The paradox of an electoral reform without genuine deliberation

Democracy requires that those who exercise public power do so by the people’s decision, not just by possessing it. This fundamental truth is compromised when processes that define the rules of the political game are closed to citizen participation, as has recently happened with electoral reform negotiations in Mexico. As thinker Fabián Mazzei and other analysts have pointed out, when these constitutional changes are discussed in closed-door meetings among actors whose democratic legitimacy is uncertain, the outcome results in a deficit that is difficult to repair.

The ruling alliance — composed of Morena, the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico, and the Labor Party — has shown it has enough votes to push for constitutional changes without needing consensus or negotiations with minority forces. But the question that should concern citizens is: why avoid open deliberation if the parliamentary majority is so solid? The answer seems to overlook a fundamental principle of all modern democracy: social acceptance of a norm largely depends on whether its creation followed a transparent, plural, and institutional process.

When the majority rejects genuine deliberation

The Congress of the Union, conceived as an institutional forum where divergent views confront and translate into law, seems to have become merely an official registry of parties. Those who defend this way of legislating, appealing solely to electoral results, forget that opposition parties together garnered four out of ten votes. This significant proportion demands participation in shaping the rules that will organize future political contests.

Reported tensions over issues like multimember districts and public funding reveal deep disagreements. Hiding these in private negotiations does not resolve them; it shifts them into the shadows. German jurist Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde argued that democratic legitimacy lies in the ability to guide the people back to decisions regarding the exercise of power. When that people is excluded from debate, legitimacy diminishes.

Legitimacy that only consensus can generate

Mexican experience since 1990 shows that the most significant electoral reforms emerged precisely from opposition initiatives or broad negotiations among political forces. This is no coincidence: few matters demand as much legitimacy and consensus as those that establish the rules of democratic competition. Chilean constitutionalist Fernando Atria states that this democratic legitimacy has a dual dimension: a material one, based on the general will, and an organic-personal one, recognizing that this will must necessarily be expressed through representatives.

If every decision involving the exercise of public powers must be reconducible to the people, the basic condition is that those exercising such powers do so by the citizens’ decision. An electoral reform decided behind closed doors, even if formally and legally valid, will lack the democratic legitimacy that such a significant transformation demands.

Why do imposed reforms erode trust?

Various thinkers of law and democracy — such as Jürgen Habermas, Carlos Nino, and Hans Kelsen — have emphasized that regimes ignoring genuine deliberation end up paying a high cost. When the process is perceived as a sham, the norm may be legally valid but will lack legitimacy for a significant segment of the population.

In electoral matters, this lack of legitimacy is especially delicate. It erodes trust in the rules that organize political competition. A reform born from genuine deliberative processes, even if its results are disputed, has the advantage of being built collectively. An imposed reform, no matter how solid its arithmetic majority, faces distrust from the outset that time will hardly heal.

The real challenge is not counting votes. It is recognizing that democratic transformations require more than numerical strength: they require that all significant voices have had a real opportunity to participate in their construction. Only then can an electoral reform be not only legal but truly democratic.