Discuss the ways in which the relationship between the federal government and state governments has changed over time, then explain whether you think things have changed for better or for worse and why.

About a year ago, on the eve of the start of the 2017-2018 federal electoral process (and the concurrent local elections in 30 federal entities), some voices with access to the media spread the species of which there was a political regression in Mexico which would equate the electoral contest of 2018 with that of 1988.

The slogan was an obvious falsehood, devoid of facts, circumstances, evidence and proportions, loaded with ignorance and bad faith. The public ecosystems of such a stridency did not last long, but perhaps they are the distrust of those who from the moment have been eliminated in the guarantees of democratic elections. The development of the campaigns, the organization of the elections and their results showed that 2018 is nothing like 1988. They are separated by 30 years in which the democratic transition is consummated, the plurality of political representation consolidated, the alternation in power became habitual, and the exercise of power remained subject to institutional balances and counterweights.

Precisely the political crisis caused by the 1988 elections accelerated the engine of democratic transition. In 1989 an electoral reform was made whose best result was the Federal Electoral Institute, as a professional body and with technical autonomy. The first alternation occurred in a state government (Baja California); a gradual process began to extend political rights of the inhabitants of the Federal District; the judiciary reformed and acquired more independence; in the states, electoral institutes similar to the IFE were created; public freedoms and freedom of the press expanded significantly; in 1996 full autonomy was granted to the IFE, and the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Branch of the Federation was created, endowed with independence and broad powers; public financing to the parties was increased and regulated to favor fair competition; in 1997 the PRI lost for the first time the absolute majority in the Chamber of Deputies, the PRD won the government of the Federal District and the PAN increased its state and municipal governments; federalism began to be a reality; the alternation in power became habitual at the local level and, in 2000, also at the federal level. Only 12 years after that troubled year of 1988, Mexico's political regime had changed radically and peacefully. He had moved from authoritarianism to democracy.