For many who are closely watching, both from inside and outside the country, Mexico?s election is part of the ?transition to democracy? of the past three decades. Like Spain in the 1970s, Chile in the 1980s or the ex-USSR in the 1990s, what?s at stake is not the triumph of any particular set of political elites, but the strengthening of a set of institutions we recognize as constituting political democracy.

These institutions have very little to do with the economic and social relations that determine who effectively ?rules? a country or a social order, but rather, as political scientist Michael Coppedge has written, ?ensure that effective political decision-makers are chosen in free and fair elections, under conditions in which citizens have access to diverse sources of independent information, can express their political opinions freely, and can organize and join parties and other organizations without fear of government retaliation.? Coppedge was a student of the influential political scientist Robert Dahl, and is describing what Dahl called ?polyarchy,? rule by many.

Dahl, in turn, was influenced by the German-born sociologist Joseph Schumpeter, who argued that democracy ?means only that the people have the opportunity of accepting or refusing the men who are to rule them.? Real decision-making, from this perspective, should take place away from the institutionalized electoral process. Free and fair elections should make the political process legitimate and prevent groups like the old Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which lack or have lost popular support, from seizing or maintaining control.

This perspective, basically a centrist, conservative one, has been given a critical interpretation by contemporary sociologist William Robinson.

?When U.S. policymakers and transnational elites talk about democracy promotion,? writes Robinson, ?what they really mean is the promotion of polyarchy, and this refers ? to a system in which a small group actually rules and mass participation and decision-making is confined to choosing leaders in elections that are carefully managed by competing elites.?

Now competing elites can differ in important ways, and a choice between, say, free-market elites and regulated-market elites, or corrupt elites and non-corrupt (or less corrupt) elites can be a significant one.

Nonetheless, argues Robinson, the key matters of the distribution of local (and especially global) wealth and power, and citizen participation in social and economic decision-making, have been entirely removed from the discourse of polyarchy.

Paradoxically, from this understanding of democracy ? be it the supportive interpretation of Dahl and Schumpeter or the critical one of Robinson ? the less at stake in any election, the more ?democratic? it can be.

Earlier this week, for example, the globally influential New York Times, short of endorsing any of the candidates for Mexico?s presidency, pronounced the ongoing process to be democratic. This, according to the Times, is because neither of the leading contenders challenged Mexico?s basic economic relations, nor, more importantly, did they challenge the global institutional arrangements into which Mexico is tied.

Here is a part of what the paper?s editorial had to say about the two leading candidates:

Felipe Calderón ?is a respectable model of the Latin American colorless, Harvard-educated, pro-business candidate. He wants to modernize Mexico and make it more globally competitive, thereby creating more jobs. Mr. Calderón advocates opening Mexico?s poorly run and underfinanced energy sector to foreign investment. It is an unpopular idea, but sorely needed.?

Andrés Manuel López Obrador ?is a leftist, but he is no threat to the United States, nor to Mexico. He has no ambitions to foment revolution and stresses the importance of good relations with Washington. He accepts a market economy, but would attempt to make it fairer to Mexico?s poor. Mr. López Obrador has said that he would like to use government spending to create jobs and raise the minimum wage ? now $4.50 a day.?

?Americans should want a Mexican president who can maintain stability and produce jobs that can keep potential emigrants at home. ? Mr. Calderón and Mr. López Obrador propose very different, completely legitimate, approaches to this task.?

The editorial represents the conventional wisdom that holds democracy to be equivalent to polyarchy. Neither candidate falls outside the accepted confines of polyarchic competition and so either is acceptable. The closer their positions to one another, the more acceptable they would be.

Perhaps this is why the election has been fought on such trivial and distorted grounds as uncomfortable brothers-in-law and dangerous personalities. Perhaps the candidates are simply guarding their democratic credentials by refusing to discuss anything substantive.

frosen@cablevision.net.mx