Joy LangstonCentro de Investigación y

Docencia Económicas (CIDE) Mexico City

Governors and “Their” Deputies: New Legislative Principals in Mexico

Many studies on legislatures around the world have not detected a regional voting dimension. yet governors are often important political figures and can exert strong influence on state politicians. From an analysis of the Mexican legislature, I determine that governors hold important resources that ambitious politicians need in a system with no consecutive reelection. Mexican governors use their power over federal deputies to prod their agents, the caucus leaders, into working for their states’ interests on fiscally relevant issues, especially the annual budget. on all other issues, the governors delegate their deputies’ votes to the party’s legislative leadership.

In multiple studies of legislative politics in federal, presidential regimes in Latin america, researchers have identified legislative principals and described their relations with their agents (Carey and Reinhardt 2004; Desposato 2004; Figuereido and Limongi 2000; Jones, saiegh, spiller, and tommasi 2002; Jones and Hwang 2005; Morgenstern and nacif 2002; samuels 2003). With respect to the role of governors in federal systems, Jones and Hwang (2005) reported that—despite the great power that argentine provincial governors hold over their federal deputies, through the potential distribution of resources that matter to the deputies’ political careers (such as nominations and future posts)—they did not find a regional dimension of voting in the argentine legislature. according to Jones and Hwang, governors delegate authority over their deputies to their party’s national leadership to win more resources. similarly, Desposato’s (2004) work on Brazil concludes that while subnational effects on legislative outcomes do exist, they are surprisingly small. Carey (2009) recognized that governors in federal systems can hold resources that matter to ambitious politicians and so governors should be a competing principal to party leaders and voters, but he did not find that the regional dimension affected party unity in the 19 nations he studied.

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If state governors do hold important political resources, then they should be legislative principals and push party unity lower in federal systems than in unitary systems. yet Carey, Desposato, and Jones and Hwang found either little evidence of subnational effects or quite weak effects. these findings must be more fully explored. to improve our understanding of the role that governors play in federal assemblies, I investigated the possibility of gubernatorial influence on Mexico’s federal legislature in the democratic era, which began in 1997 with the Party of the Institutional Revolution’s (PRI’s) loss of majority in the lower house.

Like governors in Brazil and argentina, Mexican governors do not normally become involved in the day-to-day work of the federal legis-lature, and only negotiate the bills that matter to them with their party’s legislative leadership, using the federal deputies as intermediaries. In certain issue areas related to fiscal matters, the legislative leaders of the nation’s three major parties work as agents of Mexico’s 32 directly elected state executives to gain fiscal advantages for their states. the legislative leaders respond to gubernatorial demands on fiscal matters because the leaders fear the state executives’ ability to break caucus unity. governors can influence their state deputies’ votes on certain bills because they hold important resources, such as candidate nominations and future political posts, in a context of nonconsecutive reelection. Despite enjoying great influence over the political careers of federal representatives, Mexico’s governors do not concern themselves in most congressional negotiations, and are able to make deals on those that matter to their states, and so do not break ranks with their legislative leaders, leaving discipline very high in democratic Mexico (as it was under PRI hegemony). this finding establishes a comparative context for Mexico with regard to other presidential, federal nations in Latin america: differences in political history, electoral rules, and party structures notwithstanding, Mexican governors now behave far more like their counterparts in the southern Cone than scholars previously believed.

In this article, I demonstrate how and why state governors in Mexico wield great authority over copartisan federal deputies from their states, both those elected in single-member districts (sMDs) and those elected via one of the five closed proportional-representation (PR) lists. the authority of governor over federal deputy is not readily apparent from previous studies of legislative voting in Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies. the national party and legislative leadership of the three major parties negotiate with their respective governors over the legislation that most affects the subnational executives, in effect “hiding” their

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influence. Mexican governors share control of political resources with national party and legislative leaders, but they delegate their influence to party leaders in the legislature to gain more fiscal advantages from the federal government, their main supplier of state resources.

Mexico is one of the few democracies in the world that prohibits consecutive reelection for members of the legislature, a prohibition that places some politicians at the whim of other politicians who control candidate selection. Mexican governors control most plurality candida-cies (and can negotiate some of the PR-list candidacies) that are crucial to party politicians in this political context. other resources under gubernatorial control include money and staff for campaigning and, most important, future posts in state government and the state party (as well as candidacies), which are of special interest to deputies who must retire from the federal legislature after serving a single three-year term.

I offer interview evidence to promote deeper understanding of the negotiations that take place among the governors, the national party leadership, and the federal bureaucrats in charge of managing the nation’s fiscal flows. all governors, regardless of partisan label, continu-ously strive to appropriate more funds for their state coffers, and they deploy their national party legislative leaders and their state’s deputies to help secure more funds. Mexico has a particular fiscal trajectory that leaves state governors with few local taxes but resource rich; the federal government transfers the peso equivalent of millions of U.s. dollars each year according to established guidelines (Díaz-Cayeros 2006; Flamand 2006; Hernández and Jarillo 2007). since the onset of electoral competition in the 1990s, state executives have successfully obliged the federal government to increase guaranteed transfers as well as earmarked funds (largely for public schools and hospitals). the governors depend on these automatic federal handouts for more than 90% of their average yearly budgets (Díaz-Cayeros 2004), and their diminutive local tax bases require the governors to use their political might to press for more federal funds. the yearly budget agreements offer the clearest way for scholars to perceive how Mexico’s governors use their legislative leaders, although state executives occasionally become involved in negotiating other bills, especially those concerning tax and fiscal reforms.

