Mexico’s parties and institutions: watchdogs, nepotism, immunity

Between November 2024 and July 2025, Congress changed two of the rules that shape how power is held to account in Mexico and left a third untouched. The autonomous bodies that guaranteed access to public information and policed competition between companies were abolished, and their work moved to agencies of the federal government. The Constitution now bars a person from running for the office held by a relative, but only from 2030. And legislative immunity, known in Mexico as fuero (the permission the Chamber of Deputies must give before a federal lawmaker can be prosecuted), stayed as it was, even though six of the eight parties favor ending it (two of them by our estimate).

Those are the three statements in the test topic “Institutions and corruption”: the first two appear in both the quick and the full test; the one on immunity, only in the full test. This analysis sets out what the law says today, how each parliamentary group voted and what each party proposes.

Positions marked with an asterisk (*), four out of twenty-four, are our estimates: the party has not addressed that specific statement, so we infer its view from what it says about related issues. SOMOS and Partido PAZ, nationally registered since 2026, have never had deputies and voted on none of what follows; what we say about them rests on their founding documents, which may be superseded once they file their platforms in January 2027.

What was abolished in 2024, and who does the job now

The constitutional amendment on “organizational simplification” was published on 20 December 2024 (DOF). Its transitional articles abolish seven federal bodies, plus the state transparency institutes, and hand their functions to federal ministries and to INEGI, the national statistics institute.

The change goes beyond names. The INAI and Cofece had constitutional autonomy, and their rulings also bound the government. Today the federal transparency authority sits inside a ministry, and the competition commission keeps “technical and operational independence” but is attached to the Economy Ministry, and its five commissioners are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

How each group voted

Votes on the bills as a whole in the Chamber of Deputies (Parliamentary Gazette). One deputy with no group voted for all three laws and is counted in the totals. The only break in the two-bloc pattern is Movimiento Ciudadano on the telecommunications law: it backed the bill as a whole, then cast all 25 of its votes against the reserved articles.

Bringing back autonomous bodies

The first statement asks whether bodies free from executive control should once again oversee access to information and competition between companies. No other statement in the topic splits the parties as sharply, and here no one sits in the middle.

Strongly disagreeing are the three parties that passed the reform: Morena, the PVEM and the PT. Their groups cast every one of their votes for the constitutional amendment of November 2024 and for the 2025 laws that moved the functions into the government, without a single vote against.

On the other side, strongly agreeing, are the three groups that voted no, each with more than its vote to go on. The PAN’s program of action proposes strengthening Cofece and the transparency bodies. The PRI’s 2024 program proposes a general law guaranteeing the autonomous bodies independence and adequate funding. Movimiento Ciudadano’s 2024 platform called for genuine autonomy, with no room for government interference.

SOMOS also strongly agrees, and says so almost word for word: its 2026 program of action sets out to recover the autonomous bodies and to strengthen those for transparency and competition in particular, and its 2025 ten-point plan added that they should have their own budgets. Partido PAZ agrees: without naming the INAI or Cofece, its program seeks stronger state transparency institutes and audit bodies with their own technical and budget autonomy, and its declaration of principles calls for competition laws that actually work.

Electoral nepotism: banned, but from 2030

Since the amendment published on 1 April 2025, the Constitution adds a requirement for anyone running for federal deputy (Article 55, section VIII): in the three years before the election, they must not have been married to, or lived as a partner of, the person who holds that seat, nor be related to them in the direct line to any degree, in the collateral line up to the fourth degree, or by marriage up to the second degree. The same rule covers the presidency, governorships (including the capital’s), state legislatures and municipal governments, and the Senate too, which requires the same qualifications as the Chamber (Article 58).

But its second transitional article postpones it: the ban applies “from the electoral processes, both federal and local, to be held in 2030” (DOF, 1 April 2025). The end of immediate reelection is delayed in the same way. So when Mexicans vote on 6 June 2027, the Constitution will not stop a party from nominating the relative of an outgoing officeholder. The test asks whether the ban should already apply in 2027.

On 4 March 2025 the Chamber approved the amendment as a whole by 477 votes to 0: every group in favor. The reserved articles then passed exactly as drafted in the committee report, 432 to 28, with 4 abstentions. Movimiento Ciudadano voted no, 0 to 26. Several parties that voted for 2030 now ask for something else (more on this in our analysis of the electoral reform).

Only Movimiento Ciudadano strongly agrees, the group that voted against the date: its floor leader, Ivonne Ortega, argued that the ban had to apply from the 2027 election.

Morena, the PAN, the PRI and, by estimate, SOMOS agree. Morena got there on its own: in May 2025 its National Council adopted ethical guidelines under which, from 2027, no candidate of the party may take over from a relative, even though the Constitution does not require it until 2030. The PAN’s floor leader, José Elías Lixa, had offered his group’s votes in February 2025 to bring the date forward (“we’ll move it back to 2027”), and PRI deputies also asked to bring it forward; in the end both groups approved the report with 2030. SOMOS (agrees*) opposes nepotism in its documents and its president criticized it in 2026, but it has said nothing about the date.

