The yorkino candidate, Gen. Why did Guerrero subvert the constitutional order? This is a key episode in the development of elections and representative government in Mexico. A new presidential election was scheduled in , four years later. A possible answer is that, along with yorkino recklessness, popular mobilization went out of control. Estimates of the number of participants in the riot range up to several thousand. The upheaval drove most people of means off the streets for several days, including the municipal council officers who were supposed to preserve public tranquility".

The looting itself confirmed conservative fears of the relationship between popular political participation and social dissolution, while radicals explained the event as an "understandable response to three hundred years of Spanish oppression and the repeated aristocratic conspiracies of the post-independence era promulgated by those who survived off the sweat of the Mexican people" ibidem.

Mexico City's largest uprising in over one hundred years came about directly as a result of partisan politics. Also it came about as the failure of elections to channel political participation. While the election was not the first election in which party politics and mass mobilization intersected as we have seen the election exhibited both traits , it was the first in which losers had enough incentives and means to subvert the process They were indeed successful in their attempt of altering the formal outcome of the elections.

The background of constitutional breakdown was the poor state of the economy, xenophobic agitation against the Spaniards and miners unrest. Something close to a consensus emerged. Thus the movement towards restricting the vote began. The system of elections came only second after secret societies. He believed these practices made judicious men turn away from elections, leaving the field in the hands of those less able of conducting them with tact. The "spirit of party" went so far as to consider property and enlightenment as aristocratic and excluding them from elections. Mora suggested a minimum income requirement of 1 pesos annually or real state property worth 6 pesos.

Such amounts would be cut in half in the countryside and in towns with less than 10 inhabitants. Mora also argued for a uniform national citizenship. National citizenship would be a requirement to acquire state citizenship. As we have seen, in July the government persuaded Congress to pass a major electoral reform bill for the Federal District and Territories intended to restrict access to the ballot box. However, no income restriction was adopted. The basic electoral units for the Federal District were changed from the 14 parishes to small manzanas However, as Warren notes, the change in administrative apparatus did not interrupt the electoral process much at first and the transition to the manzana system "did not result in an immediate decline in voter turnout, either.

Aggregate turnout in municipal elections was virtually the same in 12 and 12 as it was in 13 , prior to the change in the law" WARREN, , Under the new system, however, commissioners fared very well. In most manzanas the commissioners won the primary elections. In approximately 45 per cent of the winners were commissioners. Thus this shows that they became key political operatives. The elections of and demonstrated that the electoral reform "was not sufficient to curtail voter turnout or secure conservative victory" ibidem. In the municipal elections of Mexico City prominent liberals claimed that the elections had been conducted in an atmosphere of fear, which brought into office persons who did not merit the "confidence of the people".

Once more, formal results of the elections were reversed. This had an adverse effect on electoral participation. The municipal election was "marked by widespread absenteeism". The new government blamed the law for the decrease in participation. From to political apathy continued.

Electoral reform was a priority in when the centralists won power and decided to draft a new constitution. They introduced the first income restrictions on the suffrage shortly thereafter. In the Mexico City elections only 32 manzanas out of 60 held elections. According to the electoral census, turnout was In the manzanas that had elections turnout was However the key was in who voted. According to Warren, the breakdown of voters by profession shows a surprising, but undeniable pattern: Shoemakers and carpenters as well as load bearers, water carriers and bricklayers voted in significant numbers.

In the main electoral constituency were the poor. Elections were seen by many prominent actors as key to explaining the ills of the country. By early Mexico had been celebrating elections for more than 30 years. In , after 15 years of experimenting with an expansive franchise, Mexican elites decided, for the first time, to impose income or property qualifications for voters. At the beginning of the early republican period representation was so democratic that not even the principle of distinction, key to representative government, was followed.

This is quite different from what happened in older representative governments. It had taken years to political elites to agree on the need to restrict the franchise. Much had been expected from elections. Now, a peculiar disbelief captured the minds of some long-standing observers and participants. The prospect of reforming the electoral system looked grim. Adopting long overdue income restrictions to the franchise had clearly not been enough to "fix" the system. Besides, as events had shown, such restrictions did not constitute a stable equilibrium, since many political actors from all factions had incentives to deviate from it.

Mass politics was a valuable resource and it was hard to abstain from it. They believed that something else had to be tried, a new system different from those of England, the U. To preserve order and stability a corporatist representation system would be established This project was afforded little time since as we have seen, the Paredes government was ousted only seven months after the publication of the convocatoria. The federal republic - and its electoral regime - were restored. Further radicalization ensued in the following years.

After the Reform War and the fall of the Second Empire liberals enjoyed political supremacy. As we have seen, from the beginning of the republican period an expanded franchise was the product of political competition between the elites that actively used the popular classes in the factional struggles.

However, elites also wanted to preserve control over electoral process, thus the long-lived system of indirect elections.

During the era of the Restored Republic elections became contests between the federal and local governments. Thus the national government competed with local politicians for the control of voters and electors. Presidents during the Restored Republic need governors if they wanted to be reelected. Some governors cooperated, other did not. Madero revolution, were directed against the "use and abuse" of electoral rules.

He would construct his own electoral machine that lasted for 34 years, until it, too, crashed.

