ABSTRACT
Building on the literature reviewed, including the two recent investigations that explicitly explored the role of space and region, I devote this study to an analysis of increased democratization via emergence of multiparty politics in Mexico. I begin by describing the dependent variables that are used to capture the progress of party competition at the state level; next discuss the primary test for spatial autocorrelation of the dependent variables to determine whether a spatial diffusion process or a pattern of contiguous regionalization might be present; then outline the model used to evaluate concepts drawn from the theory of political development, detailing the spatial variables intended to enrich the model of political development by capturing geographic effects; and finally discuss the tests of the residuals from this enriched model designed to see whether the spatial effects have been captured or whether missing variables need to be identified and incorporated into an expanded model.
