Introduction

Good economic performance has traditionally been an asset for incumbent politicians. People support their government when the economy is doing well and oppose it when economic conditions decline. A healthy economy is good politics. In periods of economic reform, however, a healthy economy is out of the question. Economic policies usually produce a deterioration of welfare: inflation and unemployment rise and real wages decline. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the relationship between economics and presidential approval in Mexico during the years 1989–1997, when the Mexican economy experienced profound changes in its structure and Mexicans experienced hardships typical of pro-market reform processes. Did Mexicans' responses to these changes follow the pattern of normal economic voting, in which bad economic performance translates into opposition to the government and its policies? Or did intertemporal considerations lead them to accept pain and support the government in exchange for a brighter future? Or did Mexicans blame the previous government for the hard times and rally in support of the new government (exonerating posture)?

There are plausible reasons to expect exonerating, intertemporal, or normal economic voting patterns among the Mexican public (for more details see Chapter 1). Past memories, for instance, may lead the Mexican public to respond to self-exonerating arguments made by the government: three out of the four Mexican presidents in the last quarter of the twentieth century took power amid an economic crisis inherited from, or incubated by, the preceding government.