IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME.

Political parties can be major players in promoting citizens' political participation, One of the mechanisms parties can utilize to increase citizens' participation are open and democratic internal processes in the selection of their candidates. In this paper, based on the Mexican Partido Revolucionario Institucional internal primaries, held in November 1999, and a panel data survey with four rounds analyzing the Mexican presidential elections of 2000 I show that citizens who participated in the PRI primaries had a larger propensity to be engaged in the electoral process. This paper brings new evidence to three understudied subjects: primaries in Latin American democracies, primaries in democratizing countries, and the participatory effects of those election mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]