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Parliamentary Government and the Mexican Constitution of 1857: A Forgotten Phase of Mexican Political History

1953; Duke University Press; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-33.1.65

1527-1900

Frank A. Knapp,

Comparative constitutional jurisprudence studies

One of the unique political developments of nineteenthcentury Mexico was the attempt to establish a parliamentary government under the Constitution of 1857. The course of that experiment cannot be described exhaustively in a few pages. For one thing, it occurred in a complicated era of Mexican history which begins with the Revolution of Ayutla (1854-1855) and includes the interim dictatorship of Ignacio Comonfort, the abortive constitutional regime in 1857, the War of the Reform, the Congresses of 1861-1863, the French intervention, and the restoration of the republic through the presidency of Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada which ended in 1876. The efforts to establish responsible cabinet government were abrupt and intermittent and almost defy connected exposition; in addition, the evidence which remains is both fragmentary and scattered. The present article attempts, however, to define the modified cabinet government which the framers of the Constitution of 1857 desired to erect and to explain its failure and the significance of that failure. Not only did this constitutional development reflect a reaction against the dictatorship of Santa Anna (1853-1855), but in its course Juarez' luster seems diminished in relation to that of his many almost forgotten ministers whose influence has never been accounted for adequately by any of his numerous biographers. Though it may seem chronologically illogical, it is necessary to study the finished Constitution before looking into the debates of its framers in the Constituent Congress, in order to find specific evidence of an intention to create parlia* The author is with the United States Office of Education, Washington, D. 0. -Ed.