Joy Langston and Scott Morgenstern, Campaigning in an Electoral Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Mexico

Mexico's Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI), a former electoral authoritarian party, obligated its federal deputy candidates to campaign actively for elections that were almost impossible to lose. Canvassing under electoral authoritarian conditions allowed the hegemonic party to gather information on its local leaders and citizens and to distribute selective, excludable resources to mobilize voters. The PRI's deputy candidates were forced to manage, organize, and run their own campaigns in "candidate-managed" campaigns. Despite large margins of victory, the PRI had to deal with significant district variation in electoral popularity, while the corporatist sectors had far less coverage than once believed.