In his last weeks governing Mexico, President Andres Manuel López Obrador (generally known by his initials as AMLO) is gaining congressional approval of a series of constitutional reforms ahead of the inauguration of his handpicked successor, Claudia Sheinbaum. Taking advantage of a recently enhanced legislative majority, he looks to remake Mexico’s judiciary so that its members are chosen by election. Consequently, many worry that the institution will become less independent and more responsive to political pressure. He is also pushing for the abolition of a range of independent agencies that have acted as a check on executive power.

Although he could not run for reelection, his goal seems to be to impose his vision on the country permanently. His vision is taken from the past when a single political party dominated Mexico’s national life. In contrast to the way in which former presidents have typically behaved, AMLO may seek to remain an active political player, ensuring that his successor hews to these policies. However, Sheinbaum may pay the price for these reforms in terms of investor skepticism and increased opposition from domestic constituencies and the United States.

The Man and His Moment

AMLO is taking advantage of a moment that is uniquely empowering him. He will be leaving office with a remarkably high degree of approval—71 percent, a level almost unheard of among Latin American presidents who typically stagger unloved to the finish line. On June 2, he translated this popularity into electoral triumph not only for Sheinbaum in the presidential race but also for his political party, the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA). Together with two smaller satellite parties, MORENA gained seats in both houses of Congress (resulting in a two-thirds supermajority in the Chamber of Deputies and a mere two seats shy of one in the Senate) and now controls twenty-four out of thirty-two state governor’s mansions.

These spectacular results have allowed the party to pass amendments to the constitution without heeding the much-diminished opposition parties. Gaining approval for constitutional reforms by a majority of state governors, the last step required also seems assured. In his push to legislate, AMLO has taken advantage of the fact that while the new president will take office on October 1, the new Congress began deliberating on September 1 while he was still president. Sheinbaum has publicly supported the amendments, either out of conviction or a desire to avoid a fight with her patron before she is sworn in.

Politicizing Judges and Regulators

The most publicized reform is the massive alteration of the structure of Mexico’s judiciary, replacing its current system whereby judges are appointed through an autonomous examination process with direct election. This extends all the way up to Mexico’s Supreme Court.

AMLO has asserted that this restructuring is necessary to eliminate corruption, which undeniably exists within Mexico’s judiciary (and to which he typically attributes all decisions that go against his wishes). However, it seems that he actually aims to create a politically subservient judicial system and remake the Supreme Court, which has long been a thorn in his side. The planned election of judges at lower levels raises its own concerns. With the MORENA party now dominant, the prospect exists that the judiciary will become, in effect, part of its apparatus. Furthermore, in certain parts of Mexico, the narcotics cartels will be in a position to coopt judges and increase their already extensive power.

While the headlines both in Mexico and abroad have focused on the judiciary, AMLO is also achieving his longstanding goal of abolishing a range of independent agencies that have acted as a brake on executive authority. Crucially, the National Electoral Institute, new members of which are currently named by a two-thirds majority in the Chamber of Deputies, will be replaced by a new entity, the membership of which, like the judiciary, will be chosen by election. AMLO has always blamed the Institute’s vote counting for his narrow loss in the 2006 presidential race.

The Federal Economic Competition Commission will also be abolished and folded into the Ministry of Economy. The Federal Telecommunications Institute, which assigns broadcast licenses, will be placed within the Ministry of Education. The Institute for Transparency, Access for Information, and Personal Data Protection will be incorporated within the Ministry of Public Administration. Finally, the Ministry of Energy will subsume the National Hydrocarbons Commission, which regulates oil and gas contracts.

The constitutional reforms also include shifting the National Guard, the paramilitary police force that AMLO established, into the Ministry of Defense from the Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection, where it currently resides.

Nostalgia for One-Party Rule

The roots of AMLO’s constitutional ambitions may lie in his own political history and his desire to return Mexico to what he sees as its roots, undoing the perceived “neo-liberal” distortions of recent decades. AMLO entered politics as a young man in 1976 in his home state of Tabasco in southeastern Mexico as an activist for the then-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). He rose in its ranks, obtaining several government positions.

While he ultimately broke with the PRI, running for president as a leftist and then for MORENA, his political views remain those of his youth. The Mexico of 1976, when AMLO entered politics, was what political scientists term a “hegemonic political regime,” and it appears that his goal is to replicate that hegemony, returning to the dynamic he saw in his early days. Hegemonic regimes have been defined as “non-democratic regimes that (1) rule with the aid of a dominant political party and (2) hold multi-party elections.”

The PRI, in its heyday, certainly fit this definition. Although it allowed other parties to run and, on occasion, win some offices, the PRI’s lock on the electoral system, the judiciary, law enforcement, public administration, and much of the media guaranteed it continual control of Congress, as well as most governorships and local political offices. The measure of its dominance in that era can be seen from the fact that the PRI candidate for President in 1976 ran essentially unopposed.