the directly elected state executives control anywhere from 2 to 33 copartisan deputies (depending on the size of the state), which does not give them enough leverage to change the direction of most votes (except those that are most divided). the governors must therefore coordinate with other state governors to pass the legislation that matters to them.1 But arranging, negotiating, and bargaining over different bills

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is an expensive, time-consuming proposition, so governors rely on their legislative leaders to lower the costs of enacting important legislative bills.2 governors are interested in very few bills considered by the Chamber of Deputies, so it makes little sense for them to maintain constant coordination efforts with the legislature.

the national party leaders and caucus chiefs also need the governors, so the leaders work to promote state interests when issues of financial importance crop up in the Chamber. governors can, if need be, exert great influence over “their” deputies’ voting behavior in fiscally related matters (as I later show), and legislative coordinators must keep the governors happy or risk splitting the party delegation. Furthermore, the state executives control millions of votes, which can be used both in general elections and internal party primaries. some of the state executives aim to run for their party’s presidential nomina-tions, so one of them could conceivably become the next president. Mexican governors use their national chamber leadership to represent their states’ interests in the national legislature, knowing they control the political destinies of a large proportion of the federal deputies. gubernatorial influence should not be exaggerated, however; other interest groups, such as mass-media conglomerates and large business interests also wield considerable influence, albeit without controlling deputies’ future political careers.

there is no doubt that party unity scores in Mexico’s plural legisla-tures (since 1997) have been extremely high. as a result, most specialists argue that national leaders direct voting behavior in the Chamber (Casar 1999; nacif 2002; Weldon 2005). But these high unity scores have masked the ability of governors to exert political power over deputies. the reasons previously given for this voting discipline—nomination control and internal chamber resources—are insufficient. My analysis revealed that governors share nomination control with national party leaders and that future career posts (which have not been considered by other authors) are centered in the local and state political arenas, where governors enjoy great influence over the deputies’ access to political posts.

this article is divided into four sections. First, I explain Mexico’s specific set of institutional rules and review the literature on Mexican legislative behavior. In the second section, I provide evidence demonstrating that the nation’s governors possess important resources for party politicians. Political recruitment data regarding approximately 1,400 federal deputies from the three main parties (1997–2006) reveal that most of the nation’s federal deputies arrive at the Chamber from local and state posts and return to the subnational arena after a three-

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year stint in Congress. Even when a new governor comes to power in a given state, the governor is very likely to deliver future posts to out-going deputies. In the third section, I explain how Mexican governors use their influence over deputies to win benefits and increased federal transfers in the annual budget rounds and in negotiations over other fiscally oriented bills. the fourth section establishes that when governors find it in their interests to direct their deputies’ votes, they are able to do so. I conclude by reviewing the importance of these findings for our interpretation of how state interests and preferences can influence the legislature in federal regimes.

I analyzed the Party of the Institutional Revolution’s (PRI) voting behavior on a split fiscal-reform vote in the 59th Legislature (2003–2006); no party held a simple majority at that time, but the PRI had the largest caucus, with 222 of the 500 Chamber members. I chose this bill as a test case for the argument that governors can influence their deputies’ votes, because the PRI’s 17 governors publicly expressed their preference for a crucial and problematic fiscal-reform bill that split the national party leadership. It is the only bill for which any full group of governors from a party expressed their preferences in a public way.3

1. The Mexican Political Context

Mexico is a presidential, federal regime comprising 32 states (including the Federal District) whose governors are directly elected on a staggered electoral calendar, each for a single six-year term. Both constitutional and electoral rules affect relations of hierarchy and control within the Mexican legislature. First, the no-reelection clause of the constitution dictates that federal deputies must vacate their posts after each three-year term, thus preventing the deputies from relying on incumbency to construct long-term legislative careers.4 Voters cannot directly punish or benefit their representatives for their performances in the Chamber; voters can only hold parties accountable, not individual representatives. the Mexican Chamber of Deputies is filled through two different forms of representation: 60% of the 500 members of the House (300 deputies) are elected via single-member district (sMD) plurality races; 40% (or 200 deputies) reach the Chamber through five regional proportional-representation (PR) districts that elect 40 deputies each from a closed list.

scholars observing the Mexican legislature have presented a model of national party control over deputy voting behavior they claim applies from the period before the PRI lost majority control over the Chamber in 1997 through the early democratic period (1997–2006).

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according to this model, national party leaders and caucus leaders (who themselves most often act as “trusted agents” of the party leaders) mandate individual deputy voting behavior through their control over nominations and internal legislative resources (Casar 1999, 2001; nacif 2002; Rivera-sánchez 2004; Weldon 2002, 2005). Recent party cohe-sion scores seem to support this model: PRI deputies voted together more than 99% of the time in the 57th Legislature (1997–2000) and almost 95% of the time in the 58th (Weldon 2005, 15). Rates for the center-right national action Party (Pan) and center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) were even higher.

Weldon (2005, 23–24) has asserted that nomination control and the internal caucus prerogatives of legislative faction leaders largely explain the tendency of Mexican deputies to vote with their parliamen-tary caucus on an overwhelming number of bills. Electoral institutions are not of much explanatory value, since PR and plurality deputies tend to vote in similar ways (both within and across the three main parties). More importantly, Weldon did not find a regional voting dimension in Mexico, leading him to conclude that the only legislative principal of importance in Mexico is the national legislative leadership.

My work challenges previous studies on the Mexican Chamber of Deputies. I demonstrate that governors—along with the national party leadership—control ballot access, campaign funds, and future political posts, and so, explaining discipline with reference only to party leader-ship cannot be complete. Carey’s dual-principals model implies that party discipline would fall in Mexico, which it has not. Examining the role of the nation’s governors in the Chamber provides a far completer picture of the reasons that federal deputies vote as they do and the negotiations over fiscal matters that occur between governors and their party’s legislative leadership.

