Political Science Questions for Paul Gillingham
February 3, 2026
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immexpo-marseille.com – Political science offers one of the sharpest lenses for understanding Mexico’s past and present, especially when explored with a historian who works across archives, elections, and everyday life. As Northwestern professor Paul Gillingham prepares to discuss his sweeping book Mexico: A 500-Year History, we have a rare chance to shape that conversation through the questions we ask. Thoughtful questions turn an ordinary interview into a masterclass on power, protest, and possibility.
Instead of recycling predictable prompts about dates and famous leaders, we can draw on political science to investigate how institutions, culture, and conflict shape Mexican society over centuries. This is not only about Mexico’s story. It also tests political science ideas themselves: do the theories fit, where do they fail, and what does Mexico reveal about democracy, violence, and resilience in the wider Americas?
Political science lenses on 500 years of Mexico
A first theme to explore with Paul Gillingham is how political science helps organize five centuries of upheaval into something more than a long list of rulers. Ask how he structures Mexico’s history through concepts such as state-building, regime change, and political legitimacy. When a country moves from empire to colony, then to revolution and one-party dominance, which political science frameworks clarify continuity across these shifts, and which are too narrow to capture them?
It is worth asking where conventional models, often built from European or U.S. experience, misread Mexican history. For example, many textbooks treat democratic transitions as neat sequences, but Mexico’s path seems more jagged. Invite Gillingham to point out moments where political science expected linear progress, while reality produced hybrids: elections mixed with coercion, reform wrapped around old patronage networks, or local authorities who outlast national transformations.
Another valuable question concerns method. Political science often leans on statistics and models, whereas historians base arguments on archives, testimony, and narrative. Gillingham works across both approaches. How does he decide when to rely on electoral data, when to foreground oral histories, and how to weigh them together? His answer could illuminate why some political science claims about Mexico hold up badly once deeper historical evidence enters the picture.
Power, violence, and everyday political life
Any interview about Mexico and political science should grapple with violence, but not only through headlines about cartels. Ask Gillingham how he traces long arcs of coercion from colonial rule to modern security policies. What links can he draw between past rebellions, state repression, paramilitary groups, and today’s criminal organizations? Political science often treats these as separate topics; a 500-year view might reveal a shared repertoire of tactics and relationships between armed actors and officials.
Another line of questioning involves how ordinary people practice politics outside formal institutions. Political science sometimes centers presidents, parties, and courts, yet Mexico’s history pulses with village assemblies, religious brotherhoods, unions, women’s collectives, and neighborhood networks. Invite Gillingham to share stories that challenge elite-focused narratives. When did grassroots actors bend state policy, sabotage clientelist arrangements, or quietly maintain alternative forms of authority beneath official structures?
From my perspective, one of the most revealing questions concerns fear and hope as political forces. Ask how emotions appear in the archives and what they tell us about consent and resistance. Political science has grown more attentive to affect, but historians often see it first. How did fear of land loss, or hope for education, shape voting, migration, or rebellion? Gillingham’s reflections could push researchers to treat emotions not as background noise but as central variables in political explanation.
Rethinking democracy, inequality, and Latin American futures
Finally, an interview with Paul Gillingham should step back from Mexico’s borders and press broader political science debates about democracy and inequality across Latin America. Ask how Mexico’s long experiment with electoral reform, coupled with persistent corruption and regional disparities, complicates standard ideas about democratic consolidation. From my view, the most fruitful questions will connect historical depth with contemporary dilemmas: how did earlier bargains between elites and popular movements shape today’s fragmented party system, what does Mexico’s experience suggest for Caribbean societies navigating similar tensions, and where might new forms of representation emerge amid climate stress, migration, and digital activism? Ending on these themes invites readers to see Mexican history not as a closed chapter, but as a toolkit for thinking about the hemisphere’s uncertain future.
