Federalism in Mexico is the current political order of the Mexico, in which the entities that make up the federation are autonomous and are united by an agreement that delimits the powers of the three levels of government: federal, local and municipal. Therefore, the exercise of popular sovereignty of the representative and democratic republic under which the country is structured occurs exclusively or shared; through federal, local or municipal institutions. In the past, Mexico, as an independent country, has gone through different forms of political organization, such as the unitary state (both republican and monarchical). However, for much of its history, the federal model has been the norm. Even through different models such as regionalist, cooperative, centralized, or decentralized.
Definition The states of Mexico and Mexico City are semi-autonomous, each with its own government, but are unified by a common (federal) government. Since state governments and the federal government share the same territory, they must inevitably relate to each other. This relationship has been treated by political scientists in two main ways:
The first emphasizes the distribution of governing authority between the two levels of government. Whether understood as decentralization or as a pact or alliance between equals, federalism is characterized by the combination of the principles of unity and internal autonomy among a wide variety of political organizations. According to Wallace Oates, the essential thing is to understand what functions and instruments to assign to each of the levels of government that intervene in the system. The second emphasizes the relationships between governments and the public, as each unit has its own preferences and decisions to make, which have a direct effect on their respective populations. Both levels jointly govern the same territory and the same population, and each has the authority, within its sphere of competence, to make decisions independently of the other.
Under any approach, the boundary that delineates the authority of the national government from that of the subnational governments is of vital importance. The boundary may be very thick, or it may be that the national and subnational governments share authority (powers and obligations). Interactions between the different levels of government, and ultimately the capacity and effectiveness of federalism, depend on these allocations of authority. In summary: federations are characterized by a) geopolitical division, b) independence and c) direct effect on populations.
Historical evolution of federalism in Mexico
Constitution of 1824: regional federalism
As Luis Medina states, Mexican federalism has reasons and roots that go back to the social, economic and political evolution of the Colony and that were forged in the last years of the colony and the first years of the country's independent life. After independence, Agustín de Iturbide's attempt to centralize power based on the monarchy came up against militant resistance from the provinces to cede political authority. The triumph of the Plan of Casa Mata, to which the provincial elites adhered, meant the confirmation in fact of regional powers, a spirit with which the provinces would send their deputies to the constituent congress of 1824. Thus, the adoption of the first federal system was a movement from the periphery to the center; the result of a political reality and not a copy of American federalism. The federal arrangement of 1824 produced a double asymmetric relationship, on the one hand a weak federation-strong states and, on the other, limited executive power-strong congress. This situation determined the struggle of the following years (until 1867, approximately) between two factions mainly: the unitarian and the federalist. On the one hand, the federalists were interested in avoiding a despotic central power and defending individual liberties, while the unitarians were concerned about the effectiveness of the central government to guarantee national security against the expansionist intentions of the United States. The confrontation was resolved in favor of the liberal federalists; first in 1857 and, definitively, in 1867 with the defeat of Maximilian of Habsburg and the restoration of the Republic.
It is because of this first, completely decentralized federal stage that in the Mexican political imagination (even today) the unitary regime is referred to as "centralist," although today this is rather inaccurate and even anachronistic. As described in this article, Mexican federalism towards the end of the 19th century and for most of the 20th century was extremely centralized both geographically and institutionally, which is why some critical voices called it a "federal fiction." In fact, this First Federal Republic was replaced by an overly centralized unitary republic that Mexican historiography calls the Centralist Republic.
Constitution of 1857: from liberal to cooperative federalism
In the first half of the 19th century, the main problem to be solved was the type of regime that should be adopted—republican or monarchical, federalist or unitary—; in the second half, the central issue was to give content and effectiveness to a federal government that existed only de jure. Once the Republic was restored, Presidents Benito Juárez and Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada began the work of strengthening the federal government. This task was taken up and continued by Porfirio Díaz, who dedicated himself to building the foundations of the Mexican political system through pacts and agreements between the federal and state governments. Díaz achieved the integration of a Congress that would ensure the reelection of the head of the federal executive power, thus solving the central problem of the federal arrangement: the coexistence of two sovereignties. The areas that were federalized as centralizing measures to the detriment of state sovereignty included:
Mining and trade (1883) Maritime law (1883) Stamp duty (1896) Taxes on trade and consumption of goods (1896) Determination of waters under federal jurisdiction (1908) Public debt securities paid abroad (1901) Health legislation (1908)
1917 Constitution: centralizing federalism When the Constituent Congress of 1917 met, federalism was no longer in question; the issue was not included in the agenda of possible changes to the Constitution of 1857, nor was there a critical and exhaustive analysis of how it had worked until then. However, the constituents tried to reestablish a national unity that they felt was in danger. Consequently, they did not stop the incipient centralizing tendencies inherited from the Porfiriato; on the contrary, they deepened them.
