Reading Time: 4 minutesMEXICO CITY—Across the world, dominant parties often appear invincible until the institutions that sustain them begin to weaken. Mexico may be approaching one of those moments. Morena looks politically invincible. It isn’t.
President Claudia Sheinbaum remains extraordinarily popular, an underperforming economy has yet to produce a major political backlash, and the opposition is at its weakest point in decades. Yet appearances can be deceiving. Unlike the PRI during its 20th-century heyday, Morena has never built the institutional foundations that sustained one-party rule for generations, and that distinction may ultimately define the limits of its dominance.
Morena became a national juggernaut in large part by using elements of the PRI’s voter mobilization machinery and by rolling out broad cash-transfer programs that were more generous—and costly—than what the PRI ever offered. But Morena’s strength on the national stage belies a weaker position at the regional and local level. Morena has neglected the kinds of local organizations and networks that the PRI developed and that traditionally determine electoral success in Mexico. It also lacks the structures of control, discipline, and participation that the PRI relied upon to maintain internal cohesion.
