Who disagrees with the governor?Constitutional controversies, the Supreme Court and new federalism inMexico.

Political scientists have examined in great depth the transformation of formal and informal political institutions in systems undergoing democratization processes. Nevertheless, the effects of democratization on the operation of federations have been largely overlooked (Gibson 2003). This research investigates whether the process to solve disputes between state and municipal governments in Mexico has been transformed by the democratization process. Binary panel data models were estimated to investigate the effects of municipal electoral competition and vertically divided government on the probability that a municipality (the third level of government in Mexico) introduces a constitutional controversy versus its state government at the Supreme Court. We provide evidence to support the hypothesis that under the new democratic conditions, municipal presidents from political parties other than the party of the governor tended to be more active and demanding in their interactions with the state governments; and therefore contributed to decentralize the federal system. The statistical analysis reveals that, in the 1995-2000 period, municipalities in vertical divided government relationships with their state government were more likely to introduce constitutional controversies than those in unified relationships, other factors remaining equal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]