ABSTRACT
The appearance of a minority government for the first time in 1997, while the PRI was still ruling, and the recurrence of this phenomenon for the fifth time in a row, have caused wide concern regarding the capacity of the Mexican political system to process all sorts of policy decisions, particularly those with a potential to foster growth and make possible the delivery of public goods and services demanded by the population. This concern arises from a poor performance of the economy, from the growing perception that the political arena is more a battleground where no agreements can be reached than one that encourages democratic consensus, and from a decline in the approval of democracy and its institutions. All three suspiciously coincide with the appearance and recurrence of minority governments since 1997.
