Mexico under the Scrutinizing Gaze of the RMCPyS: Persistent Grievances and Challenges, 2015-2025

Abstract

This article revisits a decade of reflections published in the Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales on the crisis of the Mexican state, emphasizing how the expansion of organized crime, institutional capture, and the territorial entrenchment of armed groups have overwhelmed the traditional categories of democratic transition. It connects these diagnoses to conceptual debates on state failure, parapolitics, structural violence, and institutional decay. The text engages perspectives that problematize the fragmentation of sovereignty, the entanglement of state and criminal actors, and the erosion of the state’s monopoly over legitimate force. It also draws on assessments of the limitations of the National Anti-Corruption System, the persistence of clientelistic networks, and the state’s incapacity to guarantee security, justice, and human rights. Overall, the article shows that violence and criminality are not anomalies but structural dynamics reshaping the relationship between state, territory, and citizenship, challenging the normative assumptions that once framed expectations of Mexico’s democratic development.