Historical background of the electoral reform of 1977

Abstract

This article sets out and analyses the background to the 1977 electoral reform in Mexico. It starts with the formation of the post-revolutionary state and concludes with the gestation of the legal framework that, for some authors, initiated the Mexican democratic transition. Consolidated under a modernising and centralising project, the post-revolutionary state based its legitimacy on the success of the economic development model rather than on the democratic nature of the political system. Faced with questioning from various sectors, the regime's response oscillated between repression and the issuing of electoral reforms that would provide political space for the opposition without compromising the hegemony of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a strategy that reached its culmination in 1977.