2. Gubernatorial Resources

Mexico’s directly elected state executives control several types of resources that make them critical actors in politicians’ careers. governors wield influence over candidate selection not only for federal deputies elected from sMDs, but also for mayors, local deputies, and their own successors. second, governors often spend hefty sums of money to support copartisans in local and federal electoral campaigns. Finally, Mexican governors control access to thousands of jobs in state government and the local party affiliate, allowing them to provide political posts for vulnerable copartisan deputies leaving the Chamber after serving a single term.

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Interviews with several national party leaders, governors, and former federal deputies reveal that governors from all major parties have held increasing power over sMD candidacies for the Chamber of Deputies since electoral competition began to threaten PRI hege-mony in the mid- to late 1990s.5 PRI governors in particular won the informal right to nominate more of their allies in the 1990s because these governors could support copartisan congressional campaigns. this trend has only become more pronounced since the end of the PRI regime in 2000. the Pan and PRD governors also use their federal deputies as allies in the legislature, and they take it upon themselves to control ballot access as much as possible, although the PRD governors have more difficulty due to more-powerful internal factions.6 smart governors choose deputy candidates who can win plurality elections, not only their closest allies,7 but it is crucial that an ambitious governor send a trusted agent to the Chamber of Deputies to “take care of state business, especially the budget.”8

In all three parties, the statutes call for two types of nomina-tion for the 300 sMD seats: open primaries and district conventions. governors are crucial actors in the process, informally deciding most of the sMD nominations to the Chamber. “District conventions” are in fact elite negotiation and imposition of candidates, and the governors can place many of their allies.9 In many primaries, the governor can aid a favored candidate and tip the balance in her or his favor. allowing state executives to influence candidate selection in their states benefits the national leadership of the three parties, because the governors then have strong incentives to support those candidates and their campaigns. Voters have only one ballot for both the plurality and PR tiers. thus, as each state’s vote for its sMD candidate rises, so does the national vote of the party, which helps determine the number of PR seats the party will hold. at times, governors can negotiate with the national leadership to place some allies on the closed PR lists.

In terms of campaign financing, the picture is somewhat different. Politicians in the 300 sMDs must win plurality races, so they are interested in running local campaigns that will increase their likelihood of victory. Money is crucial to modern campaigning in Mexico, so the party leaders who can disperse funds will be important to the careers of the deputy candidates. the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) distributes all public funds for federal campaigning directly to the national party headquarters, which then distribute a portion of this money (under the old rules, between Us$25,000 and $45,000) to the candidates in the 300 sMDs as they see fit. sMD candidates have therefore been dependent on the national headquarters for a good deal of their campaign funds.10

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through the 2006 elections, however, the leadership of the three parties retained a good deal of this money for national media appeals that promoted the party label rather than individual candidates.11 Consequently, the amount allocated to would-be deputies was usually insufficient, and many turned to their copartisan governor in those states that had one. the governors can employ both legal and slightly less-appropriate means to aid federal deputy candidates during campaigns. For example, whenever governor Manuel Bartlett opened a school or hospital, he announced, “this is what the PRI does for you.”12 therefore, popular governors created coattail effects for deputies. on the less-virtuous side, governors use state employees to help distribute flyers and they spend funds on local television appeals, press their party’s mayors to organize meetings and small rallies in their municipalities, and garner support from local business owners for the congressional candidate.13 of course, the governors do not place all of the sMD candidates in their states, and many politicians from opposing state party factions win candidacies. But it is usually in the governor’s interests to aid partisan candidates in his or her state, even those from rival intra-party groups.

a final and extremely valuable form of aid—one that has not been considered previously by scholars analyzing the Mexican legislature—is the governor’s ability to distribute future political posts. It is not enough to consider resources that a governor holds before the politician enters the Chamber of Deputies; political actors can change loyalties if neces-sary. although the national legislative leadership controls important intrachamber resources with which to castigate recalcitrant deputies or benefit obedient ones, in a political system forbidding consecutive reelection, individual deputies must find new posts after only three years. national leaders simply cannot provide these posts in sufficient numbers, leaving deputies once again reliant on state and local jobs in government, in the party, or in elected positions if they wish to continue their political careers.

Indirect empirical evidence shows that plurality deputies can rely on governors or state party factions for political posts after leaving the Chamber. table 1 shows the immediately prior positions and immediately future posts of the federal deputies from three plural leg-islatures. the data account for the immediately prior posts of almost 1,400 federal deputies in the 57th (1997–2000), 58th (2000–2003), and 59th (2003–2006) Legislatures. I determined the immediate future career posts of more than 80% of the 1,416 deputies by referring to the federal government’s 2001–2004 directories and several newspaper sources.14 If we consider both PR and plurality deputies together, then the vast majority (69%) of sMD deputies rose from the subnational

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taBLE 1 Posts of Plurality and PR Deputies (Pan, PRD, and PRI),

1997–2003

Prior Post Future Post

sMD PR aggregate sMD PR aggregatePolitical arena % % % % % %

subnational 78.6 53.0 70.5 48.6

national 9.5 35.4 22.9 45.6

total subnational 69 61.7

total national 19 32

nonpolitical 11.9 11.6 12 6.6 5.7 6.3

total Found 832 516 95.2 699 469 82.4

(n) (1,348) (1,168)

total Base (n) (1,416) (1,416)

Sources: ¿Quién Es Quién en el Congreso? (Instituto de Estudios para la transición Democrática 1999, 2002), federal government directories, and several newspapers. Pan: national action Party. PRD: Party of the Democratic Revolution. PRI: Party of the Institutional Revolution.

political arena.15 If we take only plurality deputies into account, then almost 79% of the deputies came from local and state arenas. (the local political arena consists of state and municipal posts in government and the party, as well as elected positions, such as local deputy, mayor, city councilor, and governor.) More than half (53%) of the PR deputies held a state or local post immediately before taking office in san Lázaro. approximately 12% of the sMD and PR deputies came directly from nonpolitical posts.