Roderic Ai Camp

Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. En pos de la quimera. Carta a Santa Anna []. The Ballot, Land and Sovereignty: The Contested Mexican Election of The Elections of Transforming Political Culture in New Spain. Mexican Studies , Berkeley, v. La libertad, el poder y el estado en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Historias , Buenos Aires, n. El liberalismo, los impuestos internos y el Estado federal mexicano Historia Mexicana , Ciudad del Mexico, v.

El federalismo liberal mexicano. Santa Anna and the Congressional Elections in Mexico. Bulletin of Latin American Research , Oxford, v. Historia Mexicana , v.

El conservadurismo mexicano en el siglo XIX. Total Liberty in Casting our Ballots: Plebes, Peasants, and Elections in Oaxaca, Los procesos electorales insurgentes. Estudios de Historia Novohispana , n. El soberano y su reino. El Observador , El Observador , 9. Machine Politics in Mexico.

Democracy and the Limits of Self-Government. The Origins of Constitutionalism and Liberalism in Mexico. Constitutionalism in Nineteenth-century Mexico. Oaxaca and Mexican Federalism. The Sacred right of Equality". Representation under Constitution of Revista de Indias , Madrid, v. Pueblos de indios y ayuntamientos en Guanajuato, Elecciones, alternancia y democracia. Centralistas, conservadores y monarquistas Elections and Popular Political Participation in Mexico, Liberals, Politics and Power.

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The University of Georgia. Acta Constitutiva y Reformas sancionada por el Congreso extraordinario constituyente de los Estados-Unidos Mexicanos el 18 de Mayo de Recebido em 28 de junho de Aprovado em 22 de outubro de This pattern needs to be explained. Yet, there were five more than expected. Citizens were defined as those who "have their origin in the Spanish dominions of both hemispheres" and were settled in any village. Since there was no voter's list and the vecinos at the polling table were the ones who determined who could vote the result was virtual universal male suffrage.

From the records of the elections we can see that few voters were turned down at the polling tables. Meanwhile, as we have seen a standard complaint of that period was that ineligible people voted at the elections. Note however, that in theory this procedure could have worked the other way around, restricting suffrage. Lay persons as well as secular members of the church, members of the provincial Junta as well as non members could become deputies.

Oddly enough, there were more restrictions for secondary electors than for deputies. Secondary electors had to be at least 25 years of age with a five year residence in the "partido". Civil, military and e cclesiastic magistrates were excluded as well as priests. Primary electors had to be at least 25 years of age or 21 if married , neighbor and resident of the municipality.

Civil, military and ecclesiastic magistrates were excluded as well as priests. According to the Spanish Constitution, secondary electors, in addition to the requirements for primary electors, could be laymen or secular ecclesiastics. Members as well as non-members of the partido Junta could be elected. The assembly would be composed of citizens plus nine clergy, nine military, nine magistrates, nine lawyers, two farmers, two employees, two artisans, two miners, one "title" and one mayorazgo. This design sought to include significant interest groups. Oddly, this proposal was neither traditional nor modern.

It was not Spanish corporatist but clearly was out of touch with modern representative government. He served as President, from April 19 until September 22 with a brief four months interruption March 18, to July 18, , when he was toppled by Santa Anna and Paredes Arrillaga.

Primary electors, unlike regular citizens, had to be at least 21 years old, they had to be neighbors and residents of the municipality and magistrates were excluded. Besides these qualifications, secondary electors had to be at least 25 years of age and residents for at least one year in the municipality.

Finally, deputies had to have two years of residence and an annual income of at least 1 pesos. For instance, there were different mechanisms to elect governors. In some states the local executive was elected by municipal councils ayuntamientos , while in others it was elected by the local congress and yet in others it was elected by electoral colleges. Since political authority had been weakened by revolution only "immaculate" electoral processes could endow such authorities with sufficient legitimacy. There had been a "scandalous profusion" of political rights that had allowed even the lowest classes of society participation in elections.

Spain, Portugal, Naples and "all the new republics of America that adopted the principles of the Spanish constitution of extending the exercise of political rights to non property holders have marched relentlessly from one revolution to the other" MORA, In contrast, Mora admired the electoral systems of the United States, Britain and Holland because of the stability of those systems which he attributed to a restricted franchise. Mora published a series of interesting articles regarding elections: Moreover, each manzana would have one electoral commissioner, an official designated by the municipal council to conduct a neighborhood census and distribute ballots to eligible voters well before election day.

This measure was designed to cut down on multiple voting by individuals and ineligible persons. The municipal council now controlled the appointment of electoral commissioners, who in turn conducted the electoral census, handing out or denying ballots "to whomever they chose and, significantly, reporting vagrants whom would not be able to vote to the police" WARREN, , p. The problem now, he pointed out, was that voters did not vote. To correct this he proposed to fine absentee voters.

Income or property restrictions to voters were never as necessary as when a new nation adopted the representative government for the first time. He also criticized indirect elections. As a filter of the popular will they were useless, he argued, since the qualifications for primary and secondary electors were the same. Congress would be composed of deputies to be distributed among nine different classes: These citizens designated a President, a secretary and the inspectors.

The officials took the ballots where the citizens had written the names of their preferred elector. Following the Cadiz model, the polling table could decide, without appeal, any complaint on the election. After these vote section electors traveled to the capital of the district. There they voted with secret ballots to elect the deputies. Candidates had to carry an absolute majority of electoral votes. Similar procedures were followed in the election of President and justices of the Supreme Court.

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