How an Analysis of Mexico’s Democracy and Statehood Reveals the Limitations of the Liberal Democracy Index

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The V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index (LDI) is a useful quantitative measure of democracy, aggregating fifty-nine variables into a single index scaled 0.000 to 1.000. What it lacks, however, is an additional criterion that is also necessary for democracy: meaningful power to rule, whereby an elected government has effective authority over its territory, unchecked by non-state actors operating within or outside its borders. Lacking indicators representing meaningful power to rule, the V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index (as well as the V-Dem Electoral Democracy Index) risks awarding democratic status to countries that do not deserve it. One such country is Mexico. From 2000 to 2023, Mexico’s score on the LDI hovered around 0.400, but it would have been even lower had it accounted for the government’s inability to exercise effective authority over the parts of its territory controlled by drug cartels. V-Dem’s LDI would provide a fuller understanding of a country’s democratic performance if it incorporates indicators measuring meaningful power to rule.

Regular violence combined with a culture of impunity define the behavior of what Nathan Jones, author of Mexico’s Illicit Drug Networks and the State Reaction, terms territorial organizations. Territorial actors occupy particular regions, creating autonomous zones largely out of the reach of the Mexican government. Territorial networks pose a direct challenge to the state’s meaningful power to rule by operating like a state apparatus. According to Jones, both “are territorial, hierarchical, resilient, prone to violence, and funded by taxation,” (Jones, 1). Using coercive violence, territorial cartels maintain control of regions within Mexico’s borders, keeping the local populations beholden to them through systems of taxation. Because of the state’s inability to penetrate regions controlled by the drug networks, civilians often form local militias to defend themselves. These local resistance efforts not only demonstrate the state’s inability to exercise meaningful power to rule, but themselves pose a threat to the state’s monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force within the territory it legally controls.

The following example illustrates how Mexico’s territorial organizations have encroached on the state’s meaningful power to rule. Famous for spectacular acts of violence at the expense of local authorities and civilians, Los Zetas were once one of Mexico’s most dangerous territorial organizations. The Los Zetas cartel no longer holds the same influence it did during the 2010s, but the impact of its violent practices continues to haunt Mexico today. Los Zetas formed when, in 1997, 31 members of Mexico’s elite Airborne Special Forces Group, GAFES for short, defected from the military and joined the world of organized crime (InSight Crime). From the organization's inception, Los Zetas operated with an unprecedented degree of military prowess and discipline for a drug cartel. Whereas other drug cartels used corruption and taxation to preserve the loyalty of local authorities and civilians, Los Zetas used fear-mongering tactics, taking military-style control over their territories. InSight Crime characterizes Los Zetas as follows: “unlike other crime groups, the Zetas did not buy alliances so much as terrorize their enemies,” (InSight Crime). Los Zetas found success by promoting defections from Mexico’s special forces through monetary benefits and improved living conditions, fortifying their tradition of violence and territorial control using the state’s own strategies (Jones, 127). Mexico’s GAFES specializes in territorial control in an effort to combat the endemic of territorial organizations threatening state hegemony. However, for this strategy to succeed, the state must be able to preserve the loyalty of its soldiers. The case of Los Zetas demonstrates the fragility of the Mexican state, revealing how, due to Los Zetas ability to promote defections, the state effectively trained the cartel how to maintain territorial control.    

The aforementioned case provides a specific example of the ways Mexico’s meaningful power to rule has been jeopardized by territorial organizations. As of today, the Mexican government continues to struggle to maintain control of its territory, particularly along the US border. As recently as June 2024, Politico reported that the cartels operating along the US border have placed great emphasis on territorial control and the subordination of local authorities (Miroff). In the Chilpancingo region and down to the Pacific coast around Acapulco, some regions are fully beholden to the cartels. In nine municipalities, according to reporter Matthew Kaminski, cartels “handpick the mayor and police chiefs,” (Miroff). Eduardo Guerroro, a former senior government official, corroborates Kaminski’s report: “gangs love territorial control… You can do many kinds of business once you control territory. They seek political support. They intervene in elections aggressively. At the local level, we are losing sovereignty” (Miroff). These observations come directly from the occupied regions and demonstrate that the influence of territorial organizations remains as strong as ever. The Mexican Government has also acknowledged the degree of influence held by the cartels. In a 2019 security report, the government compared the role of cartels existing within its borders to insurgents, operating with “a level of organization, firepower and territorial control comparable to what armed political groups have had in other places,” (Sheridan).

