Catching the State Off Guard

Abstract

This article seeks to understand which model of electoral management body (EMB) best regulates campaign finance excesses in a hard case for EMB independence, Mexico’s one-party state during democratization (1977–2003). One would expect that the ombudsman model, where the electoral court is more autonomous from the party-state than EMB models in which the executive supervises elections directly or indirectly, would be the strongest regulatory body. However, I report that, contrarily, the indirect executive supervision EMB has rendered much more autonomous, anti-government decisions. The conclusion I draw is that the contexts in which formal institutions operate may be as important as the institutions themselves. Depoliticized electoral justice, even in the hard case of electoral courts in a fraud-marred one-party system, was largely attained, but under the ‘ombudsman’ institutional model which preceded the electoral courts’ formal incorporation into the judicial branch in the mid-1990s. It took informal political conditions – alternation in power and acceptance of this 2000 electoral watershed by the former ruling party – and a related change in the relationship with their nominators, to resume and accelerate the insulation of electoral case law from the magistrates’ nominator, the president. The achievement of true electoral court autonomy in Mexico is best evidenced through its monitoring of party finance.