One Party Political Systems Essay Research Paper

One Party Political Systems Essay, Research Paper

Political scientists often describe Mexico as a one-party authoritarian state. Power is centralized in the hands of a virtually omnipotent president, who is always the candidate of the dominant or ruling party, which in Mexico is the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI). Singapore is a one-party state that declares that it is democratic although when analyzed by political scientists is considered socialist. These parties have many similarities and many differences and this paper will undertake the task of comparing and contrasting the one-party system in both Singapore and Mexico.

The controlling political party in Mexico is the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), and it had been the governing political party since 1929. The PRI is divided up into three sectors: labor, agrarian, and popular. This party claims to be the true heir of Mexico s revolutionary tradition, and has worked extremely hard to keep an appearance as a left-wing party. Although the PRI certainly has right-wing and left-wing factions. Until very recently for many Mexicans the PRI, the state, and the government were basically the same thing. From 1929 up until 1988 the candidates of the PRI had won in all presidential, state, and Senate elections, and practically all the representative elections for federal and local congress, including municipalities. Military chieftains and regional bosses who survived the Mexican revolution started the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI); they created the National Revolutionary Party to put an end to two decades of violence and turmoil. Since then the PRI and its partisan predecessors have never acknowledged the loss of a presidential election and always controlled both houses of Congress. The machinery of politics at the president s service, the ruling party and the government officials charged with managing political affairs, often governed effectively, but to maintain their political control, they also resorted to electoral fraud and abuse of power. The official opposition party of the PRI is the Partido Accion Nacional (PAN), which is a right-wing political group. Other opposition parties are the Partido Autentico de la Revolucion Mexicana (PARM), Partido Popular Socialista (PPS), the Partido Communista Mexicano (PCM), and the Partido Socialista Unificado de Mexico (PSUM). Except for the PAN, none of Mexico s opposition parties have been able to develop a nationwide, mass following. The opposition parties are mainly outlets for dissident political leaders, keeping them within the government-sanctioned arena of political competition. However, PAN was essential to the PRI as it helped maintain the image that the PRI was truly revolutionary. The reason that PAN accepted its non-dominant status is that the PRI consulted with business leaders associated with the PAN when deciding on policy or on people to fill certain positions. The PAN played a cooperative role, until last summer when PAN won the presidential election. The PRI operates through an informal system of camarillos or political cliques. Throughout the development of the contemporary Mexican political system, the creation of pressure groups of one sort or another has been crucial to the exercise of power. The camarillos are a tightly knit core of loyal and influential people, the cliques are usually founded around the power of a given individual who has the ability to control behavior and allocate rewards, this makes the person the catalyst who gives the group a singularity of purpose and an informal loyalty web. The history of Singapore s most dominant political party, the People s Action Party (PAP) can be divided into five periods. The periods from (1) 1954-1958, which marked the years of opposition and the united front; (2) 1959-1961, the crisis of dissent which led to the split of the united front; (3) 1961-1963, the period of instability during which extreme right-wing and left-wing forces combined to topple the PAP government in the Legislative Assembly; (4) 1963-1965, the period as a part of Malaysia; and (5) 1965 to present the period of consolidation and achievement of an independent Singapore. The PAP started as a small group of dedicated trade unionists, teachers, lawyers, and journalists whom met in order to discuss the formation of a new left-wing political party. The political party evolved as electoral devices to place party leaders in policy-influencing positions and to prepare the party tactically for a power role at a subsequent date. To understand this idea, one must remember that the political party formed while still under British rule. The party started in order to gain some power when the United Kingdom was slowly giving autonomy back to Malaysia and Singapore. This describes the first period of Singapore s history. One of the PAP s first goals was to end colonial rule, and to stay with Malaysia. The PAP was committed to a democratic and socialist society. Although the PAP preached an ideology of democratic socialism, its leadership faced economic realities of a Singapore possessing few resources other than those derived from its own human endeavors. As a result, the PAP was forced to follow along the line of what might be termed democratic capitalism; the socialist aspect of the PAP s pronounced ideology is based solely on the provision of excellent social services and on creating