Do Old Habits Die Hard? A Statistical Exploration of the Politicisation of Progresa, Mexico's Latest Federal Poverty-Alleviation Programme, under the Zedillo Administration

Abstract

Under his administration (-), President Ernesto Zedillo replaced Pronasol, the targeted poverty alleviation programme created by his predecessor, with his own programme, Progresa. Pronasol had come under severe attack as a politicised federal welfare programme intended to generate votes for the PRI. In contrast, the Zedillo administration insisted that Progresa was a genuine poverty-alleviation programme devoid of any political agenda. The purpose of this article is to assess whether Zedillo's claim is valid. To do so, I build a statistical model with the aim of identifying the factors that may have influenced the reach of Progresa in , an important year of electoral preparation for the July  elections. The picture that emerges is not entirely clear-cut. On the one hand, poverty indicators played a key role in determining who should benefit from the programme. On the other hand, Progresa also displayed a political edge, revealing that, in certain respects, the executive and the PRI continued to resort to old tricks in an attempt to alter electoral results.

Clientelism and Social Funds: Evidence from Chávez's Misiones

“…Detailed descriptions and explanations have been given to show how social funds under Carlos Salinas de Gortari in Mexico, Carlos Menem in Argentina, and Albert0 Fujimori in Peru where openly driven by political considerations (Molinar and Weldon 1994;Bruhn 1996;Graham and Kane 1998;Schady 2000;Magaloni et al 2002;Weitz-Shapiro 2005). Even social funds like PROGRESA under the Ernest0 Zedillo government in Mexico, a program praised internationally for appropriately targeting the extreme poor, apparently succumbed to the temptation of allocating resources using political rather than purely technical criteria (Rocha-Menocal 2001).…”

Does Welfare Provision Promote Democratic State Legitimacy? Evidence from Brazil’s Bolsa Família Program

“…Alternatively, scholars have argued that the express purpose of a state's provision of assistance benefits is to promote regime stability through the "regulation" or "disciplining" of the poor, independent of whether such policies support the wellbeing of their beneficiaries (e.g., Piven and Cloward 1971;Soss et al 2011). Perhaps more crucially in the Latin American context, there are several examples of populist leaders who have used public assistance programs to consolidate their personal authority, often at the expense of the political autonomy of their supporters and in opposition to the prerogatives of other branches of government (Bruhn, 1996;Brusco et al 2004;Calvo and Murillo 2004;Díaz-Cayeros 2008;Graham and Kane 1998;Magaloni et al 2009;Penfold-Becerra 2007;Rocha-Menocal 2001;Schady 2000). While such efforts may also produce specific forms of legitimacy for the incumbent among seemingly "regulated" or "disciplined" assistance-receiving followers, we do not expect that they would bolster the broader legitimacy of any components of the regime that these followers perceive to be autonomous from the populist leader.…”

Retrenchment, Expansion and the Transformation of Mexican Social Protection Policies

“…Whereas PRONASOL expenditures were politically manipulated and bore little relationship to poverty levels, PROGRESA has been hailed for its efficiency, transparency and more objective targeting of resources (Scott 2000; Skoufias and McClafferty 2001; Skoufias 2005). At the same time, however, studies have raised suspicions that even PROGRESA spending, with its careful formulas for choosing municipalities and beneficiary families, may have been manipulated at the margin for partisan purposes (Rocha Menocal 2001; Green 2005; de la O 2006). Nearly all observers agree, however, that the Zedillo administration, in its implementation of PROGRESA, tried to avoid the gross abuses of poverty alleviation policy for political ends of the Salinas administration.…”