ABSTRACT
Mexico's Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI) serves as a subordinate extension of the presidency and central government bureaucracy, and its decline reflects problems in the evolution of those institutions. This chapter suggests that causes for the decline of the PRI, and examines the functions of the party in the Mexican system, the party leadership through the first half of President Miguel de la Madrid's term, and some of the internal and external dynamics of the party. It deals with an assessment of party and system reforms and some projections for the period 1985-90. Mexico's PRI is a genuinely indigenous party, one that has evolved since 1929 in response to a series of specific historical challenges. Despite the line of analysis that emphasizes decline, the PRI performs critical functions in Mexico's presidential system. The national-local tension is neither uniform nor inevitable; that is, probably only a minority of PRI candidates serve national needs only and proves difficult to elect.
