Mexico's democratically elected government recently decided to dismantle many of the relatively autonomous public oversight bodies that were created as part of its gradual regime transition. This action highlights tensions between majority rule and public accountability. Advocates of this rollback underscore those oversight bodies’ limited results, whereas critics see evidence of authoritarianism. Democratic reformers had high expectations of those oversight bodies, including the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL), the subject of Diana Graizbord’s book Indictors of Democracy: The Politics and Promise of Evaluation Expertise in Mexico. For example, an opposition senator charged that the government wanted “to disappear CONEVAL because they don’t want a third party to review whether [they] are stealing from social programs, or whether they are using them for electoral purposes.”[1] This accusation reflects the tone of the debate, yet it is puzzling for two reasons. First, that senator represented a former ruling party that was infamous for both corruption and political use of social programs; second, in practice, the government's social policy evaluation agenda was quite technical and never considered either corruption or political manipulation to fall within its mandate.

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