Authoritarian Legacies and Incumbency Advantage in Mexico's Gubernatorial Elections: Party Machines Over Performance

What explains electoral success in Mexico's gubernatorial elections after its transition to democracy? And to what extent did governors shape electoral outcomes in this period? This paper argues democratic competition, combined with the decentralisation of resources to the states, reinforced authoritarian-era practices like clientelism and the discretionary use of public funds by incumbents. As a result, electoral success was driven less by government performance and more by the support candidates received from the incumbent governor. Candidates from the governor's party were more likely to win because governors could deploy public resources, channel funds, or pressure local electoral authorities to tilt the playing field in favor of their co-partisans, thereby diminishing the relevance of performance-based voting. The analysis draws on a dataset of 238 candidates nested in 98 gubernatorial elections held between 2000 and 2017, along with interviews with gubernatorial candidates that shed light on the mechanisms behind the incumbency advantage.