Authoritarian Recall: Mexico’s Drug War and Subnational Patterns of Opposition to Democracy

Abstract

In times of crisis, citizens’ support for democracy can depend on how well they think their democracy can address that crisis compared to authoritarian alternatives. Mexico is in the midst of just such a crisis, as its war on drug trafficking organisations has brought an unprecedented rise in violence and, in some areas, posed a direct challenge to the state’s capacity to govern. At the same time, its subnational political landscape ranges from vibrant, multi-party states to those with continued connections to a dominant one-party past. We leverage these variations in subnational political context and levels of drug-related violence to examine how the subnational political context mediates the relationship between a crisis and support for non-democratic alternatives. When faced with a violent shock to the system, public attitudes towards democracy depend in part on one’s experiences with non-democratic alternatives and whether these authoritarian options appear to solve the crisis at hand more effectively.