Party, the National Action party. The preceding party in control of the government, the Institutional Revolutionary Party had been in charge of the government for 71 years. There were a lot of expectations generated by this new government and new president and mexico was expected to move from what i would call this electoral democracy to what scholars like to describe as a consolidated democracy. It basically means that you have achieved a certain level of transparency and accountability and a rule of law. In those areas, mexico still has a lot of work to accomplish. In 2000, how critical was that pan after that many years . It was critical. It was essential because people had become so used to the power that it actually created a condition, in spite of the fraud that they were committing in the election, it was impossible to defeat so that really not only changed the pragmatic outlook but it also changed peoples attitudes about it being worth while to participate in an election because your vote would count. After fox, the next president was also from the pan party. Thats correct. Is it fair to say the pan party is a Republican Party and the preparty was a Democratic Party or is that really generalize. No, thats really generalize. Its basically a three party system. The third party we havent mentioned is a party of the democratic revolution and i would describe the pan party as centerright in the preis also also centerright and the other is centerleft. The preand the pan in many respects, particularly in recent years in terms of their Overall Economic policy philosophy share a lot of similarities. The prd is more of an outlier because its active Party Members and militant partisan members are more likely to favor an active state role in the economy rather than a traditional neoliberal capitalist. The current president is preagain. Correct which again reveals that mexico has achieved an electoral democracy once again because now you have another party coming back into control of the executive branch after 12 years. You Exchange Power twice in a 12 year time period. Thats an achievement. You also said when the United States sneezes, the United States gets a cold. You can surely see that in economic terms. That is especially true in 2008 when thousand eight when we had the global recession. Mexico is more attached to the United States than any other country. Its a major trade partner. It is number two and number three trade partner for a number of years so because of the asymmetry between the two countries in terms of the size of their economy, when the u. S. Economy has serious problems, it has a tremendously negative impact on mexicos employment and income because of so much commerce that is the case between the two countries. Obviously when mexico has a problem with its economy, it does have an impact to some extent extent in the border state and border cities like el paso or tucson and so on. A lot of mexican tourists come across the border and are important contributors to the economy and other areas in the u. S. Today. We are taping this in april 2016. Whats the condition of the mexican economy . The condition of the economy right now is pretty solid. Its not growing on a yearly basis at the rate that governor government officials would like to see it. There happens to be a lot of confidence in the stability of the economy and the degree to which it has reduced unemployment. Its part of the reason why, actually in the last four or five years, undocumented immigration to the United States has reversed and more than a Million People have gone back to mexico. Not only because the u. S. Was having a recession but eventually mexico began employing those people who previously could not find jobs. From your book, politics in mexico, the u. S. Constitutes a crucial variable in the very definition of mexicos modern political culture. What did you mean . I think if you look at the relationship between the two countries, whats interesting about it from a historical perspective, part of the liberal democratic influences in mexico have come significantly from the United States over many years so that mexico has ace bandage heritage and an indigenous heritage and a liberal political heritage not in the current american politics sense but in terms of the 19th century. It borrowed a lot of principles from the mid 19th century from american political historical experiences. For example the idea of jeffersonian agrarianism. All of these have led to a highbred Cultural Heritage in terms of political models. You have a semi authoritarian model in the 1920s all the way to the near end of the century and then you have the democratic model and hopefully you will evolve into a more significant and deeply felt democratic, participatory model. Is the National Assembly set up as a parliamentary system . No. It is patterned after the United States. There is a senate and the chamber of deputies which would be equal to our congress. Senators serve for sixyear terms and deputies served for a threeyear term. Its also quite different from the u. S. Its patterned after the u. S. , but in the late 20th century, it developed an additional system which is a Party Representation system. You have 500 members of the lower house, 300 are elected in single districts just as they are in the u. S. , but 200 are elected on the basis of mexico divided up into multiple regions and its based on the percentage of the vote that each party receives in that region and they get so many representatives into the lower chamber. A lot of observers in mexico, a lot of analysts, both mexican and american, think that system needs to disappear because it will default originally as a means of getting broader representation from the Opposition Party who were winning because of fraud, in most cases, see on the district by district basis. Do you agree . Yes, i do. I believe its no longer necessary. What it does is buys a composition of the chamber of deputies among those 200 individuals who are basically very strong party attached leaders, rather than individuals are coming up from their home district, developing relationships with their constituents and developing a pattern in which those constituencies are important. If we were in mexico city today, what would would be some of the frontpage headlines . One