Labyrinths of Power: Political Recruitment in Twentieth-Century Mexico

by Peter H. Smith

Overview

Peter Smith has written a comprehensive and in-depth study of the structure and more important of the transformation of the national political elite in twentieth-century Mexico. In doing so, he analyzes the long-run impact of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 on the composition of the country's ruling elite. Included in his focus are such issues as the social basis of politics, the recruitments process, political career patterns, the amount of periodic turnover, and the relationships between the political and economic elites.

The author explores these issues through an empirical, computer-assisted investigation of biographical information on more than 6,000 individuals who held national political office in Mexico at any time between 1900 and 1976. He then employs various comparative and statistical techniques, along with a use of archival data, questionnaires, and interviews, to determine precisely how Mexico's political system actually works.

Professor Smith finds that the Revolution of 1910 did not fundamentally alter the class composition of the national elite, although it did redistribute power within it. He further observes that the Mexican Revolution did bring about a separation of political and economic elites, and that the route to political success is much more varied and less predictable now than before the revolutionary period.

Originally published in 1979.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691608136
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	03/08/2015
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #1596
Pages:	402
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 2.90(d)

Read an Excerpt

Labyrinths of Power

Political Recruitment in Twentieth-Century Mexico

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By Peter H. Smith

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1979 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-10065-4

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CHAPTER 1

THE LINES OF INQUIRY

One of the most critical sets of questions about any political system concerns the composition of its leadership: Who governs? Who has access to power, and what are the social conditions of rule? Such issues have direct bearing on the representativeness of political leadership, a continuing concern of democratic theorists, and on the extent to which those in power emerge from the ranks of "the people" — or from an exclusive oligarchy. These themes also relate to the role of the political system within society at large, and to the ways in which careers in public life offer meaningful opportunities for vertical (usually upward) social mobility. In addition, these questions focus attention upon the patterns of political careers — that is, the timing, sequence, and duration of tenure in public offices — patterns which can in turn provide important clues about the operative codes that guide and affect the behavior of the leaders of the system.

Consideration of these problems is highly relevant to an understanding of political change in twentieth-century Mexico, and Mexico offers an exceptionally promising laboratory for a study of them. In the first place, Mexico underwent an extended, violent, and ultimately mass-based revolution in the decade from 1910 to 1920. It is therefore possible to examine, with substantial historical perspective, the long-run impact that the Mexican Revolution may (or may not) have exerted upon the composition of the country's political elite. Did it really alter the social background of the ruling groups, or did it merely reallocate power to differing segments of the same class? Any thorough assessment of the meaning of the Mexican Revolution, and its significance for Mexican society, obviously demands an answer to this question.

In the second place, Mexico has created and maintained an unquestionably "authoritarian" regime — a system that is characterized by "limited pluralism," in Juan Linz's phrase, and one that is identifiably and analytically distinct from democratic or totalitarian types of rule. Authoritarianism is a widespread phenomenon, especially in countries throughout the Third World, and an appreciation of its variety and complexity calls for the study of elites. For if authoritarianism consists of limited pluralism, it becomes necessary to determine who falls on which side of the limits — who does (and does not) have the functional right to organize and compete for power. There is an equally urgent need to gain some understanding of the behavior of authoritarian elites and the "rules" of their political game. Ironically enough, the qualities that set off the Mexican regime from so many of its authoritarian counterparts — its apparent stability, and its domination by civilians — also make it an extraordinarily useful case study, since the recruitment and selection processes have endured for many years without a military coup or any other major interruption. To put the question in its simplest form: If you don't attain high office by amassing a popular vote (as in a democratic system), or by ascending the military hierarchy (as in countless places), then how do you do it?

Third, Mexico has undergone rapid and profound socioeconomic change during the course of this century. Industries have flourished, cities have grown, literacy has spread, the population has boomed — and the gap between the rich and poor has steadily increased. The situation thus affords an opportunity to analyze the relationship, if any, between alterations in society at large and in the composition of the ruling groups. For it is at least conceivable that socioeconomic trends, rather than political events or processes, have exercised primary influence upon the patterns of leadership recruitment.

In an effort to confront these issues I focus, in this study, upon the changing characteristics of the national political elite in twentieth-century Mexico. Specifically, as explained in some detail below, I explore the personal biographies of more than 6,000 individuals who held national office in Mexico at any time between 1900 and 1976 — before, during, and since the Mexican Revolution. My intent is to analyze the structure and, more important, the transformation of elites over a substantial stretch of time. Straightforward as this purpose seems, it raises a series of complex conceptual problems, not the least of which concerns the very notion of a political elite.

The Concept of Elites

A study of this kind draws heavily upon the intellectual legacy of the classical elite theorists: Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, and Robert Michels. Writing in the late nineteenth century, when Europe's hereditary aristocracies were waning and burgeoning labor movements were promoting Marxist visions of stateless Utopias, these thinkers argued forcefully that in all societies, no matter what the political system, power would always be controlled by a small minority. "Among the constant facts and tendencies that are to be found in all political organisms," declared Mosca in his famous treatise,

one is so obvious that it is apparent to the most casual eye. In all societies — from societies that are very meagerly developed and have barely attained the dawnings of civilization, down to the most advanced and powerful societies — two classes of people appear — a class that rules and a class that is ruled. The first class, always the less numerous, performs all political functions, monopolizes power and enjoys the advantages that power brings, whereas the second, the more numerous class, is directed and controlled by the first, in a manner that is now more or less legal, now more or less arbitrary and violent, and supplies the first, in appearance at least, with material means of subsistence and with the instrumentalities that are essential to the vitality of the political organism.

