The costs of electoral success: the Partido Accion Nacional in Mexico

Abstract

This paper analyzes the dilemmas the PAN is beginning to confront as its electoral base grows and its office opportunities expand. The argument is that during the past 10 years, one of the PAN's greatest sources of electoral strength has been, paradoxically, the party's weak, fragmented, decentralized and porous organizational structure. The lack of a bureaucratically strong political apparatus allowed the party to have a great degree of flexibility which enabled it to accommodate and adapt to changing political conditions. Flexibility allowed the party to mobilize its political sympathizers around electoral periods and to contract and reduce its activities after the elections, to recruit new supporters, select ad-hoc candidates with strong roots to their communities, and design electoral campaigns addressing issues peculiar to each region. However, as the party grows and becomes a party in government, its organizational fragility increasingly becomes a source of weakness. The PAN's organizational structure results inadequate to respond to the party's growing demands and responsibilities.