of the frontpage headlines probably would be what mr. Trump has to say in the republican primary about mexico. There is a lot of concern in mexico over the image that he is providing in the primary. The government has finally realized that instead of taking a restrained attitude about that, it needs to encourage people that theyre willing to speak up and indicate where mr. Trump has made a number of significant statements that are just untrue. I think the other issue which mexico is most concerned about is trying to deal with the level of criminal violence in mexico which has gone well beyond drug cartels and now is very much an issue of what i would describe as organized crime. That means that the cartels themselves have gone beyond producing, shipping Illegal Drugs to the United States to extortion, kidnapping and other forms of crime including Human Trafficking which are very, very low risk it also very productive in terms of income. How has that been allowed to flourish . Its been very difficult to stop because of the resources of organized crime. Its related to the other issues i mentioned, the lack of a culture of law, a respect for the judicial system, the involvement involvement of police in criminal activity including those three activities beyond Illegal Drugs, and that has resulted in the expansion of organized crime, criminologist from mexico, three quarters of mexican communities at all levels have been penetrated by organized crime. Is it, in your view, the Biggest NationalSecurity Threat facing exit go . Yes, absolutely. Help out powerful is the chief executive in mexico . Fairly powerful, i would would say, to a certain extent it has a heritage coming up to and into the 21st century. Whether the president is actually a stronger decisionmaker than a comparable president in the United States, theres a history of the branch but particularly the presidency itself being an influential body and that has resulted in an expectation, even in a democratic system that the president still be a strong, in command type of decisionmaker. Is the president strong . He started out in a very promising way by developing what was called the pact for mexico. The first 14 months of his administration he implemented a number of really major significant reforms on which most objectives and analysts of mexico and many economists felt were critical to mexicos future. What this was was an agreement among the president that the three parties and the president of mexico. It got a lot of legislation passed that otherwise wouldnt of been the case. In fact it wouldve been, in my opinion somewhat humorously, this could have been a learning exercise for the u. S. Congress in terms of its own internal relationships as well as its relationship with the presidency unfortunately, because of the problems with crime and you may have read about this incident in mexico almost two years ago where 43 students in the Southern States disappeared, there is so little credibility in mexico among governing institutions, even though the federal government is not likely to have had anything to do with this particular case, but its inability to convincingly solve the case has led to an extraordinary decline in Public Opinion approval of the presidency and unfortunately, as has created a significant barrier in terms of the ability of the Mexican Government at the federal level as well as at the local and state level to govern. For example, his opinion ratings for the last two years have been in the 30s. Now when he was in office the first year, his Approval Rating was double that in the mid 60s. It has made an extremely difficult, even when the government, in my opinion is implementing policies to the benefit of mexico today and in the long term, it cant create any legitimacy in any sort of general public approval of those policy issues and the implementation of those. As somebody who has written many, many books on mexico, how many times have you traveled to the nation . Oh my gosh, ive lost count. Several hundred. Is there any place today where you would not travel in mexico because of safety concerns which mark. I think theres a lot of places where you would not travel. The problem is, and you can see how these change in their representative on the u. S. State Department Warning list that there are 32 states in mexico including the Federal District and somewhere between 15 and 20 of those states, at any one time will have warnings from the state department for americans traveling to mexico, but in most cases, its not an entire state. Its the certain part of the state where certain highway or certain community. Those dont remain the same over time. They change. My advice to people who obviously asked me because of my focus on mexico is that you have to know where you are going from point a to point b. Point a might be safe, point b might be safe, but, but getting there may not be. You have to be careful and you have to pay attention. You have to stay on top of what the most recent recommendations are from our own government. What has fueled the rise of the prd . The left and center party . What has fueled the rise was not only opposition to the predominance for so many years, but the election where there was competition that was led by a person who ran as a 1988 president ial election president ial election. That started the democratic transition in mexico in a significant way in terms of electoral policy because he did say well, in spite spite of the fraud, as a result of his effort , one year after that election the pr d actually formed as an official party and he became the candidate of that party and to more subsequent elections. I think with the prd is most attracted to voters his first voters who believe actually the concept that was savored by the governmental activism in Economic Policy projects and so on. What the prd was trying to do was return to that aspect of pregovernment. The other area is a really strong emphasis in something that is actually quite necessary in mexico and thats addressing poverty. Nearly half of the population is still living in conditions of poverty. To its credit, all of the governments since the late 1980s have devoted more and more federal resources to social expenditures of which a very large part is going to anti poverty programs. Each administration