The distribution of power was highly skewed and bimodal, and the minority which possessed it comprised a "ruling class." To this dominant stratum Pareto gave the label that has since remained in common use: the governing, or political, elite.

This emphasis upon a ruling elite seems, at face value, unexceptionable. Political power is unequally (if not bimodally) distributed in all societies; those who have the greatest shares can properly be regarded as an elite, and it is in that sense only that I employ the term throughout this book. Whether power must be so concentrated, as Michels gloomily concluded ("Who says organization, says oligarchy"), is a separate question. The fact is that it has been so, at least in all societies observed to date, and it applies to twentieth-century Mexico as well as to other situations.

The difficulty with classical elite theory lies in its extension of this basic insight. Beginning with its stark, unnecessarily simplistic dichotomy between the rulers and the ruled, the theory went on to posit that the ruling group comprised a unified, organized, self-conscious, purposeful class "obeying," in Mosca's words, "a single impulse." One problem with this formulation stems from the implicit concept of class, which includes the question of consciousness but ignores the question of socioeconomic influence or status. Another and perhaps more basic problem comes from the assumption of shared consciousness. It may be, in some cases, that the dominant elite pursues a common purpose; it may also be, in other cases, that those possessing power do not have a sense of unity. That is a matter for empirical research, not for a priori definition.

In addition, proponents of the theory tended to argue that members of the elite were somehow superior — "select," as the word itself implies — and that, in an almost Darwinian sense, they held a monopoly of power because they were the fittest for it. As Mosca put it, "ruling minorities are usually so constituted that the individuals who make them up are distinguished from the mass of the governed by qualities that give them a certain material, intellectual or even moral superiority; or else they are the heirs of individuals who possessed such qualities." Pareto, for his part, laid the emphasis on psychological attributes: political leaders had to know how to use appropriate combinations of persuasion and force, and this task called for special kinds of personalities. In either case, the assumption was that individuals acquired power largely because of their own qualities, rather than because of structural inequities or patterns of oppression.

A concomitant part of this view was an idea that political elites, or ruling groups, were essentially autonomous. They could be pressured by the masses, and they needed the support (or acquiescence) of the nonelites, but they were mainly beholden to themselves. Even Harold Lasswell, writing in the early 1950s, defined the political elite as the social stratum from which leadership originates "and to which accountability is maintained." Again, this might be true and it might not be true: there is no inherent reason why it must be so.

Ironically enough, some theorists have constructed interpretations of political democracy by accepting much or most of elite theory and rejecting just this one assumption. In a democratic system, as Joseph Schumpeter (among others) has maintained, positions of power are in principle open to everyone, but they are in fact sought by members of a tiny minority — that is, by competing factions of a political elite which, in contrast to the classical model, owes accountability to its electorate. Democracy, then, consists of the "institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote." In this conception, democracy is merely a method for the selection of elites.

At any rate, the emphasis on elite autonomy led the classical theorists to find the sources of political change within the ruling group itself. In Mosca's terms, "the varying structure of ruling classes has a preponderant importance in determining the political type, and also the level of civilization, of the different peoples," and a change within the ruling class necessarily meant a change within society at large. (Mosca also conceded that dislocations in the ruling class could result from the emergence of new social forces, as when "a new source of wealth develops in a society" — a position that, as James MeiseI observed, brought him "uncomfortably close to Marx," and one that Mosca himself did not thoroughly develop.)

It was Pareto, of course, who crystallized the idea of the circulation of elites. Leadership demanded a requisite combination of psychological attributes, according to Pareto, and the elite must constantly replenish its supply. "Aristocracies decay not only in number but also in quality, in the sense that energy diminishes and there is a debilitating alteration in the proportion of the residues [sympathies] which originally favored the capture and retention of power...." Therefore the elite should draw upon the nonelite, improving (and protecting) itself by renewing itself. Social mobility would thus maintain high standards of leadership and assure political stability as well. But if circulation stopped, danger then arose: "the accumulation of superior elements in the lower classes and, conversely, of inferior elements in the upper classes, is a potent cause of disturbance in the social equilibrium." In time, most ruling groups lost sight of this fact and eventually succumbed to challenges from below. Hence revolutions, and hence Pareto's well-known aphorism: "History is a graveyard of aristocracies."

What Pareto envisioned was a cyclical exchange of political dominance between two psychological types, the foxes and the lions. Foxes, in this scheme, tended to be cunning, shrewd, manipulative, artists of corruption and deception. Lions relied on force instead of persuasion: they were primitive, forceful, and strong. Interestingly enough, Pareto identified these leadership types with differing economic activities — foxes with industrial and commercial interests, lions with agriculture — but he did not pursue this connection at any length. Essentially, he saw elite transformation as the interplay of psychological forces, with excesses of one kind counterbalanced by excesses of another.

