Evaluation of the democratic system from the qualification of political spaces: the case of Cuauhtémoc (Mexico)

Abstract

Since the 1990s, developing criteria to evaluate democratic systems has been a common undertaking in Political Science. Democratic transition was no longer the predominant theme, having been weakened by the supposed victory of liberal democracy in the post-Cold War context. In recent years, researchers have investigated possible reasons to explain the reversals in countries where democratic systems had already been considered consolidated. In this debate, Political Geography remained predominantly distant. This article aims to build a methodology to evaluate democratic systems from a geographical perspective, developing a methodology capable of drawing possible explanations for differences in the quality of democracy. Inspired by famous methodologies, like Freedom House and Democracy Index, this article created a set of questions using quantitative and qualitative ways to collect data about three different political spaces (Open, Limited, and Exclusive). The Alcaldía (municipality) of Cuauhtémoc, considered the political-symbolic heart of Mexico, was selected as the subject of this analysis because of its role in the political reconfiguration of Mexico City, one of the largest urban agglomerations in the world. In developing this evaluation methodology, we seek a new way to evaluate the effectiveness of democratic phenomenon beyond the usual analysis applied at the nation-state level of government and we suggest that the greater qualification of political spaces is one of the explanatory factors for democratic asymmetries found at different political scales. Our research show how the bad quality of new political spaces reflects and perpetuates the hierarchy between different representatives and participatory institutions in Cuauhtémoc, making participatory democracy a myth.

Keywords

• political space
• evaluation of democracy
• democracy
• Alcaldías
• Mexico