Engendering Political Commitment: the Grupo Oaxaca—Expertise,
Media Projection—and the Elaboration of Mexico’s Access to
Information Law
by
Greg Michener
Doctoral Student, University of Texas at Austin
<gregmichener@mail.utexas.edu>
To be presented at the Southern Political Science Association 2005 Conference
Panel on Freedom of Information
January 6, 2005
In a great number of countries, closed government institutions and secretive state practices have
encumbered economic, social and political development. In response to these conditions, access
to information laws have been championed around the globe as a first-order institutional
mechanism aimed at increasing government transparency. Essential for assessing investment
climates and keeping public servants accountable, the free flow of information has become the
hallmark of advanced democracies and their markets.
Through market and democratic opening, Mexico has strived to join the ranks of these
advanced nations. Its entry into the OECD, NAFTA and the WTO1 in the mid 1990s, and its
graduation to a functional multi-party democracy, heralded-in by the election of Vicente Fox in
2000, is testament to Mexico’s progress. Now Mexico has moved on to a third set of goals
dealing with the past, confronting endemic corruption, and further reforming the political system.
Mexico’s new access to information law is emblematic of this new stage. La Ley de
Transparencia y Acceso a la Información Pública Gubernamental, passed in 2002 and put into
effect in June 2003, is by any account among the most significant accomplishments of the Fox
Administration. Based on the concept of maximum openness, it is also one of the vanguard laws
in Latin America. The law establishes an autonomous institution with its own budget to ensure
compliance with the law, the Federal Institute of Access to Information2; it promises a response
to a request within 30 days, even if the request goes unacknowledged; the law strictly limits what
the government may withhol