MEXICO: Poverty Programs, Political Opportunities?

Graduate student Emily Curran reports on Professor Beatriz Magaloni’s CLAS talk on the electoral returns to welfare spending in Mexico.

Can an anti-poverty program sway an election and, if so, is this evidence of clientelism? While such questions are of abstract and abiding interest to political scientists, they acquire concreteness and currency in Mexico, where President Felipe Calderón won the 2006 election by fewer than 300,000 votes following a campaign in which the opposition repeatedly accused the government of manipulating antipoverty programs for political ends.