Parallel authoritarian powers
An explanation of Mexico’s authoritarian regime breakdown
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6252645 |
|---|---|
| Authors | José Antonio Hernández Company (0000-0002-2106-2177, Escuela de Gobierno, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City, Mexico, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 465-483 |
| Publication date | 2019-04-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Democratization (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1351-0347 • E-ISSN: 1743-890X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13510347.2018.1549545 |
| OpenAlex | W4245206570 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 28 |
Many scholars suggest that dominant parties enhance authoritarian regime resiliency by regularizing and directing the distribution of spoils, careers, and policy among members of the authoritarian coalition. This article challenges this assertion by providing a novel mechanism to explain why, under stress, some dominant party regimes are more likely to break down than others. The argument posits that an autocracy’s capacity to fend off systemic crises increases when elites who control the power to make decisions locate themselves in the same organization (for example, the military, the bureaucracy, a political party) as elites in charge of implementing these decisions. If elites of these types locate in different organizations (what I refer to as a “parallel power” arrangement), in the face of systemic adversities elite collective action suffers and, consequently, regime resiliency decreases. I illustrate the applicability of the argument in the case of Mexico’s party-based autocracy. The stability of this regime was fatally damaged when, in the presence of systemic challenges in the 1980s and 1990s, the state’s bureaucracy – in charge of making decisions – decided to enact economic and electoral policies against the wishes of the elites in the dominant party, who were in charge of implementing many of these decisions
Authoritarianism · Democracy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · International Development and Aid · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Politics and Society in Latin America
Labyrinths of power
Democratization and Authoritarian Party Survival
Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization
Voting for Autocracy
The Politics of Authoritarian Rule
Economic Crises and the Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes
The Origins of Dominant Parties
Ordering Power
The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions
Why Dominant Parties Lose
Inequality and Democratization
Competitive Authoritarianism
Los sectores del PRI en las elecciones de 1988
Courting Democracy in Mexico
Making Enemies
Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions
Exploring the relationship between infrastructural and coercive state capacity
Dominant party cohesion in comparative perspective
Iron Cage in an Iron Fist
Credible Power-Sharing and the Longevity of Authoritarian Rule
Time Will Tell? Temporality and the Analysis of Causal Mechanisms and Processes
What Do We Know About Democratization After Twenty Years
The autonomous power of the state
Mexico's One-Party System
Why Rules Matter
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |