Dominant Party Strategy and Democratization in Mexico

How do dominant parties strategize in the context of democratization when the addition of a regime cleavage into partisan competition disadvantages the incumbent? This article presents a two-dimensional extension of Riker’s anti-coordination logic that conflicts with Downsian extensions. I argue that when voters coordinate on a single challenger based on their common support for democracy (the cross-cutting cleavage), the dominant party should move toward the weaker challenger on the primary dimension of competition, even at the risk of abandoning the median. The second half of the article tests the theory with original sample survey data from party personnel in Mexico