STANFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
  
Cover of Mexico’s Pivotal Democratic Election by Edited by Jorge I. Domínguez and Chappell H. Lawson
Mexico’s Pivotal Democratic Election
Candidates, Voters, and the Presidential Campaign of 2000
Edited by Jorge I. Domínguez and Chappell H. Lawson


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2003
392 pages.
from $45.00

Hardcover ISBN: 9780804749732
Paperback ISBN: 9780804749749
Ebook ISBN: 9780804779821

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The 2000 Mexican presidential race culminated in the election of opposition candidate Vicente Fox and the end of seven decades of one-party rule. This book, which traces changes in public opinion and voter preferences over the course of the race, represents the most comprehensive treatment of campaigning and voting behavior in an emerging democracy. It challenges the “modest effects” paradigm of national election campaigns that has dominated scholarly research in the field.

Chapters cover authoritarian mobilization of voters, turnout patterns, electoral cleavages, party strategies, television news coverage, candidate debates, negative campaigning, strategic voting, issue-based voting, and the role of the 2000 election in Mexico's political transition. Theoretically-oriented introductory and concluding chapters situate Mexico's 2000 election in the larger context of Mexican politics and of cross-national research on campaigns. Collectively, these contributions provide crucial insights into Mexico's new politics, with important implications for elections in other countries.

About the authors

Jorge I. Domínguez is the Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. Chappell H. Lawson is Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT.

"Dominguez and Lawson's book fills an important gap in the systematic, analytical, empirical, and theoretical study of Mexican electoral politics."

Latin American Politics and Society