When a deputy completes a single three-year term, that legislator tends to return to her or his state to continue political service. almost 62% of all deputies find a subnational post after the Chamber stint. and disaggregating plurality and PR deputies reveals that although more sMD representatives find posts in the state and local arenas (70.5%), many PR deputies (48.6%) also return to the subnational arena, a higher percentage than move to national political posts (45.6%). these data cannot demonstrate conclusively which state political actors distributed these subsequent posts, but governors clearly control access to both state-level party posts and government positions, and they exert much influence in local-level ballot access for elected posts (such as those for local deputies and many mayors) in their respective states.

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one could argue that because Mexican governors cannot be reelected, they would have little power over their deputies, some of whom will necessarily leave office under a new governor. Using the same database, I examined the career paths of those deputies who entered the Chamber during a copartisan governor’s tenure and left during a different but still copartisan governor’s tenure (who won office during the deputy’s three-year legislative term). almost 72% of these outgoing deputies found posts in their states. this pattern is indirect evidence that new copartisan governors are willing to find positions within state politics for outgoing deputies whom they did not see elected to the Chamber of Deputies.

3. What Governors Want

Caucus leaders in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies act as the day-to-day bosses of party backbenchers and direct those members’ votes on the vast majority of initiatives. they share this authority over deputies with copartisan governors only on issues involving fiscal and resource distribution to the states. Former governor Manuel Bartlett promised his party’s caucus coordinator, “te mando mi diputación” [“I send you my state caucus”], meaning the deputies from Bartlett’s state were “his” but Bartlett was sending them to the party’s caucus coordi-nator so the caucus leader could use those votes as he saw fit.16 several observers of Mexican politics (Casar 2001; nacif 2002; Rivera-sánchez 2004; Weldon 2005) have pointed out that caucus leaders’ control over the legislative agenda, their rule-based ability to assign and fire committee presidents, and their discretional control over intrachamber resources provide them with great power over deputies.17 Deputies feel the influence of governors most keenly during negotiations of the annual budget and other financially relevant initiatives, in large part because state coffers are so dependent on federal resources.

Caucus coordinators know that deputies must represent guber-natorial interests on certain votes, such as the annual budget bill (the spending bill is called the Propuesta de Egresos Federal, or PEF).18 a former PRI legislative leader acknowledged, “a coordinator has to take care of his governors in the PEF negotiations, because he has to guaran-tee the unity of his caucus.”19 If the caucus coordinator does not work for the governors’ interests, then the coordinator might find it impossible to deliver party backbenchers’ support in the next vote. according to a former president of the Budget Committee, when the coordinator does not take into consideration the preferences of the governors on certain votes, the governors can “make noise” by instructing their deputies

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to ignore the party line on future floor votes. and ironically, because discipline is so high in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, if the party delegation does not vote together, then the caucus leader looks weak, seemingly unable to negotiate.20

governors, as we have already seen, share influence with their party’s legislative leaders, because they help determine the political futures of their deputies. Furthermore, governors are important for national politics because they win elections—both local and federal—in their respective states. state executives from the three main parties tend to be strong pre-candidates for their parties’ presidential nominations, and even politicians who do not run for the nation’s highest office can provide critical support for other presidential hopefuls. a strong coalition of governors is a must for presidential candidates, both to win the party’s nomination and the general election.21 Legislative leaders know that governors matter both within the Chamber, because of their control over deputies’ futures, and externally, because of their vote-winning capability. therefore, it is in the leaders’ interests to help the state executives secure their goals in the Chamber, much as is the case for argentina’s legislative leaders (Jones and Hwang 2005).

Caucus coordinators find that having a copartisan governor exercise some control over his or her state’s representatives can actually make their jobs easier. Without a governor to “deliver the votes,” indi-vidual deputies can, under special circumstances (for example, during consideration of a disputed bill), drive up the cost of their votes. For example, several members of the PRI delegation from a non-PRI state were treated as “free agents” during the fight over the fiscal reform in 2003. Because these members did not have a PRI governor to direct their votes during the breakdown in national party unity, one of the two rival PRI caucus coordinators offered each of the state’s deputies Mex$40,000 (roughly Us$3,700) for a yea vote on the bill. the other PRI leader doubled the prize to 80,000 pesos for a nay vote.22 Having to pay off—or even spend much time negotiating with—individual deputies drives up the transaction costs of managing the caucus. these costs are lowered considerably if the caucus deals instead with the far smaller number of governors (the major parties hold from 5 to 19 governorships each).

Because of Mexico’s particular system of fiscal federalism, all governors want more resources from the federal government, and they need their party’s legislative coordinators at the federal level to help them win these resources. governors depend on federal government transfers for a large percentage of their state budgets (Díaz-Cayeros 2004; Flamand 2006; sour, ortega, and san sebastian 2003). tax

