Caciquismo and Democracy: Mexico and Beyond

The publication of Knight and Pansters’s (2005) Caciquismo in Twentieth-Century Mexico (2005) renewed a debate about the significance of caciquismo [boss rule] in Mexican politics that has spanned more than five decades. The volume’s immediate goal was to extend and deepen earlier historical studies of caciquismo in post-revolutionary Mexico (especially Brading, 1980). The editors and contributing authors succeeded admirably in this task, shedding new light on the role of caciques1 (local or regional bosses) in different regions, sectors and time periods. At the same time, their research raised important questions concerning the broader relationship between caciquismo and different kinds of political regime (authoritarianism versus democracy) and about the ways in which Mexico’s slow, uneven process of democratisation has affected – and has been shaped by – instances of cacical domination. Caciquismo in Twentieth-Century Mexico thus contributed to broader, multidisciplinary exchanges about the scope and impact of democratisation in Mexico and, by extension, in Latin America more generally. Political scientists’ and sociologists’ interest in caciquismo peaked during the 1960s and 1970s when, for example, some analysts focused on local leaders as brokers or intermediaries in countries confronting challenges of national political integration (Chalmers, 1972: 110–111; Valenzuela, 1977: 155–68). At the time, many scholars viewed the phenomenon as a traditional, predominantly rural form of personalist domination that would disappear under the relentless, ‘modernising’ pressures of socio-economic change and rural–urban migration. Even those researchers who documented the presence of cacicazgos [instances of cacical rule, or political fiefdoms] in other contexts, particularly in urban squatter settlements, generally assumed that caciques would eventually be doomed to political extinction. And, with the gradual instauration of civilian democratic rule throughout the region after