This report was written when Mexico — the second largest country in Latin America by size of population and economy, a neighbour and partner of the US, one of the world’s top 15 economies, and a member of important interna- tional ‘clubs’ such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Devel- opment (OECD), the G20 group of developed economies, and the Pacific Alliance — is on the cusp of major changes.
Executive Summary
In part, this is a good time to re- view where the country is heading simply because in early December Presi- dent Enrique Peña Nieto of the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) will mark his first two full years in office. Mexican federal governments serve six-year terms known as sexenios, so at the two-year point the president has completed one-third of his expected time in office (unlike many other Latin American countries, Mexico retains a long-standing constitutional ban on consecutive presidential re-election). But this is not just a question of con- venient timing: as anyone who has been following Mexico in the international press will know, the country is currently in the middle of a major political crisis: how it deals with it may be decisive for the next four years.