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collection is extremely centralized (with the average state only collecting about 5% of its budget in local taxes), and spending is quite decentral-ized. the governors depend on additional federal transfers that become available during the annual budget negotiations within the Chamber of Deputies (Díaz-Cayeros n.d.; Pardinas 2008).23

state governments depend on the federal government for four different types of transfers. First, revenue-sharing monies (Ramo 28), unassigned state funds collected by the federal government, are trans-ferred to the states as state resources; governors are only accountable to the state legislatures for how they spend these funds. second, earmarked transfers (Ramo 33) are sent to the states, 75% going directly to pay teachers’ and doctors’ salaries. supposedly, the distribution of these two transfers is controlled by a government formula, but in practice, individual accounts rise and fall over time in ways that cannot be explained by the formula (ortega 2004). state executives must therefore scrutinize to how the deputies distribute these funds each year. third, governors rely on the resources that the various ministries of the federal government spend in their states, with highways, credit programs, and public health programs being of central importance (Hernández and Jarillo 2007).24 Finally, during the period covered in this study (1997–2006), oil prices rose steadily and the governors won a fair-sized share of the windfall profits from the state-owned oil monopoly, PEMEX (Pardinas 2008). state executives also care about other types of legislation that could affect the flow of federal funds to their states, especially fiscal and tax reform packages (as I will address in the next section).25 outside of fiscal matters, governors take little interest in the vast number of bills considered by the federal legislature, and they permit their party’s legislative coordinators to decide how “their deputies” should vote on any nonfiscal issue.

the final negotiations over the annual spending bill are controlled by the Chamber in the Budget Committee (Comisión de Presupuesto y Cuenta Pública, or CPCP). Joint hearings with other committees are not held, but members from other panels can attend most of the CPCP’s hearings and send specific spending requests (see Caballero and Dávila 2007 for more detail on the torturous process of budgeting). the senate is constitutionally excluded from the spending side of the annual budget negotiations. these rules make the CPCP the bull’s-eye for the nation’s 32 state executives, and, as one would expect, governors push their legislative leaders to get their state deputies on this panel.26 of the 117 members from the three main parties on the CPCP over the past four legislatures, 71% represented states governed by a member of the same party, compared to the 57% of deputies who represented copartisan states in the legislature as a whole.27

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During Vicente Fox’s administration, the presidents of the CPCP travelled all over the nation, asking governors about their states’ needs. governors now come to san Lázaro to make their appeals personally: between october and november of 2008, for example, 29 of the nation’s 32 governors met with members of the committee and asked for the rough equivalent of $15.5 billion Us dollars more than what they had originally received in the PEF.28

the president of Mexico is not particularly influential in the budget-making process (Casar 2002; Díaz-Cayeros n.d.). the president is often forced to make concessions to the subnational executives to win cross-party support for initiatives in a legislature that lacks a co-partisan majority. the president sets the budget agenda, because he or she initiates the process by sending the PEF to the legislature, but the Chamber can amend the PEF as it sees fit (at least, whatever part of the budget has not been preassigned to pay the nation’s debt and other obligations; see Hernández 2006 for more description of Mexico’s budget complexities). the limit on congressional modifications is that spending must not surpass the resources available in the annual tax bill (Ley de Ingresos, passed by both the Chamber and the senate). there had been great doubt among observers as to whether or not the president could veto a budget bill (Weldon 2002), but the supreme Court recently determined that the president does have the right to veto either part of or the entire annual budget bill. the number of votes in the decision was not sufficient to create a precedent, but now most scholars believe that the Court will rule in favor of the presidential veto in the future.

the Pan has been the governing party since 2000, but it has never held a simple majority in the legislature. thus, it has had to negotiate all bills, including the budget, with the support of at least one other major party (although, in practice, the budget is almost always signed off on by the big three). this need for a coalition makes the opposition delegations of the PRD and the PRI especially important during the budget process.

4. A Test of Gubernatorial Influence over Federal Deputies

From my analysis, I determined that when governors need and want to influence the votes in the Chamber, they can do so. I focused on the Fiscal Reform Bill of December 2003 because it caused a split within the PRI’s national party leadership and, equally important, it was the only bill over which the PRI governors expressed a public prefer-ence, either in favor of or against an initiative. the 2003 Fiscal Reform Bill provides a viable test case for my investigation of gubernatorial

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influence: if governors are deputy principals, then when a party’s national leadership splits and the issue involves fiscal resources, the governors should be able decide the votes of their states’ deputies. the split in the national leadership reveals the influence that governors hold over their deputies. I would not argue that splits have become more prevalent since the end of PRI hegemony in the late 1990s—Weldon (2005) has shown that discipline has fallen slightly, at most—only that, in matters of resource allocation, the governors are coprincipals, along with national party leaders.

the key to policymaking in Mexico’s 2003–2006 federal legisla-ture was the PRI’s 222-person delegation, the largest in the Chamber. the president’s party (Pan) held 151 seats, the PRD held 98, and the smaller parties held the remaining seats. the Fox administration (2000–2006) had two choices: it could convince the PRI’s entire caucus to vote for a fiscal reform that would include a value-added tax on all foods and medicines, or it could split the PRI delegation to win the 100 votes necessary to produce a majority. the Fox administration and its caucus coordinators began an intensive lobbying campaign on the PRI’s leaders in Congress. the Fox camp had the vocal support of the PRI’s caucus leader in this effort. the left-wing PRD mobilized against the measure, however, and many PRI deputies were simply ideologically opposed to the tax, which was seen as regressive. of course, if the PRI voted in favor of Fox’s fiscal reform, then the party might have been blamed for raising taxes, but any subsequent positive effects on the economy or foreign investment would have been claimed by the Pan going into the 2006 presidential elections.

an important aspect of the 2003 fiscal reform debate is the breakdown it caused in the tenuous alliance between the president of the PRI’s national Executive Committee (CEn), Roberto Madrazo, and his second-in-command, the secretary general of the CEn, Elba Ester gordillo, who was also the party’s caucus coordinator. gordillo, as caucus leader, had openly supported a fiscal reform since before she was elected caucus coordinator. the deputies rejected gordillo’s negotiations with the Vicente Fox administration to raise taxes (and her personal leadership style), contributing to her downfall and the party’s split on the fiscal reform vote. When the PRI deputies rebelled against gordillo,29 her erstwhile-ally Madrazo used her miscalculation in an attempt to destroy gordillo politically.