Mexican federalism originated through the agreement between Santiago Padilla and Ricardo Pazo to cede limited powers to a central government as a political entity. For this reason, the constitutional texts of 1824, 1857 and 1917 reproduce the same provision, namely: any power that is not explicitly assigned to the federal government is understood to be reserved to the states. For this reason, through constitutional reforms and other means such as, for example, the control of fiscal income and budget planning, the federal government after the revolution was characterized by a marked centralization. According to Rogelio Hernández, throughout its history, one of the central concerns of Mexican federalism has been fiscal issues to give financial viability to the federal government. In fact, the tax power of the states is not a delegation of the federation but, on the contrary, is original, it precedes the federal government; furthermore, it was centralized after a long period of disputes between local and federal executives. The factors that influenced the centralization of power and the construction of a stronger executive during the post-revolutionary period were:
Replacing indirect elections with direct ones (thus eliminating the source of power of regional elites) The agrarian distribution Protection of labor rights The declaration of the State as the governing body of the economy (Article 27 of the Constitution) The creation of the official party was born as a pact aimed at sharing power quotas at all levels, since it incorporated into national political life the three actors created by the revolution: the agrarian, the worker and the military, which had powerful national centers.
The implementation of the social program of the revolution led to reforms that further deepened the concentration of powers taken from the states in the federal government, in order to prevent strong local powers from using them for their own ends, but also to enable the federation to draw up and implement national development programs to compensate for the country's marked regional imbalances. The reforms included:
Education (1921) Labor (1929 and 1933) Film industry (1935) Disputes over communal lands (1987) Justice and agrarian courts (1983 y 1992) Electrical energy (1934, 1940, 1960) Environmental pollution (1971) Nuclear energy (1975) Asentamientos humanos (1976)
Decentralizing efforts of the late twentieth century The first attempts to counteract centralizing tendencies were made during the six-year terms of Miguel de la Madrid (1982–1988), Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–1994) and Ernesto Zedillo (1994–2000), which were characterized by decentralizing efforts to strengthen states and municipalities. These new trends sought administrative and economic modernization to face the processes of opening and integration with other economies, as well as the strengthening of the democratic transition.
Miguel de la Madrid De la Madrid decided to face the economic crisis of the 1980s with a direct reduction of public spending and, in general, of the functions of the Government, reducing the minimum indispensable its responsibilities of both investment and direct administration of companies. This is how an administrative decentralization process began that led to a deep reform in the distribution of responsibilities between state and municipal governments, as well as a redistribution of budgetary resources. This process was unfolded in three lines of action: strengthening federalism, invigorating municipal life and promoting regional development. His measures included:
decentralizing powers previously reserved for central bodies delegating functions, and relocating government agencies and entities to the states creating the State Planning and Development Committees (Coplade) and their municipal counterparts (Coplademun), which were bodies for deliberation and consensus-building between the federal and subnational governments granting municipalities powers over taxation, the provision of public services, and urban planning
Federalism and political system Currently, two elements characterize Mexican federalism. Federalism has greater political and social influence, and, although it also has economic influence, this has been conditioned by criteria for application that have always been reserved to the federal government. In general, governors from political parties in opposition to the president tend to be the most active and demanding in their negotiations with the federal government. The second is that it is precisely the economic restrictions that have become the main problem for governors with the federation, which has motivated demands for the allocation scheme to be redesigned, since the financial requirements, derived from greater administration and provision of services, have not been accompanied by an equivalent flow of resources.