Poverty of Democracy: The Institutional Roots of Political Participation in Mexico

摘要

This is an interesting book that engages a debate situated in the American tradition of political analysis. Using a sophisticated combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, Holzner criticises rational-choice explanations of why the 'poor' participate politically less than the 'rich' in Mexico after the transition to democracy, or, stated otherwise, why the political participation of the poor has diminished in the last decade or so. It seems, given the construction of the argument, that this diagnosis can claim some validity for Latin America more generally. The author contends that this process has been caused by institutional changes derived from both the adoption of neoliberal economic policies and the effects of the very transitions to democracy. The hypothesis is the first problem of this book. Given the multiple forms of democratic experimentation that are going on in most countries of Latin America, and the magnitude of popular mobilisations, it is difficult to accept that the poor participate less than before in the political life of the region. Certainly, the Mexican case is the less optimistic, but even here there's more political action than there appears to be. The problem lies in a conceptual restriction imposed by a very narrow idea of the political.