Eventually, Mexico’s need for economic and political modernization forced PRI governments to progressively loosen control, paving the way for free and fair elections and an alternation in power. AMLO’s reforms seem aimed at reversing these changes and replicating the system that kept a single party in power for over fifty years, with MORENA as a new version of the PRI.

MORENA’s control of the presidency, Congress, and governorships could conceivably become indefinite through these constitutional reforms. The new electoral authority’s management of vote counting could ensure that these majorities become permanent while the courts turn a blind eye. At the same time, a politically controlled anti-trust authority could give the government new powers over the business community, and a similarly controlled telecommunications regulator could become a whip to keep electronic media in line.

Will Sheinbaum Toe the Line?

But while AMLO is riding high, poised to throw Mexico’s political life in reverse gear, the full realization of these ambitions is not guaranteed. He, of course, will not be personally running the country, which will have a new president, former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum. But it is worth noting that in making it clear that she was his preferred choice as his successor (another PRI tradition that he adopted), AMLO bypassed other senior MORENA figures who may have had stronger personal followings within the party.

She has been in tune with AMLO’s insistence on “transformation,” including his package of constitutional reforms. But it is anyone’s guess as to how hard she will press forward with his attempt to return to a hegemonic regime. She has denied any intention to govern in an authoritarian manner, and her reserved personality and background as an environmental scientist set her apart from AMLO’s bombastic “man of the people” persona. 

At the same time, it is unclear if AMLO will fade into the background as former presidents have typically done in Mexico. He has pledged to retire quietly to his home in Tabasco. However, MORENA’s legislators and governors closely identify with him, not Sheinbaum. Given his popularity with the general public, he may have multiple levers at his disposal to pressure her to stay the course in implementing his reforms.

In doing so, AMLO may have handed Sheinbaum a poisoned chalice. The massive rewriting of Mexico’s judicial system and administrative state has not gone unnoticed by the business community, both within and without Mexico. Skeptical analyses by major banks such as Morgan Stanley and UBS have made headlines, highlighting the deteriorating investment climate.

It remains to be seen whether the adverse response is a temporary reaction that will subside. Without distancing herself from AMLO, Sheinbaum sought to calm the business sector, arguing that she would maintain the rule of law. But she has had to contend with AMLO’s rhetoric, including a recent statement denouncing judges who defend “foreign companies that come to loot, to rob, and affect the economy of the Mexican people.”

Action Will Lead to Reaction

The U.S. government itself also weighed in, albeit at the last minute, with its ambassador in Mexico City expressing concern about the judicial reform. Such public language, coming as the reforms neared passage, seems, however, to have been more for the record, given the concerns of the business community, rather than a serious attempt to derail AMLO’s project, especially given U.S. silence throughout his six-year term regarding his authoritarian tendencies. Unsurprisingly, AMLO reacted sharply, saying he was putting “a pause” on relations with the U.S. embassy.

In recent decades, the United States has had the luxury of largely ignoring issues of Mexican governance, except when it impinges on narcotics and immigration problems. During the long period in which PAN and PRI presidents alternated in power, Mexico could be viewed as another democracy along with Canada, its other partner under the North American Free Trade Agreement. 

While the full measure of slippage from democratic norms is yet to be seen, Washington may find itself facing hard decisions about how loud to raise its voice in defense of specific affected interests such as those of U.S. businesses, U.S. citizens living in Mexico, or U.S. law enforcement. Thus, it will have to calibrate the degree to which it will accept the threat of lessened Mexican cooperation on immigration, a hot-button issue in American domestic politics.

If these constitutional reforms add up to a sustained effort to shoehorn Mexico back into the outdated model of a de facto one-party regime, we can expect significant pushback from within. Mexico has changed vastly from the country AMLO knew in the 1970s. Petroleum, which once gave the PRI seemingly endless resources, is now a much smaller part of Mexico’s economy. State oil producer PEMEX is in deep trouble as production has dropped, and AMLO has shut out new foreign investments. 

A diversified economy anchored by free trade with the United States and Canada has developed. Mexican society, too, has changed with the rise of a significant middle class that is connected to the world and accustomed to a vigorous free media. 

AMLO has benefited from corruption and complacency on the part of the two other major political parties, the PAN and PRI. But Sheinbaum cannot count on them remaining weak forever. Should they use their time in the wilderness to regroup and reinvigorate themselves, they may yet be in a position to challenge MORENA’s dominance in a country that may be far less tolerant of any effort to suborn independent institutions.

Thus, Mexico’s new president will have to tread carefully and decide how far she is prepared to go in implementing AMLO’s effort to return Mexico to its past. She may face pressure from him and his MORENA supporters to use her powers to the maximum. But she should not underestimate the dangers of igniting tensions both internally and with Mexico’s giant northern neighbor.

Richard M. Sanders is a Senior Fellow, Western Hemisphere at the Center for the National Interest. A former member of the Senior Foreign Service of the U.S. Department of State, he served at embassies throughout Latin America and in positions in Washington dealing with the region.

Image: Octavio Hoyas / Shutterstock.com.