Policy Issues The Lost Sexenio: Vicente Fox and the New Politics of Economic Reform in Mexico

The 2000 presidential election of opposition candidate Vicente Fox signaled an end to seven decades of Mexico’s single-party regime and seemed to herald the advent of truly competitive politics. But by 2003, economic reform had largely stalled, and Fox’s party suffered a historically unprecedented midterm loss in the congress. This article analyzes the underpinnings of policy gridlock in the Fox administration. Fox inherited the need for microeconomic restructuring and increased competitiveness, more innovative and pragmatic state policies, the need to pay attention to the country’s sharp income inequalities, and the challenge of crafting a political strategy that could build a middle ground and foster policy consensus. With his party’s minority standing in the congress, Fox was constrained from the start by divided government. But more effective statecraft and coalition building would have helped. These will be essential elements for the success of any post-Fox regime. The July 2000 election of National Action Party (PAN) presidential candidate Vicente Fox marked the first time in Mexican history that the executive torch had been passed democratically from the long-reigning Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to another political contender. Fox won the election under authentically competitive conditions, and after seven consecutive decades of PRI hegemonic rule and nearly two decades of sharp economic challenges, hopes were high that the political breakthrough would be accompanied by a renewal of economic growth. With broad agreement on the issues that topped the country’s economic reform agenda (for example, fiscal, energy sector, and labor market reforms and an overhaul of human capital investments and antipoverty strategies), Fox’s victory seemed to signal a consensus on the need to move full speed ahead on a new growth-oriented agenda. However, as the Fox sexenio (or six-year presidential term) draws to a close, the gap between those earlier expectations and the Fox record could not