The Second Mexican Empire was a brief experiment in monarchial governance that lasted only a few years in the 1860s. Yet it remains one of the most intriguing "what-if" scenarios in modern history — one that continues to generate genuine curiosity about how North American politics might have developed differently.
The Historical Context
Yglesias argues that understanding the Second Mexican Empire requires examining the ideological divisions within Mexico itself. Conservative forces sought to establish a regime aligned with France, while liberal forces under Benito Juárez represented a different vision of governance. The intervention by Napoleonic France created an opportunity for a Habsburg prince—Maximilian von Habsburg—to rule as emperor.
The conservative faction in Mexico expected the new regime to pursue their policy preferences. But Maximilian turned out to hold fairly liberal views: he upheld freedom of religion, confirmed the legitimacy of previous sales of church property, and even attempted to pardon Juárez and bring him into the political system. This was not what Mexican conservatives had bargained for.
Why the Empire Failed
The failure of the Second Mexican Empire can be traced to several factors. Juárez refused any accommodation, led a rebel movement, and continued to be recognized as the legitimate president of Mexico by the United States government. The American Civil War was raging at the time, so American support for Juárez was not particularly effectual. But after the Confederate surrender, the United States turned its attention to Mexico, backed Juárez more forcefully, and the French were defeated.
From the American perspective, this was fundamentally a Monroe Doctrine issue — the United States did not want a France-aligned regime on its borders. From the French perspective, it was essentially a debt collection issue; France did not want to let Juárez repudiate the loans without consequence.
Critics might note that this analysis oversimplifies the complex web of motivations involved. French imperial ambitions, American expansionism, Mexican internal politics, and European great power interests all intertwined in ways that resist simple causal explanation.
The Counterfactual Question
The interesting counterfactual is whether a different path could have been negotiated. Yglesias suggests there may have been room for a deal where French troops withdraw in exchange for the United States stopping its backing of Juárez and pushing him to accept a pardon from Maximilian. Together, they might have stabilized a liberal order in Mexico.
This seems plausible on paper — but it requires assuming Napoleon III was a better decision-maker than history suggests he was. His actual choice to pursue military intervention proved disastrous, and the losses on the loans were ultimately eaten anyway.
Yglesias notes that among the various paintings depicting the execution of Emperor Maximilian, the version held in Copenhagen is arguably the finest. A 2006 MoMA exhibition displayed all five versions simultaneously, offering an unusual opportunity to compare different artistic interpretations of this historical moment.
Electoral Reform and Primaries
The discussion then shifts to electoral reform, specifically examining Alaska's system. The state has a jungle primary like several other American states, but instead of the top two finishers proceeding to the next round, the top four finishers move on. This reduces anxiety about lockouts and has allowed independent-minded politicians like Lisa Murkowski and Mary Peltola to thrive.
Yglesias expresses some caution about electoral reform through primaries. He does not recommend that people spend significant time, money, or energy on this kind of tinkering. The reason is that he considers primaries themselves to be overrated as a source of polarization and dysfunction.
The main mechanism through which primaries empower extremists is not that primary voters are particularly extreme — it's that extreme actors are far more engaged and activated. Most people who vote in Democratic Party primaries, for example, are favorably disposed toward labor unions and environmental organizations in an abstract way. When they hear that one candidate is good on workers and the environment and the other is bad, they are likely to vote accordingly.
But if examined closely, what being "bad" on labor might mean is believing school districts should offer higher salaries to their best teachers rather than compensating them strictly by seniority. And being "bad" on the environment could simply mean favoring natural gas exports that help keep Europe safe from Russian aggression with no meaningful impact on global emissions.
An informed electorate would not necessarily agree with advocacy groups about these positions, which are not in fact bad for working people or the environment. But the electorate is not particularly well-informed; it is instead deferential to advocacy groups.
On the environment side, Yglesinas suggests some of these organizations' own donors do not recognize how firmly anchored they remain in 1970s degrowth thinking. Many center-left business people have become interested in climate change over the course of the twenty-first century and want to contribute to addressing it, assuming that supporting name-brand environmental organizations is a good way to do that.
A counterargument might be that advocacy groups provide valuable structure to voters who lack detailed policy knowledge, and that their positions often represent considered judgment even if imperfectly reasoned.
The political right is structured differently and is pathological in different ways. The key modality is largely that people working on the vote-winning cultural side of conservative politics are never supposed to point out or notice that their ostensible causes are constantly being sacrificed on the altar of regressive tax cuts and unpopular health-care rollbacks.
Yglesias argues the solution to extremism is not to engage in a long-term organizing project to alter the primary system — it is simply to engage in first-order organizing projects on behalf of better ideas. A relatively modest amount of money invested in YIMBY organizing has made a huge difference to national politics. A relatively small number of people in San Francisco organizing to put together a comprehensive common-sense platform has made a big difference in the city.
There is an observed empirical reality that ideological extremists are more engaged in the political process, but that is not a law of nature. If people who think the Republicans are kinda crazy but Democrats are also kinda crazy in a totally different way actually bother to do the work, you can get different outcomes.
Beyond tweaking primaries, Yglesias would favor proportional representation. Lee Drutman at New America leads this effort, and he argues that proportional representation helps address several problems simultaneously. Depending on exactly how it is implemented, it would make gerrymandering either a lot less relevant or a total non-issue. It would also surface the reality that every state has a median voter.
In a deep blue state like California, the center of political gravity is a moderate Democrat, not a far-leftist. And in Texas, it is a moderate Republican, not a far-rightist. But moderates only wield real political power in these states when the stars align in very specific ways.
Beyond improving representation, this would lead to better policy outcomes: Texas would expand Medicaid, and California would stop wrecking its public university system. This is because you would not be counting on weird unicorn figures like Andy Beshear or Charlie Baker to pump the brakes on partisan monocultures.
Even better is that proportional representation would allow weirdo localist parties that do not necessarily exist in other states or run for Congress to rise. That would help mentally focus people on the idea that the actual issues in play in state government are meaningfully distinct from the issues in federal politics, and that you should not treat your vote for state legislature as a mechanical function of your attitude toward the president.
Transit Systems
The discussion turns to urban transit in American cities. New York is obviously difficult to emulate due to its size, but other U.S. metro areas with non-trivial transit modal share include Boston, Chicago, the Bay Area, and Washington D.C.
Boston is smaller than the rest, so it probably counts as the highest performance system. But there is not actually very much to emulate there; the main issue is that because contemporary Boston inherited a much more extensive set of legacy railroads, you can run commuter trains on them without needing to build them from scratch.
The whole American concept of "commuter rail" is a kind of catastrophe relative to international best practices. Most American cities just do not have these kinds of legacy rail lines and should not build them. But those that do have them ought to be upgrading them to the kind of service that is called S-Bahn in German-speaking countries or is probably most familiar to American tourists from the RER in Paris.
That would mean electrification of service so that you can accelerate and decelerate in and out of stations faster, proof of payment with spot checks rather than conductors to reduce operating costs, fare integration with buses and subway, and through-running of service. In Boston, this would require building a tunnel to connect North Station and South Station.
Because MBTA commuter rail is so extensive relative to Boston's modest population, the failure to generate this kind of upgrade produces really substantial underperformance relative to what you see in medium-sized German cities.
The Boston suburbs are one of the most under-housed places in America, and all these transit changes could be usefully complemented by zoning for tall apartments near the stations.