Mexico

PMR — pp. 1-28 2026-09-17 Original Unpacking local government responsiveness to social media: evidence from Mexico Guillermo M. Cejudo, Fernando Nieto-Morales Abstract Local governments worldwide increasingly adopt social media to engage citizens. What factors make governments more likely to respond to citizens on social media? We explore how Mexican municipal governments use Facebook to interact with citizens, with a mixed-methods approach analysing data from 635 municipalities. Using a crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis, we distinguish between general responsiveness (channel setup) and interactive responsiveness (substantive engagement). Small municipalities are more likely to engage citizens when adaptive potential and formal participation policies are present. In contrast, larger cities show responsiveness when they have available resources, established participation rules and policies, and a propitious environment.

PSJ 54/4 2026-09-07 Original Ethnoracial Characteristics and Police Abuse Within Mexico's Criminal Justice System Arturo Luna Cancino, Javier Reyes‐Martínez

PSJ — 2026-05-29 Original Media Coverage Shifts and Policy Overreactions: Evidence on Government Serial Processing and Information Saturation Daniele Guariso, Omar A. Guerrero Abstract ABSTRACT We investigate the causal link between societal signals and policy changes through novel data and a unique empirical setting. Using a corpus with all the opinion columns published in 2017 in the nine major Mexican newspapers (the signals) and data on the universe of individual expenditure programs (the policies), we provide quantitative evidence about government overreactions (in terms of overspending) to differentiated media coverage across various policy topics. First, we test formal models of serial and parallel information processing that relate to the debate between punctuated equilibrium and incrementalism. We find empirical support for the serial processing hypothesis. Second, we frame a natural experiment exploiting two earthquakes that took place in September of the same year. By leveraging the disparity in coverage of opinion columns across both earthquakes, we employ a difference‐in‐differences design and find evidence of the causal relationship between coverage shifts and policy overreactions. Our study sheds new light on a central topic in the study of policy changes and agenda‐setting, and provides quantitative evidence difficult to obtain under conventional empirical frameworks.

GOV 39/2 2026-04-07 Original When the Regulatory State Meets Populism: Regulatory Agencies in Mexico Mauricio I. Dussauge‐Laguna, Martin Lodge, Daniel Daza‐Vázquez

WP 78/2 pp. 251-292 2026-04-01 Original Making or Breaking Citizens? Criminal Organizations and State-Society Relations Kaitlyn Chriswell Abstract abstract: When do groups of citizens organize to resist criminal group presence, and what form does their resistance take? Criminal groups operate across the globe, imposing a variety of costs on local communities. Confronted with these conditions, citizens can either accommodate or contest; when they contest, they choose either to engage or to avoid the state. This article leverages variation in three municipalities across Mexico to illustrate how and why communities react differently to the presence of criminal organizations. While the degree of criminal competition and the strength of preexisting civil society drive whether groups of citizens contest, the degree of local state autonomy from criminal groups shapes the form—state centered or nonstate—that contestation takes. Organized crime is broadly considered an impediment to functioning democracy, but this article demonstrates that its presence can also push citizens in some cases to organize and engage with the state in ways that bolster democracy.