Advocacy coalitions or pragmatic coupling of streams? Explaining policy change in Mexico: The tax reforms of Vicente Fox and Enrique Peña (2001 and 2013)

Abstract

AbstractWhen the former hegemonic PRI won the 2012 election after 12 years of rule by PAN, the President shared with his predecessors a similar institutional setting and divided government. And yet, the PRI managed to pass all items of an extensive 2013 tax reform. If the setting was the same, why did PRI succeed when PAN had only limited success? Why was the 2013 tax reform progressive if PAN and PRI were ideologically proximate? Current explanations that characterize PAN's 2001 tax reforms as a failure because of an unsuccessful change to the Value‐Added Tax Law can accommodate neither the puzzling 2013 extensive tax overhaul nor the changes to the Income Tax Law that were indeed approved in 2001. To navigate these puzzles, I contrast the elements of both proposals and rely on two public policy theoretical frameworks literature, the Advocacy Coalitions and Multiple Streams frameworks to find that, despite representing political compromise over a shared agenda, the outcomes in 2001 and 2013 had less to do with commitment to a core of mutual beliefs and more with policy entrepreneurs of PRI and PRD taking a gamble on a window of opportunity.