Lessons From the Dissolution of Mexico's Information Commission

Abstract

A much-emulated information commission and a superstar within global transparency policy circles, Mexico's National Institute for Access to Information (the INAI) wielded practically unappealable decision-making power over public information across the entire Mexican federation. In November 2024, the populist Morena regime formally dissolved the INAI. Looking beyond the tired tale of populist backsliding, the INAI's demise offers key lessons about the vulnerability of transparency in the absence of adequate social and institutional embeddedness. While the INAI exceled at freeing information from the state, exposed abuses went unaccompanied by broader linked efforts at enforcement. Lesson: Integrate public transparency into broader policy agendas, especially those popularly associated with transparency's raison d’être (e.g., social, administrative, criminal justice). And while the INAI did make efforts to socialize the right to information, these lacked scale and arrived too late. Lesson: Engage citizens early, making transparency relevant to the problem-solving tasks of everyday civic life.