Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Mexican legislature

I've found the charts from The Economist are among the most useful for teaching certain things. I've been clipping them out for students for a long time. The on-line charts are even better because they're in color.

I've included a partial sample below, because these charts are not mine to distribute. You can certainly "clip" them out for your students. I don't know about availability to non-subscribers, but if you don't have a subscription, perhaps your library does. That way you can use that subscription to get full access to the magazine's web site.

The PRI’s qualified comeback

THE band that struck up jolly music to greet Enrique Peña Nieto as president-elect probably had not bothered to practise any of its downbeat numbers. Mr Peña, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), had long been the favourite and went into the election on July 1st leading by double figures in most polls. Sure enough he won, restoring to office the party that ran Mexico for seven decades until 2000. But his victory was slimmer than expected, and the PRI was denied a majority in Congress. Indeed, it appeared that the party had lost seats in the lower house. Voters are clearly not ready to hand the former ruling party free rein…

Which faction of the PRI will hold sway in Mr Peña’s government is uncertain. The president-elect looks and sounds like a moderniser, but plenty of old-fashioned party dinosaurs lurk around him. His best bet looks to be to try to strike a firm alliance with the PAN—if, in its chastened state, it is a willing partner. Otherwise, he risks being reduced to relying on some of his own party’s shadier governors to marshal their local congressmen—and even that might not be enough to approve reforms. Mexico has voted the PRI back to office, but not necessarily to power.

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Labels: elections, legislature, Mexico, politics