After the heyday of the Revolution (1910-20) and seventy years of "perfect dictatorship" under the Institutional Revolutionary Party, over the last two decades Mexico has been experiencing an original transition to democracy. Federalism and presidentialism, which traditionally characterized Mexican institutions, have been extensively changed by party pluralism and alternation of power, especially since 2012. The 1917 Mexican Constitution, the first in the world to sanction an organic set of social rights, even though it is undergoing a process of continuous revision, remains the lynchpin of the institutional order in one of the most important countries in Latin America.

Marco Olivetti teaches Constitutional Law at the University of Foggia.