Democratization, Vol. 7, No.3 (Autumn 2000): 117-132. BLIND SPOTS IN DEMOCRATIZATION: SUBNATIONAL POLITICS AS A CONSTRAINT ON MEXICO’S TRANSITION 1 By Wayne A. Cornelius Introduction: The Reemergence of Subnational Political Regimes The struggle between central and local authority has been a constant feature of Mexico’s history as an independent nation. The main argument of this article is that Mexico, after nearly seven decades of highly centralized, presidentialist rule, is again moving toward a political system in which power is contested actively and continously between center and periphery, with uncertain but potentially adverse consequences for the completion of Mexico’s democratic transition. State governors and other sub-national political actors become more assertive in national politics, and they have greater financial resources under their control, due to fiscal decentralization since the 1980s. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has controlled the presidency and the federal Senate continuously since 1929, has switched to a primary system for selecting its presidential candidate – a system that inevitably rewards the state and local PRI machines that deliver the vote for the winning candidate. Under these circumstances, the very different subnational political regimes 2 that coexist inside Mexico may function more as obstacles to the completion of the democratic transition than as breeding 1 The author is grateful to Reynaldo Yunuen Ortega Ortiz, Federico Estévez, Chappell Lawson, and Todd Eisenstadt for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. 2 The term “subnational” is used in this article mainly to refer to state-level political regimes. With few exceptions (e.g., the indigenous government of Juchitán in Oaxaca state) and municipalities controlled by a party different from the party in power at the state level) local and regional political regimes in Mexico today can be treated as extensions of state-level political organizations controlled by incumbent or former state governors.