208 Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) Bihari Vajpayee of India and Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan, signed the Lahore Declaration for solving the Kashmir dispute peacefully In February 1999 a war that would last for 73 days began on May on the Kargil ridges, situated about 120 miles from Srinagar, the capital of Indian Kashmir Both armies had to fight in the inhospitable terrain of the Kargil mountains On July 14 both India and Pakistan ended military operations without boundary changes Kashmir has remained an unresolved problem between the two nations It has assumed dangerous proportions with the potential for a nuclear conflict However, summit talks have begun between leaders of both nations Further reading: Akbar, M K Kargil: Cross Border Terrorism New Delhi: Mittal, 1999; Amin, Tahir Mass Resistance in Kashmir: Origins, Evolution and Options Islamabad: Institute of Policy Studies, 1995; Gulati, M N Pakistan’s Downfall in Kashmir—The Three Indo-Pak Wars New Delhi: Manas, 2004; Kamath, P M., ed India-Pakistan Relations, Courting Peace from the Corridors of War New Delhi: Promilla, 2005; Raza, Rafi, ed Pakistan in Perspective, 1947–1997 Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997; Schofield, Victoria Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War London: I.B Tauris, 2002 Patit Paban Mishra Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) For more than seven decades (1929–2000) Mexico was governed by a single ruling party that dominated Mexican politics in a so-called one-party democracy Dubbed the “perfect dictatorship” in 1990 by the conservative Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, the ruling party went through several name changes and transformed in important ways as the century progressed, but it also retained a high degree of institutional continuity Following the Mexican Revolution (1910–20), the constitution of 1917, and the turmoil of the Cristero Rebellion (1926–29), the party was founded in 1929 by Supreme Chief (Jefe Máximo) and President Plutarco Elías Calles (1929–34) It was called the Revolutionary National Party (Partido Nacional Revolucionario, or PNR) In 1938, soon after nationalizing the properties of foreign oil companies, President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40) changed its name to the Mexican Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Mexicana, or PRM) Its final name change came under President Miguel Alemán Valdés (1946–52), when in 1946 it became the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institutional, or PRI), as it has remained into the 21st century The PRI and its forebears (hereafter referred to as the PRI) won every national election from 1934 to 2000, when it was defeated at the polls by Vicente Fox, candidate of the opposition party Partido de Acción Nacional (National Action Party, or PAN) While the PRI did not outlaw opposition parties—in fact, encouraging their existence to lend greater legitimacy to its rule—its grip on the reins of state power remained unassailable by virtue of its domination of the machinery of state, the major media, and the electoral process, and by its capacity to repress or coopt opposition and to garner popular support by its selective dispensation of government patronage Its strategies of rule and modes of domination were similar to the political machines that dominated major U.S urban centers, such as Mayor Richard J Daley’s political machine in Chicago (1955–76) Despite its origins in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution and its ostensibly “revolutionary” orientation, the PRI grew increasingly conservative, authoritarian, and corrupt after the major reforms of the Cárdenas years Cárdenas in effect forged an authoritarian corporatist state, in which all major social sectors were represented in the state and party’s bureaucratic and administrative structures: the military, labor unions, the agrarian sector, and the popular sector Unlike the situation in many Latin American countries, the Mexican army and police remained firmly subordinated to civilian authority Organized labor was represented by the Mexican Workers’ Federation (Confederación de Trabajadores de México, or CTM), an increasingly bureaucratized union founded under Cárdenas and firmly integrated into state structures Independent or insurgent labor unions were either repressed or coopted The agrarian sector was represented by the National Peasant Confederation (Confederación Nacional Campesino, or CNC) and other state-controlled organizations In the six decades from 1940 to 2000, the PRI was characterized by its conservatism at home and, from the 1950s, its rhetorical support for leftist and revolutionary movements abroad, such as the Cuban revolution Under President Manuel Ávila Camacho (1940–46), the PRI supported the Allies in World War