Morena’s two allies are against. The PVEM, which strongly disagrees, made 2030 a condition of its support and did not copy Morena’s internal rule either. The PT, which disagrees, also kept open the option of fielding relatives of sitting officeholders in 2027; its floor leader, Reginaldo Sandoval, put it this way: “We are independent parties.” Partido PAZ (neutral*) criticizes political “fiefdoms” in its declaration of principles but does not address electoral nepotism.

Immunity: what it is and when it has been used

Applied to lawmakers, the word fuero appears only once in the Constitution, in passing: Article 61 asks the president of each chamber to see that it is respected. What actually exists is the declaration of grounds to proceed (Article 111): to prosecute a federal deputy or senator for a crime committed while in office, the Chamber of Deputies must first declare, by an absolute majority of those present, that there are grounds to do so. If it says no, the case is suspended until the person leaves office; the charge is not dropped. If it says yes, the lawmaker is removed from office while the trial lasts. Supreme Court justices, cabinet ministers and the attorney general, among others, enjoy the same protection.

Inviolability under Article 61 is something else: it shields deputies and senators for the opinions they express in their work, and the test does not ask about it. The presidency has its own rules: since 2021, Article 108 allows a sitting president to be charged with the same crimes as anyone else, although the charge is brought before the Senate.

The most recent case voted in the Chamber came on 25 March 2025. The Morelos State Attorney General’s Office had asked to prosecute a federal deputy, and the Investigating Section, the committee that examines these requests, proposed declaring it inadmissible because, in its view, the investigation lacked basic steps. The floor approved the report 291 to 158, and 12 deputies abstained:

Parliamentary Gazette, tabla1or2-27; one deputy with no group also voted in favor. Backing that report is not the same as defending immunity as a rule: it only hints at how each group applies it.

That same day, Morena’s deputy floor leader in the Chamber, Alfonso Ramírez Cuéllar, filed a bill to strip lawmakers and governors of that protection while keeping their immunity for opinions; he withdrew it a week later to “look more deeply into its content.” In February 2026 he regretted that the president’s electoral reform did not include the change. In October 2025 a PVEM senator filed another bill with the same aim. Neither has changed the Constitution.

The PAN strongly agrees with ending immunity: its national leader, Jorge Romero, wrote in March 2025 that his party supported legislating to abolish it, and its group voted against the report. Morena agrees because of its deputy floor leader’s bill and statements, although he withdrew it and most of the group approved the report. The PT also agrees: it was the ally whose group voted mostly against the report, 38 to 9, and one of its deputies argued that the sensible course was to take leave and face the courts. Movimiento Ciudadano (agrees) voted the same way; in 2026 its floor leader demanded that the case be settled without privileges, although we have found no proposal to end immunity in its 2024 documents.

The PVEM is neutral: its senator’s bill points one way and its group’s vote the other. The PRI disagrees, and it is the only one: its group backed the report without a single vote against (33 to 0), and neither its program nor its platform proposes ending the protection. SOMOS and Partido PAZ agree*, by estimate: their documents insist that no one should be above the law, without mentioning immunity.

The positions in one table

Each documented position links to its source on the party’s page: Morena, PAN, PRI, PVEM, PT, Movimiento Ciudadano, SOMOS and PAZ.

What divides the parties

Autonomous bodies split the parties exactly as the 2024 and 2025 votes did: five in favor, three against and none neutral. Comparing the eight parties two at a time, the average gap is 2.18 points, more than on any other statement in the topic (our own calculation from the test positions).

Nepotism breaks up the governing coalition: Morena sides with the PAN, the PRI and Movimiento Ciudadano, and its two allies end up against. The average gap falls to 1.46.

Immunity is the statement with the broadest agreement: six parties in favor of ending it, one neutral and one against, with an average gap of 0.93. But the blocs shift again: the PRI, which voted with the PAN and Movimiento Ciudadano against abolishing the autonomous bodies, is the only party against, and the PT lines up with the opposition.

Adding up the gaps on all three statements (12 points at most), the party furthest from the opposition is not Morena but the PVEM: 9 points separate it from the PAN and from Movimiento Ciudadano, against 5 for Morena with each of them. Among the allies, the PVEM and Morena are 4 points apart, and Morena and the PT, 2 (see the comparisons Morena vs. PVEM and Morena vs. PT). The closest are Movimiento Ciudadano and SOMOS, and the PAN and SOMOS, 1 point apart, with two of the SOMOS positions estimated; the PAN and the PRI, partners in 2024, are 3 apart because of immunity (PAN vs. PRI).

To see where you stand, take the test.