The avocado moratorium and the hybrid regime in Mexico

I apparently made a misstatement in yesterday’s column.I referred to Mexico as “a full-blown democracy.”It turns out that I was wrong—at least if you go by the Economist’s ranking of levels of democracy across the world. It has recently demoted Mexico from “flawed democracy” to “hybrid regime,” right in between Honduras and El Salvador.The reason? “Mexico’s president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador [ALMO], continued his efforts to concentrate power in the executive branch. In August, López Obrador said he would seek a total reform of the country’s electoral authorities, considering them biased against his government, and said they are at the service of anti-democracy,” The Economist noted.On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 at the bottom (e.g., North Korea) and 10 at the top (Norway comes closest), Mexico fell by .5 points in 2021 to 5.57.The ranking is based on five criteria: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil ...