Most Mexicans probably believe the country is in the midst of radical change. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announces it every morning, with a blistering denunciation of the corrupt elite that once ruled the country. The opposition counters that the change is a catastrophe, a threat to democracy, and a throwback to the nationalist past. But everyone seems to agree that change is happening.
The truth is that when President Lopez Obrador finishes his term on September 30th following this Sunday's elections, the Mexico he will leave behind to his successor will be very similar to the Mexico he inherited six years ago: a violent country ruled by a corrupt government resting on a mediocre and unequal economy that has caused millions of disenfranchised Mexicans to suffer for decades.
Strange as it may sound, this grim diagnosis presents an unprecedented opportunity to set Mexico on a path to an inclusive and prosperous future.
Mexico's economy has made little progress in the past 40 years. Forty-four years ago, Mexico's gross domestic product per capita was three times that of South Korea. Today it is less than half that. And Mexico remains one of the most unequal countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Follow this authorEduardo Porter's opinion
Mexico has the highest percentage of adults without a high school diploma and the lowest percentage with a college degree among OECD countries. More than a third of Mexicans live in poverty, according to government estimates; by one measure, only 12 percent are middle class. Eight percent, or about 11 million people, have fled to seek prosperity in the United States. And more than 30,000 are murdered each year.
This situation hardly matches up to the glorious promises made by many three decades ago when Mexico signed with the United States and Canada in the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was pitched as a surefire path to replicating the success of the East Asian “tiger” economies and making Mexico a major manufacturing hub for the world's largest consumer market.
As Mexican economist Santiago Levy has pointed out, Mexico was split in two: in the north, a group of large, productive companies with access to foreign capital and the US market thrived, while in the south, countless small, unproductive, informal businesses thrived, accounting for a quarter of the country's GDP and more than half of its employment.
Certainly, the problem lay in believing in the “Washington Consensus” that macroeconomic stability, privatization, free trade, and education would solve all the country's problems, ignoring the fact that Mexico's politically controlled institutions were hindering the productive deployment of physical and human capital.
But the root cause of Mexico's failure lies in a rigid political structure that keeps ossified elites in power. Parties cycle in and out of power, perpetuating the country's class-bound social contract and failing to bring about real change.
The country adopted multiparty democracy in 2000 after 70 years of rule by the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI). Eighteen years later, Lopez Obrador, a veteran PRI supporter, led the populist National Renewal Movement to seize power from the international elites entrenched in the democratic era.
Perhaps the most significant change over this period has been the deterioration of Mexico's governance. Mexicans' trust in their political system, as measured by the World Bank, has declined significantly since the one-party era on all fronts, including accountability, the government's ability to protect people from violence, and the level of corruption. The World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index ranks Mexico 116th out of 142 countries.
Mexico's rule
It's been getting worse for years
A lower score indicates weaker governance.
Political stability and
Absence of violence
2018:
Lopez Obrador
Elected
the year of 2000:
Single End
-Party control
2018:
Lopez Obrador
Elected
the year of 2000:
Single End
-Party control
The bands indicate the margin of error for governance estimates.
Mexico's rule
It's been getting worse for years
A lower score indicates weaker governance.
Political stability and
Absence of violence
2018:
Lopez Obrador
Elected
the year of 2000:
Single End
-Party control
2018:
Lopez Obrador
Elected
the year of 2000:
Single End
-Party control
The bands indicate the margin of error for governance estimates.
Mexico's governance has been deteriorating for years
A lower score indicates weaker governance.
A lower score indicates weaker governance.
Political stability and
Absence of violence
the year of 2000:
Single End
-Party control
2018:
Lopez Obrador
Elected
The bands indicate the margin of error for governance estimates.
In any case, Lopez Obrador's combination of cash handouts and rhetorical skirmishes with the “elites” has made him perhaps the most popular Mexican president in living memory. He has positioned himself as a defender of the people and an architect of a “fourth transformation,” which he holds up, with characteristic lack of modesty, as a follow-up to independence from Spain, the anticlerical reform wars of the 1850s and the revolution that began in 1910.
Sure, the poor got some money: In 2022, 34% of Mexicans were covered by some form of social security system. Lopez Obrador expanded social spending, mainly through universal pensions for the elderly (funded in part with money that had been set aside for children). He raised the minimum wage, which was good news for some formal workers. He built refineries and railroads that might one day bring development to Mexico's lagging south.
But that's it. Like the technocrats who emerged at the end of the PRI's long reign, and the Democrats who followed them, the Fourth Transformation didn't dare try to change the hard issues. “The political equation is exactly the same as it always was,” Levy once told me. The ruling elites are still making a ton of money.
There is a lot to be done: how about tackling corruption, which is essential to addressing the devastating levels of violence, or building a truly independent judiciary that can guarantee Mexicans the protection of the law?
If the next president really wants to disrupt the establishment, he could open up Mexico's markets to competition. He could increase tax revenues, which are among the lowest in the OECD. Reforming labor and social security laws to include the many Mexicans excluded from the state safety net would help. All of this would help build a social democracy.
Given that tragic history, it is probably naive to believe that Mexico can get on the path to shared prosperity. The main candidates for president in Sunday's election, his party's frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum and her opponent Xochitl Gálvez, both come from the same political class that built and maintained Mexico's unequal status quo over the past century.
But the main reason for optimism lies not in the candidates, but in Mexico's current situation. At the very least, Lopez Obrador has made it clear how desperately Mexicans want change. He has achieved little change, relying mostly on charisma. But whoever succeeds him will have to deliver. The next president can no longer ignore the demands of Mexicans for a fairer, more just, and more prosperous country.
