1 The Mexican State and Rule of Law

2 Mexico is a country that has had varying success in terms of state-building. In recent

3 years, rule of law issues have been of special concern. The Mexican government has

4 made an effort to crack down on organized crime, leading to high levels of violence.

6 (1) Is Mexico really likely to become a failed state? Why or why not?

7 (2) What other factors outside of Mexico affect the government’s inabilities to

8 maintain rule of law?

10 As discussed in this chapter, one of the distinguishing features of modern states (in

11 addition to their relative autonomy, bureaucratic mode of organization, and so forth)

12 is that they have established the rule of law. This means that, at least ideal-typically, a

13 fully functioning modern state (1) has a legal-rational framework for resolving

14 conflict: (2) enforces that framework transparently; and (3) enforces it equally, rather

15 than privileging one or another set of actors based on network ties or some other sort

16 of affiliation. 
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18 The Mexican state has done this at various times in its history with varying degrees of

19 success. As Mörner (1993: 6) notes, the state was relatively weak after independence

20 and then grew in strength during the Porfiriato, entering a period of weakness during

21 the revolution and its immediate aftermath before gaining capacity again in the middle

22 of the twentieth century. In very recent years there has been a great deal of concern in

23 Mexico and abroad, particularly in the United States, about increasing levels of

24 violence, drug trafficking, ongoing corruption, and the seeming inability or

25 unwillingness of components of the Mexican state (army, police, and the judicial

26 system) to curb criminal activity. Some areas of Mexico, it is alleged, largely lie
27 outside of the state's real jurisdiction. In some towns in parts of the country, drug

28 gangs essentially exercise state-like functions, resolving disputes and maintaining

29 order of a certain sort. 

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31 How could we explain the presence and influence of powerful criminal organizations

32 that make a mockery of the state's "monopoly on the legitimate use of force"? Several

33 basic factors are likely decisive. First, there must be gains to be made above those

34 made in licit activity for an important segment of people. Otherwise, there would be

35 little incentive to engage in illicit activity. This would suggest that continued

36 economic development would help to reduce organized, nonstate violence (of course,

37 organized nonstate violence makes economic development more difficult to achieve).

38 Second, the risks must not be so high as to discourage a large number of criminals

39 from participating in illicit activity. In contemporary Mexico, as in many parts of the

40 developing world, the risks that state enforcement poses to criminals is relatively low

41 because of high rates of impunity. The state cannot or will not enforce the law in

42 certain areas, dramatically reducing the cost (in terms of risk) for illicit activity,

43 Finally, illicit groups must have the resources necessary to seek their chosen ends

44 these resources can be both material and organizational. Material resources include

45 both guns, which in the case of Mexico are often trafficked from the United States,

46 where there is little gun control and money, again from the United States as it is

47 estimated that cross-border drug trade sends between $15 billion and $25 billion to

48 Mexico each year (ONeil 2009 70). Organizational resources include the ongoing

49 existence of criminal gangs, as well as their established ties, via corruption, to state

50 actors. 
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52 Interestingly, a number of commentators have tied the escalation in Mexican drug

53 violence to reform. Some of this has to do with the fact that the PRI historically

54 sometimes worked with criminal networks rather than aiming to squash them (O'Neil

55 2009: 65). Moreover, at lower levels of the organizational structure of the state, police

56 corruption was common under the PRI (Davis 2006), and remains so. Where and

57 when the PAN came to hold office, linkages between the PRI and drug traffickers

58 were broken, producing non-institutional (and thus often violent) responses (O’Neil

59 2009: 65). In essence, whereas the PRI had allowed the continued existence of illicit

60 organizations but had co-opted them and used them for their purposes. After the

61 emergence of democratic pluralism, these organizations faced higher risks and thus

62 sought new techniques to maintain and protect their autonomy and interests.

63 Exogenous factors were important as well, including U.S. efforts to restrict the flow

64 of trafficking in Caribbean region. If the costs of one path get too high, traffickers will

65 look for another path, and trafficking through Mexico rose dramatically in response to

66 changing patterns of U.S. enforcement (O'Neil 2009:66; Davis 2006: 62). Of course,

67 this necessarily bolstered the position of Mexican illicit organizations. Thus at the

68 same time, Mexican criminal organizations had greater profits, more autonomy, and a

69 reason to become more independent. Then the Mexican government attempted to

70 stamp them out. At this point the organizations had little choice but to fight back. 
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72 It is worth noting that some of the same commentators have seen linkages between

73 Mexican democratization (O'Neil 2009; Davis 2006) and rising crime in Mexico (this

74 is perhaps not surprising since reform and democratization have been so closely

75 linked). Indeed, the rise in crime witnessed in Latin America from the 1980s on does

76 roughly mirror the pattern of regional democratization. Could it be, as some authors
77 have asked, that democratization and rule of law don't always go hand in hand?

78 Others (Magaloni and Zepeda 2004) have looked at economic data, though, and

79 argued that while democratization seems the culprit, its near simultaneity with rising

80 crime is largely coincidental, and that the most important variables associated with

81 rising crime are income inequality and economic difficulties. This is an ongoing

82 debate in the field.