on December 11, 2003, the fiscal reform bill was remanded to the floor for a Chamber vote.30 the PRI’s legislative delegation, the largest in the Chamber of Deputies, ruptured over the decision: 71 of the party’s representatives followed their former legislative leader and

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voted for the president’s reform initiative (and against their caucus majority), while the 141 remaining deputies voted with the center-left PRD to reject the Pan’s bill and 10 deputies abstained. the final floor count was 234 votes in favor of the Pan/gordillo bill and 251 against, with 15 abstentions.

almost all of the PRI’s governors came out publicly for or against the December 2003 fiscal reform bill,31 as did leaders of the party’s corporatist organizations, and, of course, the antagonistic leaders within the national party leadership (Madrazo against, gordillo in favor). this breakdown in party leadership offers us a unique opportunity to perceive the principal-agency problems that always exist but are obscured by the strong national party leadership. Using the PRI deputies’ votes on the 2003 fiscal reform package, I asked, “to whom do PRI deputies owe their loyalties?”

I ran two binary logit models, with the dependent variable being the individual deputy’s decision to vote with (0) or against (1) the caucus majority (that is, 0 against the reform; 1 in favor of reform). the summary statistics are listed in the appendix. the main indepen-dent variable is the preference of the governors toward the proposed reform. I employed two different governor-preference variables: the first (Governor Preference-SMD) takes each PRI governor’s preference and applies it to plurality deputies from that governor’s state; the second (Governor Preference-SMD/PR) extends each governor’s preference to all of the copartisan deputies from that state, both plurality and PR. I used two different variables because the governors might only control those copartisan deputies who won plurality sMD races; or, in a wider application, governors might control all deputies from their state, no matter how those deputies won their seats, because deputies are highly likely to return to their home states. I omitted deputies from non-PRI-governed states from the study, because, by definition, they are not affected by the potential influence of a copartisan state executive. If governors have influence over their deputies, then we should see a positive and significant relationship—if the governor was in favor of the reform, then the deputies should have voted in favor; if the governor was against reform, then the deputies should have voted against it.

to get a better idea of how district voters might influence legisla-tive outcomes in the absence of district-level opinion polls, I included Runner-up in the model, scored as 0 if the second-place finisher in the 2003 midterms were from the center-left PRD and as 1 if that deputy belonged to the center-right Pan.32 Because the Pan leadership came out strongly in favor of the measure, I expected deputies from more-panista districts to tend to vote in favor of the reform but those in

250 Joy Langston

comparatively left-of-center districts to vote against it, all other things being equal.

the PRI has a mass base that is in part composed of peak-level union federations that group together hundreds of thousands of workers, peasants, and teachers. If this corporatist leadership matters, then members of the party’s sectors—the workers’, peasants’, and teachers’ unions—should follow voting cues from corporatist leaders outside the Chamber, regardless of gubernatorial preferences.33 I defined the corporatist members of the lower house as those listed on the Chamber’s website as being from the three aforementioned sectors. the corporatist leaders from the workers’ and the peasants’ groups came out publicly against the reform in the days before the floor vote, but the major proponent of the fiscal reform, Elba Esther gordillo, controlled the teachers’ votes. I constructed a variable for the peasant- and worker-allied deputies and a separate one (SNTE) for the teacher-allied deputies, because their respective leaders came out in different directions.

District Competitiveness is a control variable, measured (for deputies who won a plurality race in a sMD) as the difference between the first- and second-place party in the July 2003 federal congressional elections, subtracted from 100. For Full District Competitiveness, used in Model 2 with the extended governor preference, I assigned PR deputies a very low district-competitiveness score, to simulate their lack of preoccupation with electoral competition.

Model 1 (results shown in table 2) uses the governor preferences for only plurality deputies from PRI states on the fiscal reform vote, with the number of cases equal to 108; neither PR deputies from PRI-governed states nor deputies from non-PRI states were included, and some deputies abstained from voting. the governor-preference variable is positive and significant, as is sntE. this is an important finding: the governors were able to direct the voting of their sMD deputies. this result holds even when we take into account other possible influences, such as electoral competition and corporatist membership. District Competitiveness and Runner-up are not significant, indicating that PRI plurality deputies from PRI-governed states tend to be more affected by their governors than by district-level concerns. Peasants’ and Workers’ Sectors is not significant, meaning that deputies affiliated with these sectors did not vote as a group, most likely because their first principal in the context of a national leadership split was their state executive, rather than the corporatist leadership.

the sntE, close to one-million strong, is clearly a different sort of corporatist entity from the peasants’ and workers’ peak associations. the sntE deputies were both selected and controlled by gordillo, who

251new Legislative Principals in Mexico

taBLE 2 Logistic Regression Models,

Deputy’s Vote on Fiscal Reform as Dependent Variable

Independent Variable Model 1 Model 2

governor Preference-sMD 2.78*** (–0.59)

governor Preference-sMD/PR 1.99*** (–0.426)

Peasants’ and Workers’ sectors 0.41 –0.147 (0.551) (0.435)

sntE (teachers’ sector) 2.99*** 2.97*** (1.23) (1.12)

Runner-up –0.274 (0.688)

District Competitiveness –2.4 (2.22)

Full District Competitiveness 1.99 (0.426)

Constant –0.226 –1.53 (1.98) (0.925)

observations 108 142

McKelvey and Zavoina’s R2 0.48 0.378

Note: the cell entries are coefficients; standard errors are in parentheses. ***p = .01; **p = .05; *p = .10.

