Mexican Political Elites 1935-1973: A Comparative Study

Scholars are increasingly using biographical data to study political elites in an attempt to penetrate the mysteries of the decision-making process. Determining why and how decisions are made is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks to attempt for not only do decision-makers intentionally obfuscate the process but often do not understand it themselves. Unable to penetrate the minds of the participants or to observe directly decisions being made, scholars often turn to studying the decision-makers (elites) themselves by identifying who they are. Biographical data are used because they form at least part of the definition of an individual; they are relatively easy to obtain; they can be coded and put in machine-readable form; and they lend themselves to statistical analysis. On this basis, the scholar can at least describe an elite group, infer why decisions were made, and suggest who future elites might be (assuming that the recruitment system is based on these variables and does not significantly alter in the future).