The Mexican government’s meaningful power to rule has been severely challenged by the existence of territorial organizations. This reality, however, is not factored into Mexico’s score on the V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index.

The V-Dem’s Liberal Democracy Index is widely used in political science to evaluate a country’s democratic performance. The Liberal Democracy Index consists of two subindices, the electoral democracy index and the liberal component index. The electoral democracy index is its own score, essentially an evaluation of the state in accordance with Robert Dahl’s polyarchy. The liberal component index comprises three sub-indices: equality before the law and individual liberty, judicial constraints on the executive, and legislative constraints on the executive. In 2000, Mexico’s score on the Liberal Democracy Index hovered around the 0.500 benchmark, which, as alluded to earlier, is the generally accepted score at which a country is considered to be at least a minimalist democracy. After 2000, however, that score steadily declined until by 2023 it had fallen to 0.300, indicative of the state’s failures to preserve its democratic institutions (Coppedge). However, with a consideration for meaningful power to rule, it would be even lower. In order to properly evaluate Mexico’s democratic performance, we ought to consider an alternative measure to transcend the Liberal Democracy Index’s shortcomings, providing a fuller picture of democracy in Mexico and worldwide. 

McGuire (2020) suggests that an index measuring meaningful power to rule might include the following six criteria: “in formulating domestic policy, a country's (1) head of state and/or (2) head of government must seek approval from ruling parties, royal councils, the military, religious leaders, tribal or ethnic councils, or other unelected actors of comparable scope and power; (3) whether the state in the country is autonomous from the control of other states in (3a) domestic and (3b) foreign policy; and (4) the percentage of the national territory under the effective control of the national state,” (McGuire). If we define the meaningful power to rule index in terms of these six indicators, it becomes increasingly clear that Mexico’s democratic performance is weaker than is demonstrated by the LDI. Although the state does not “seek approval” from drug syndicates, it is certainly beholden to them. A revision could be made to the language that addresses the case of Mexico and other countries, navigating the influence of non-state actors, such as “a country’s head of state and/or head of government can exercise discretionary power over domestic policy without the influence of non-state actors.” McGuire’s sixth criterion (4) speaks directly to the state authority over territory measure, a figure that ought to hover at or near one hundred percent for a state to maintain its sovereign status. 

Without a consideration of meaningful power to rule, the Liberal Democracy Index risks bestowing democratic status upon nations where the sovereignty of the state is challenged by non-state actors. It is evident, therefore, through an evaluation of Mexico, that the V-Dem’s Liberal Democracy Index does not provide a comprehensive assessment of a state’s democratic performance. Therefore, a measure that incorporates meaningful power to rule in conjunction with the electoral democracy index and liberal component index offers an enhanced alternative capable of evaluating democratic performance more comprehensively.

Bibliography

—Coppedge, Michael et al., V-Dem [Country-Year/Country-Date] Dataset v14, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project, 2024, https://doi.org/10.23696/mcwt-fr58.

—InSight Crime, “The Zetas: Mexico’s Most Violent Criminal Organization,” InSight Crime, n.d., accessed January 2025, https://insightcrime.org/mexico-organized-crime-news/zetas-profile/.

—Jones, Nathan P., Mexico’s Illicit Drug Networks and the State Reaction (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016), 1.

—McGuire, James W., Democracy and Population Health (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

—Miroff, Nick, “The U.S.-Mexico Border Is No Longer Just About Drugs and Immigration,” Politico, June 1, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/01/us-mexico-border-drugs-immigration-00160725.

—Sheridan,  Mary Beth, “Violent Criminal Groups Eroding Mexico’s Authority and Claiming More Territory,” The Washington Post, October 29, 2020, accessed January 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/mexico-losing-control/mexico-violence-drug-cartels-zacatecas/.