ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses trends in Mexico's political development in the wake of the reform efforts of 1977. It examines efforts by the dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to implement internal reforms in conjunction with steps toward broader system reform. The chapter explains to characterize the PRI's views of Mexican democracy and aims to understand the place of the PRI in the logic of Mexico's presidential system, noting certain inherent problems. It provides an assessment of the prospects for party reform for the remainder of the Miguel De la Madrid sexennium. Miguel de la Madrid at Planning and Budget showed more the president's continued frustration with implementing new planning arrangements than a substantive policy. Miguel de la Madrid inherited even a worse economic crisis and a more debilitated political system than did Jose Lopez Portillo. Lopez Portillo's selection of Sansores to head the PRI probably involved a number of calibrations of power arrangements.
