Sinembargo: Jorge Javier Romero Vadillo*
*Jorge Javier Romero Vadillo is a political scientist, professor and researcher in the Department of Politics and Culture of the Autonomous Metropolitan University, Xochimilco Campus. He holds a masters in Political Science from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a doctorate from the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology of the University Complutense of Madrid. He is a regular contributing columnist for Sinembargo. @Giorgioromero
Nov. 21, 2019
...Despite substantial [democratic] changes [in Mexican government], the base of State organization remains intact. Public administration remains a source of booty to be distributed among politicians and their clientelistic and corporate operation has not been modified.
...Despite substantial [democratic] changes [in Mexican government], the base of State organization remains intact. Public administration remains a source of booty to be distributed among politicians and their clientelistic and corporate operation has not been modified.
MVNote: Corporatismo was the political system that prevailed in Mexico throughout most of the 20th century under the rule of the PRI, the Party of the Institutional Revolution. In 1929, President Plutarco Elías Calles instituted the system for controlling the citizenry by means of social groups known as 'corporate' entities, such as workers' unions, farmers organizations and social organizations funded and controlled by the government. Citizens were represented and controlled politically as "clients" of their respective "corporations" by being given certain benefits in exchange for their political loyalty.
Since then, the electoral competition has focused on capturing parcels of public power to distribute them among followers and the loyalists, just as before, but now without the element of continuity that control by the PRI gave it.
While the government now in office [of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, aka AMLO, and his party, Morena, the Movement for National Regereration] insists repeatedly that it represents the foundation of a new regime, it has become clear that it has been captured by its own political coalition. Not only has it swept away the little professionalism that public administration had in order to distribute public jobs among its clientele, but it is also doing everything possible to capture the autonomous state agencies, built largely as professional spaces to protect them against partisan control. What is seen with the appointment of the new president of the National Human Rights Commission and the threats against the autonomy and stability of the Electoral Institute are two examples demonstrating the incomprehension of Mexican politicians. Those in power now are the same as those before regarding the professionalization and relative political autonomy of these state agencies.
The Mexican State is falling apart because the bureaucratic-administrative apparatus of the times of the PRI regime is obsolete. It is an organization that has always put party discipline and political loyalty ahead of technical capacity and specialization. The officials in Mexico are, instead, general political operators who, one day, may work in Communications and Transportation and another day follow their jefe [boss to whom they owe personally loyalty for their position] to the IMSS [Mexican Institute for Social Security, which oversees government-run health care as well as pensions]. Their fundamental task is to serve as a transmission belt for the clientelistic distribution of state revenues through public programs. They are not specialists in a certain field of public policy who remain in a position because of their knowledge and abilities, independent of the party in the government. Instead, they are part of a specific political party´s network and each electoral change means they are out of a job, even if their party wins, since the network of loyalties [by which they got and held their jobs] is essentially one of individuals.
This system has expired and is no longer able to fulfill the basic tasks of the State. The booty system means that every three years in municipal government administrations and every six in the state ones, the entire network of decision makers and implementers is practically replaced, while only those who occupy the lowest rungs of the structure remain in their positions. But even there there is no recognition of professional capacity, only membership in a corporate union [one supported by and therefore submissive to the government].
This bureaucratic patronage is, to a large extent, the reason for the collapse of the State's capacity to reduce violence, since the system operates even in the police and prosecutorial and judicial agencies. The absence of professional police officers, ones who are not mere negotiators of disobedience of the law and sellers of private protections, and of career prosecutors who are not part of a network of political loyalty has led us to the disaster in which we find ourselves. But politicians still do not take care of the issue, as seen in the cosmetic transformation of prosecutors [from being attorney generals] in almost the states. [The change at the federal and state level was supposed to ensure the independence of prosecutors from control by the executive.]
Mexican politicians continue to cling to the booty of the bureaucratic budget in order to distribute it among their clientele. They seem to ask themselves: otherwise, what is the use of winning elections? In Mexico, politics isn't used to promote reform agendas and specific packages of policies, only to seize assets from the treasury. And in that, the current coalition in power has already shown that they are exactly the same. But without reform of the State, the Republic will continue to collapse, no matter who wins the elections. Spanish original
The Mexican State is falling apart because the bureaucratic-administrative apparatus of the times of the PRI regime is obsolete. It is an organization that has always put party discipline and political loyalty ahead of technical capacity and specialization. The officials in Mexico are, instead, general political operators who, one day, may work in Communications and Transportation and another day follow their jefe [boss to whom they owe personally loyalty for their position] to the IMSS [Mexican Institute for Social Security, which oversees government-run health care as well as pensions]. Their fundamental task is to serve as a transmission belt for the clientelistic distribution of state revenues through public programs. They are not specialists in a certain field of public policy who remain in a position because of their knowledge and abilities, independent of the party in the government. Instead, they are part of a specific political party´s network and each electoral change means they are out of a job, even if their party wins, since the network of loyalties [by which they got and held their jobs] is essentially one of individuals.
This system has expired and is no longer able to fulfill the basic tasks of the State. The booty system means that every three years in municipal government administrations and every six in the state ones, the entire network of decision makers and implementers is practically replaced, while only those who occupy the lowest rungs of the structure remain in their positions. But even there there is no recognition of professional capacity, only membership in a corporate union [one supported by and therefore submissive to the government].
This bureaucratic patronage is, to a large extent, the reason for the collapse of the State's capacity to reduce violence, since the system operates even in the police and prosecutorial and judicial agencies. The absence of professional police officers, ones who are not mere negotiators of disobedience of the law and sellers of private protections, and of career prosecutors who are not part of a network of political loyalty has led us to the disaster in which we find ourselves. But politicians still do not take care of the issue, as seen in the cosmetic transformation of prosecutors [from being attorney generals] in almost the states. [The change at the federal and state level was supposed to ensure the independence of prosecutors from control by the executive.]
Mexican politicians continue to cling to the booty of the bureaucratic budget in order to distribute it among their clientele. They seem to ask themselves: otherwise, what is the use of winning elections? In Mexico, politics isn't used to promote reform agendas and specific packages of policies, only to seize assets from the treasury. And in that, the current coalition in power has already shown that they are exactly the same. But without reform of the State, the Republic will continue to collapse, no matter who wins the elections. Spanish original