has increased that. The trouble is in real numbers it has decreased the number of People Living in poverty as a percentage, it hasnt. The leading candidate of the prd in the last two elections made poverty a central issue of his campaign. The most recent president ial issue campaign, what was sort of an unmentioned issue is that many people who voted for him, even many people who were upper middleclass actually voted for the prd candidate because they thought he was the most honest candidate. Integrity became an unspoken issue in that campaign and he seemed to have attracted a disproportionate number of the voters who considered that a central issue. One term, six years. Is that correct. What the population in mexico and whats the voter turnout a third the size of the u. S. Yes. Its turnout, the highest turnout that it ever had was close to 80 in 1994 which is really interesting. You would think after that election, which many people considered to be the first step, in terms of a balloting process of their honest election, we all thought as observers, the next time around it would be higher, but its usually in the high 50s. Its fairly comparable to the United States in terms of turnaround. I think a lot of people dont participate in election because they just have a general distaste for politics. The general view in mexico is that all Political Parties are corrupt or politics is what we would describe as a dirty business so they just dont want to get involved in it. On a government to government level, what did we get right in your view when dealing with mexico . I think actually, contrary to what a lot of americans may think, there is a lot of collaboration between the two governments. Its more whats unsaid then what is publicly said. There is a lot of collaboration, drug intervention, drug policy, the fact that mexico uses intelligence thats provided from the u. S. Which has led to the capture of a lot of drug cartel. There is a lot of collaborative effort going on. Also on an economic level, in terms of the amount of commerce and trade and physical aspects of trade relationships trying to improve the transportation, the ease of transportation between the two countries, you would be surprised at the conversation going on amongst counterparts on both sides of the border in the secretary of commerce for the secretary terry of agriculture. When i used to give talks in washington, there were sponsored by International Studies in the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson center, american policymakers in higher middle level from all agencies come to these settings to hear what experts have to say about mexico they would include the internal attorney generals office, the fbi, and never surprised me that the u. S. Military, the defense department, just a wide range of individuals who have a real interest in mexico and if you did these over a period of years like ive done, you would see the same faces. They were just as expert in their particular areas involving mexico as i was in an as an outsider and a scholar. 2001, the first date dinner. Has he been to the states . Yes, he came fairly early on not only had contact with the u. S. Government, the gave a presentation on Foreign Relations in new york. There has been some significant change between the leadership of both countries. I would say you also have an exchange among various members of congress on both sides of the border as well. It occurs at Different Levels and a number of the border states, contrary contrary to what you might think because of the more publicized position of the state of arizona, but for years, governors in the border state, both in northern mexico and in the southwestern u. S. Have had a lot of contact because they realize a lot of their problems are local and regional. And thats true of border towns as well. Relationships between el paso or tijuana and san diego. You might be surprised at just how far some of those relationships go. What do surveys show about mexican attitudes toward the u. S. . I think the attitudes, there are number of different surveys that have been done but one of the general conclusions is that you shouldnt judge peoples attitudes about government, in terms of their attitudes about the people. So in general terms, there actually are a lot of positive evaluations provided both by mexicans and americans for each other that i think would surprise some people and when you ask them their attitudes about certain values or issues, sometimes you find very close similarities in terms of the importance that both mexicans and americans would give to the same issue. It surprises even me as many years as ive been working on that country. Again, its april 2016. Are you optimistic about the future and our relations . Imap domestic about the relations, im less optimistic about its future because i think it needs to really address some of these underlying issues and theyre all related. Poverty is related to Economic Growth but also the distribution of income in mexico, its also related to corruption and trusting government effectiveness and unemployment which is a very significant explanation of why organized crime can attract so many young, particularly male individuals were not well educated and who have been unemployed and they can link it to criminal activity. All of these elements, economic Economic Growth, better access to education, quality education, theyre all related to crime which is related to violence which is related to corruption. Theyre all intertwined and those need to be more fully addressed. Heres the book, politics in mexico the subtotal, the author is roderic ai. Thank you very much, i enjoyed it. Youre watching book tv on cspan too. Heres a look at whats on prime time tonight. We kick off the evening with stacy, her book, there goes my social life, is a memoir of her life from two conservative. A look at Teddy Roosevelt speech tonight and then the penn World Freedom to write voices. They discuss his book the third wave. That all happens tonight on cspan to book tv. First up, its stacy dash. Good afternoon, im michelle, president of the institute. Its wonderful to see a room full of what young conservative women. Want to thank you for coming and welcome you to our first afternoon with an author for the summer featuring stacy dash. A