Mexico's civil war democracy

Abstract

Threats to the integrity of electoral democracy are manifold. The democratic quality of electoral contests can suffer damage from self-serving manipulation by central or subnational governments, foul play by contending parties and candidates, or the administrative incapacity or incompetence of election authorities. This paper focuses on a distinct form of threat that has received scant attention in the comparative literature: the societal subversion of democratic elections by criminal violence. Conceptually, the paper presents criminal violence as a form of horizontal threat against the integrity of liberal democratic elections. Empirically, it analyzes the ongoing civil war in Mexico (the so-called drug war) to illustrate the chilling effects criminal violence has on electoral d democracy.

La democracia electoral se puede socavar de muchas maneras. La literatura comparada sobre el autoritarismo electoral se ha centrado en la “subversión vertical” de la democracia en manos de gobiernos centrales manipulativos. En contraste, este ensayo dirige la atención hacia su “subversión horizontal” en manos de actores privados violentos. Conceptualmente, presenta la violencia criminal como una forma de amenaza societal a la integridad de elecciones democráticas. Empíricamente, analiza la nueva guerra civil mexicana (la llamada Guerra de las Drogas) para ilustrar los daños que la violencia organizada privada inflinge a la integridad electoral.