Since its independence from Spain in 1821, the nation of Mexico has become one of the
most highly developed countries in the world, and one of the few successful countries remaining
after declaring independence from a European country. By trying to follow the same route as the
United States, the people of Mexico decided to declare their independence from the Spanish
Empire, along with many other Latin American countries, and soon established a democratic
government system very similar to the US. Unlike the United States, the Mexican government
had struggled in keeping civil order within its borders but today the country has managed to unite
itself enough to be recognized by other nations as a powerhouse country. However, even though
Mexico was successful in elevating its international position to a world power, its regime’s
stability does not reflect the same. In an attempt to determine Mexico’s regime type, this paper
will be using the Democracy Index to examine its domestic politics. The Democracy Index was
created by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) to determine the strength of a given country
and its regime type. Designed as a dichotomous point-based scoring system, every indicator’s
score will either mainly be a yes (worth 1 point) or no (worth 0 points), with the occasional in
between options (worth 0.5 points). There are 60 indicators in total that are dispersed throughout
five separate categories. The first category Mexico’s electoral process and pluralism, followed by
Mexico’s functioning of government, its political participation, its democratic political culture,
and its civil liberties were each given an overall score based on the research and analysis
provided throughout this paper. After averaging all the individually scored categories to
determine Mexico’s overall index score, this paper will conclude that Mexico should be given a
Democracy Index score of 5.2 and can be classified as a Hybrid Regime.
