Regime crisis, subnational authoritarianism and justice reform in Mexico

Abstract

This article discusses the widespread and equivocal diagnosis that attributes the failure of the justice reform and the crisis of violence and insecurity in Mexico to the justice system’s broken institutional and legal design. Using concepts from both political sociology and anthropology, and through a historical reinterpretation of the place and functions of the justice system in the authoritarian regime, it is shown that the institutional collapse and the inability of the State to control criminal violence are the result of the persistent political subordination of the justice system to the executive power, of its deliberate institutional precariousness and its capture by private interests and criminal actors. The structural ineffectiveness of the justice system has been reproduced in the cycle of the transition to democracy, and has worsened in the context of a conservative federal arrangement constituted by subnational authoritarian regimes, which constitute the main obstacle to a genuine reform of the justice system.