was one of the two rival PRI caucus coordinators. Because gordillo held so many powerful posts at the same time (leader of the sntE, second-in-command of the PRI, and caucus coordinator), it seems clear why sntE deputies obeyed their union chief. the sntE politicians were few in number (only 24, or roughly 11% of the PRI’s deputies), but they were loyal and voted with their leader, even though this loyalty meant voting against the caucus majority. there are few union leaders in the PRI today who can boast this sort of deputy loyalty.

governor Preference-sMD/PR, included in Model 2, raises the number of cases to 142. Model 2 poses a more-difficult test, because it assumes that a governor will have influence over all that state’s deputies, even those who won their elections via the multimember lists. neverthe-less, as table 2 shows, governors do exhibit influence over all their state

252 Joy Langston

taBLE 3Predicted Probabilities of Deputies’ Votes

on Fiscal Reform Bill

% Chance of Voting not sntE sntE In Favor

Governors’ Preferences-SMD

In Favor 1 58 1 94

against 1 8.8 1 61

Governors’ Preferences-SMD/PR

In Favor 1 56 1 93

against 1 15.5 1 60

Note: sntE = teachers’ sector.

deputies, whether those deputies entered office via plurality election or PR list. governor Preference-sMD/PR is positive and significant, although the effect of the second governor-preference variable is weaker than the first. this finding again plays up the governors’ importance in deputies’ futures. the sntE deputies continued to vote with their union leader.

I used the logit estimates to calculate the predicted probability that a deputy would vote in favor of the measure and against the caucus majority (see King, tomz, and Wittenberg 2000). as shown by the results in table 3, when a deputy’s governor opposed the fiscal reform vote (and the deputy was not a member of the sntE), the deputy had only an 8.8% chance of voting in favor of reform. But when the governor approved of reform, the deputy’s probability rose to 58% (again, when the deputy was not a member of the sntE). the governor-preference variable that takes into account both sMD and PR deputies from PRI states performs similarly: the likelihood of voting for the reform rises from 15.5% (governor against) to 56% (governor in favor).

253new Legislative Principals in Mexico

Conclusion

For this article, I sought to enrich our understanding of legislative politics in federal systems by detailing the manner in which powerful state executives use their deputies and caucus leaders to advance their states’ interests. Mexican governors hold resources that matter to ambitious politi-cians in a context of nonconsecutive reelection. the state executives largely control nominations for sMD candidacies, and they share control with the national party leadership for the PR slots. the governors also support campaigns and control hundreds of party and government posts that can be distributed to job-seeking former deputies. I researched the political backgrounds of almost 1,400 federal deputies from the three major parties, I determined that the large majority of deputies come from the subnational arena and return there after their (first) three-year term in office ends.

the state executives are not interested in most of the initiatives that the Chamber of Deputies considers during a typical three-year term, and they are willing to delegate almost all of their authority over their state deputies to their caucus leaders. But, because of Mexico’s particular form of fiscal federalism, the governors seek to ensure that their states win their shares in the annual budget rounds. governors use their caucus leaders as agents to promote their states’ fiscal interests, especially during the annual budget negotiations, but also during discussions of new taxes, fiscal reform, and the distribution of windfall oil profits. I interviewed deputies and party leaders to illuminate how governors informally influence caucus leaders through the potential sanctioning power of their deputies on future floor votes.

Finally, to test the argument that governors influence their states’ deputies, I analyzed a single vote that split the PRI leadership. I did not argue that ruptures within the national party leaderships are becoming more frequent. Rather, the purpose of my statistical test of the fiscal reform vote was to highlight the hidden influence of the executives.

the findings reported here are crucial for comparative work on legislatures. Much like their federal counterparts in other presidential regimes, Mexican governors wield important influence over deputy voting behavior. and, as in other cases, this influence is difficult to measure because of the negotiations and bargaining between caucus leaders and governors that take place behind closed doors, mostly with respect to issues of fiscal importance.

Joy Langston <joy.langston@cide.edu> is Professor of Political Science, Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE), Carretera México-Toluca 3655, Lomas de Santa Fe 01210, Mexico City, México, D.F.

254 Joy Langston

aPPEnDIX summary statistics

Variable number Mean s.D. Min Max

Vote Reform 211 0.336 0.473 0 1governor Preference 116 0.517 0.501 0 1Extended governor Preference 150 0.507 0.501 0 1sntE (teachers’ sector) 222 0.108 0.311 0 1Workers’/Peasants’ sector 222 0.36 0.481 0 1District Competitiveness 160 0.839 0.112 0.487 0.996Extended District Competitiveness 222 0.741 0.184 0.487 0.996Runner-up 160 0.217 0.413 0 1

NOTES

I thank several colleagues who were kind enough to read some version of the work, including Matthew Cleary, alberto Díaz-Cayeros, Michelle Dion, Mark Jones, David samuels, Matthew shugart, and the members of the Comparative Politics Workshop at CIDE.

1. Díaz-Cayeros (2004) offers more detail regarding the coalitional possibilities among state delegations in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies.

2. once the governors did, however, form a group called the national Coference of governors (Conago), which was active during the first national action Party administration (2000–2006).

3. governors from the center-right national action Party (Pan) and the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) did not come out publicly on this or any other measure, and so I did not use their legislative delegations in this analysis.

4. Local deputies, mayors, and city councilors can serve one three-year term, leave that office, and then return. governors (and presidents) serve six years and may never serve in that office again, although some governors do continue their political careers.

5. I refer to personal interviews that I conducted with the former leaders of the national Executive Committee: Mariano Palacios alcocer, august 2002; Humberto Roque Villanueva, november 2003; and Dulce María sauri, september 2003.

