Peña Nieto PRI modernising-neoliberal + Pacto por México reforms

Doctrine — stated goals and content

Modernising-neoliberal return of the PRI under a technocratic-reformist leadership team that used the cross-party Pacto por México (signed 2 December 2012 with PAN and PRD) to push through the largest bundle of structural reforms since the Salinas era. Economic school: Mexican market-liberal with institutionalist framing — open Pemex to private upstream capital, force competition in telecoms, formalise an evaluation-based teaching career, broaden the tax base. Sits clearly centre-right on the economic axis; pairs liberalisation with an active legalistic-institutionalist build-out of new regulators (IFT, CNH, CRE with expanded mandate, SAT modernisation). Signature policies include: (i) energy reform Dec 2013 (constitutional Arts. 25, 27, 28) ending Pemex's 75-year upstream monopoly and creating farm-out / licensing rounds, with secondary laws Aug 2014; (ii) telecoms reform Jun 2013 creating the IFT as constitutional regulator and forcing asymmetric obligations on "preponderant" players (América Móvil / Televisa); (iii) education reform Feb 2013 creating INEE teacher evaluation and service law; (iv) fiscal / hacendaria reform Oct 2013 (effective 2014) eliminating IETU/IDE, capping deductions, raising top PIT to 35%, introducing junk-food/sugary-drink excises and homologating VAT at the border; (v) financial reform 2014; (vi) political-electoral reform 2014 (INE replacing IFE, re-election of legislators). Popularity trajectory: won July 2012 with 38.2% plurality, PRI+PVEM held ~251 Cámara seats (lower house majority via alliance); approval peaked mid-2013 around ~50%, collapsed to 12-25% after Ayotzinapa (Sep 2014), Casa Blanca (Nov 2014) and 2017 gasolinazo; ended 2018 among the least popular presidents on record, with the PRI reduced to third place and 14% of the vote that year. Coherence line: reformist content was materially liberalising on regulated sectors (energy, telecoms, labour-adjacent education) and pro-competition in product markets; the movement's legitimacy was hollowed by corruption scandals and security failures, producing the backlash that carried AMLO to power in 2018.