The Institutional Revolutionary Party has been one of the most singular political phenomena of the twentieth century. A cornerstone of presidential power for more than six decades, it has given its most important features to the contemporary Mexican state.
Since its foundation as an organ of the Mexican state in 1929, the party has had clear continuity in its institutional role. The party has had three avatars, the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR, or National Revolutionary Party, 1929-38), the Partido de la Revolución Mexicana (PRM, or Party of the Mexican Revolution, 1938-46), and the present-day PRI. Although the name changes have marked important transitions, the PNR, PRM, and PRI are for all practical intents and purposes a single party. Since 1946 the PRI's candidates have won in all nine presidential elections, and the PRI has never lost the majority in the Mexican legislature, despite an increasingly strong opposition. After the crisis of 1988 the PRI suffered important defeats in state and municipal elections, but its national preeminence remains solid.
Despite its importance, however, academic discussion about the legal and political nature of the PRI has been quite limited. A few theorists have proposed tentative characterizations of the PRI, largely based on its role in the Mexican political system, its relations with other political parties, and its electoral strength.
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research paper help and we will write your research project from scratch! In the 1960s the PRI was characterized as a "strongly dominant party," in the 1970s as a "pragmatic hegemonic state," and in the 1990s as a "single party." More recent analysts have gone beyond these early characterizations and termed the PRI a "state party," examining the relations between the PRI and the Mexican state, the noncompetitive character of the party itself, and the structure and fraudulent practices in the electoral system.
As some critics of this model have pointed out, the PRI is not a "state party" like the Fascist Party in Italy or the Communist Party in the former Soviet Union, whose relationship to the state was constitutionally mandated; the closest analogy is the communist parties of eastern Europe, where the role of the communist parties was not constitutionally defined and the existence of other parties was allowed without offering a real alternative. The PRI is a state party for three reasons: first, it was created by President Plutarco Elias Calles ( 1924-2

to conserve political power, not to dispute it. Second, the most important organizational changes in the PRI in 1938 and 1946, as well as changes in its principles, programs, and plans, have been imposed by Mexican presidents without any discussion within the party. Finally, the PRI strength comes from the Mexican state and not from the party organization. Indeed, the PRI and the state have been melded to such a degree that in electoral campaigns the PRI has been able to make use of the material, financial, human, propaganda, and logistical resources of the Mexican state.