6. Interview with senator arturo nuñez, formerly a member of the PRI and its caucus coordinator, now a member of the PRD, March 9, 2009.

7. Interview with Manuel Bartlett, former PRI governor, May 28, 2009.8. Interview with Francisco suárez Dávila, a former PRI deputy who was presi-

dent of the treasury Committee in the Chamber, July 10, 2009. Interview with Ricardo Monreal, former PRD governor, February 17, 2009.

9. Interviews with Humberto Roque Villanueva and Mariano Palacios alcocer (PRI) and Ricardo Monreal (PRD). Interviews with Luis Díaz Medina, May 23, 2002,

255new Legislative Principals in Mexico

and Francisco Jiménez Merino, May 26, 2004, both former PRI federal deputies. Fran-cisco suárez Dávila stated simply, “the governors can influence their deputies because [the deputies] owe their posts to the governors.”

10. this dependence is less pronounced in the PRI because of recent changes to the party’s statutes, which now mandate that 48% of the IFE monies for regular party activities be sent to the state party affiliates. see the PRI website http://www.pri.org.mx (last accessed March 5, 2009) and art. 79, IIIa. of the new 2008 PRI statutes.

11. the Mexican legislature passed an important electoral reform in 2007, which took effect in 2009 and could change how resources are allocated within the party.

12. Interview with Manuel Bartlett, former PRI governor, May 28, 2009. 13. Interviews with norberto Corella, former Pan deputy, February 23, 2005;

Francisco Jiménez Merino (PRI), arturo nuñez, PRD senator, Jesús María Ramon, former PRI deputy, June 15, 2004; and Jorge Utrilla, former PRI deputy, May 25, 2004. Utrilla accused the PRD governor of helping PRD deputies in their campaigns.

14. I could not uncover the future posts for all deputies, because some former deputies left politics or had such unimportant local political posts that they did not receive newspaper coverage. In any case, the bias is weighted against local politicians in the data. I counted politicians who died as no-finds.

15. Here, “political arena” means an area of political action that is somewhat self-contained but whose barriers are permeable, allowing politicians to move from one area to another. the two relevant political arenas in Mexico are the subnational level (understood as both state and municipal government and party posts) and the federal level (which includes the federal government and the national party).

16. Interview, May 28, 2009.17. PRD and PRI deputies elect caucus leaders at the beginning of each new

legislature. the Pan boss is chosen by the national Executive Committee, and because the Pan has controlled the executive since 2000, the president of Mexico has great influence over the Pan caucus leader.

18. Even deputies who are not from the governor’s party must represent guber-natorial interests on fiscal matters. armando Cobián, “se Unirán Diputados a Favor del Proyecto Carretero de HMV,” El Sol de la Laguna, 15 october 2008.

19. Interview with arturo nuñez, March 9, 2009.20. “a party that does not vote together looks bad.” Interview with Jorge Chávez

Presa, former president of the Budget Committee, May 19, 2009. 21. For more analysis of the role of the governors in presidential elections, see

my previous work (Langston 2009) and Madrazo’s assertions (2006) of the “betrayal” of PRI’s governors during the 2006 presidential election.

22. Interview with a former PRI deputy who wished to remain anonymous. the members of the state delegation voted against the measure.

23. the senate does not have the constitutional right to sign off on the annual spending bill, only the annual tax bill.

24. according to Francisco suárez Dávila, a former PRI deputy and treasury Committee president, governors care about money for highways, Seguro Popular (which functions as the backbone of the state health system), PyMEs (a credit program for small and medium-sized businesses that is largely distributed through state govern-ments), and oil windfall profits. Hernández (2006) provides more detail on infrastructure spending and the budget.

256 Joy Langston

25. During the economic downturn of 2009, congressional leaders began to discuss repealing the “car-use” tax that states can levy annually on car owners. the governors, who depend on this tax, immediately mobilized, and the initiative was put on hold.

26. Interview with Ricardo Monreal, former PRD governor, February 17, 2009. one of the duties of each deputy on the CPCP is to make a good case for the budget requests of her or his governor. see “se sabe,” Milenio, 15 october 2008.

27. For example, in the 60th Legislature (2006–2009), the PRD had deputies on the CPCP from the six states it governed: Zacatecas, Chiapas, Baja California sur, guerrero, Mexico City, and Michoacán; the Pan had deputies from san Luis Potosí, Querétaro, tlaxcala, Morelos, Baja California, aguascalientes, and Jalisco.

28. salazar, Claudia, and Carole simonnet. 2008. “Quieren Estados Mayor tajada.” Reforma, 25 october 2008.

29. gordillo attempted to convince her congressional delegation of the need to apply the value-added tax to food and medicine, although this strategy had been explicitly prohibited in the PRI’s statutes and rejected in the party’s 2003 legislative campaigns. see “Provoca nuevo plan rebelión antigordillo.” El Norte, november 20, 2003.

30. the tax code bill is a section of the president’s miscelánea fiscal, or omnibus bill: if the executive wishes to reform tax laws, then he or she must annex a bill to do so (Weldon 2004, 15–17).

31. the Colima governor did not voice a preference, so I excluded the Colima deputies from my analysis.

32. I thank Matthew Cleary for this idea.33. the Popular sector of the PRI is not a tightly knit peak association, unlike

the Workers and Peasants, which organize large numbers of unions under their respec-tive banners.

34. For the Workers’ position, see “Rechaza Pri-iva la CtM.” El Norte, november 22, 2003. For the Peasants’ stance, see “Emilio Chuayffet lider diputados PRI.” El Universal, December 4, 2003 and “Crearan organismos campesinos propuesta alterna-tive de presupuesto.” Notimex, november 25, 2003.

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