At face value, this thesis has a certain plausibility. In the case of Mexico, for instance, there appears to be a fox-lion-fox cycle in the transition from the aging Porfirio Diaz (and his elegant collaborator, Jose Yves Limantour) to rough-and-tumble types like Pancho Villa to smooth operators like Miguel Aleman. But the scheme is as superficial as it is suggestive. In the first place, political leaders, especially in Mexico, have displayed conspicuous abilities for combining foxlike agility with lionlike power, summoning each trait according to the requirements of the situation, not just because of psychic predilection. Second, the cyclical theory does not easily accommodate patterns of linear, secular change (as will be sometimes encountered below). Besides, I do not have any data on the psychological predisposition of Mexican political leaders and could not classify them even if I wanted to. On the other hand, this book is supposed to be a study of elite transformation: if not psychological forces, what might have been the sources of change?

One set of possibilities deals with political factors. In some societies electoral reform, to take one kind of political event, has contributed to major alterations in the social origin of leadership. In England, the Second Reform Bill of 1867 helped precipitate a sharp decline in the proportion of landowners sitting in the House of Commons. In Argentina, as I have elsewhere shown, the enfranchisement of all adult male citizens in 1912 prompted a similar decline in the percentage of upper-class "aristocrats" in the Chamber of Deputies, and the rise of the Peronist movement led to their near-complete eclipse in the 1940s. Being a process of violent upheaval, a revolution such as occurred in Mexico could — almost by definition — be expected to bring about profound and sudden changes in the composition of elites. Did it?

A lot of people seem to think it did. An ex-president of Mexico, Emilio Portes Gil, writing in a government-sponsored volume, has expressed what practically amounts to an official view on the subject. In contrast to the aristocratic pretensions of the prerevolutionary elite, said Portes Gil,

The founders and leaders of the Mexican Revolution were men of humble origin who were always in contact with working-class people in the city and the countryside. Many were farmers and had personally suffered the despotism of the landowners ... ridiculed, reviled, and persecuted, they belonged to a class which possessed no privilege of any kind, and they viewed the latifundistas and representatives of the Porfirian dictatorship with contempt. From these men, the spokesmen and commanders of the Revolution, came the laws for the protection of the worker and the peasant, rural education, the conservation of the culture and traditions of the indigenous race, the assertion of national dominion over the subsoil and natural resources, and the many other and important social and political reforms that have made Mexico into a respected country.

In short, the Revolution meant a change from an urban, urbane, exclusive oligarchy to the political preeminence of poor and rural elements. Thus the Revolution opened the doors to political and social opportunity, drew its leaders from the masses, and created a system that would remain truly representative. Sometimes the argument is cast in racial terms, stipulating that the Revolution passed effective power from white blancos to mixed-blood mestizos and even to some pure-blood indios. Hence a streetcorner slogan, used by regime supporters to demonstrate the system's flexibility and by opponents to indicate its mediocrity: "Anyone can become president."

Whatever the validity of this assertion, it would be excessively simpleminded to assume that all elite transformations are due to political factors. As Karl Marx argued so powerfully, and others have since maintained, alterations in leadership can also result from the changing balance of socioeconomic forces. For Marx, the ruling class consisted of those who controlled the means of production and who consolidated their hegemony through political means. A change in the modes of production necessarily entailed a change in social structure and the conditions of class struggle, and this, in turn, necessarily entailed a change in elite role or composition. Donald Matthews and Robert Putnam have observed that, for a variety of reasons, there might be substantial lags in time between economic change and transformation in the social background of elites, and Nicos Poulantzas has pointed out that the changing role of elites might not require a change in social origins of membership. But even then, the similarities and differences in social background and position of the economic and political elites provide important indications about the character and operation of the system, and it is abundantly clear that these relationships can hinge upon the processes of economic change.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Labyrinths of Power by Peter H. Smith. Copyright © 1979 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• Frontmatter, pg. i
• Contents, pg. vii
• Acknowledgments, pg. ix
• List of Illustrations, pg. xi
• List of Tables, pg. xii
• List of Figures, pg. xv
• List of Abbreviations, pg. xvi
• 1. The Lines of Inquiry, pg. 3
• 2. Society and Politics in Mexico, pg. 28
• 3. The Social Conditions of Rule, pg. 65
• 4. Social Background and Political Success, pg. 104
• 5. The Structures of Political Careers, pg. 133
• 6. Continuity and Turnover, pg. 159
• 7. Is There a Power Elite?, pg. 191
• 8. Serving the System: Deputies and Sectors of the Pri, pg. 217
• 9. The Rules of the Game, pg. 242
• 10. Retrospect and Prospect: From Echeverria to Lopez Portillo, pg. 278
• Appendix Α. Defining a Political Elite, pg. 317
• Appendix Β. Measuring Continuity and Turnover, pg. 329
• Appendix C. Parties and Sectors in the National Chamber of Deputies, 1964-67, pg. 341
• Bibliography, pg. 349
• Index, pg. 373