AbstractThis article reviews the institutional changes that have come about in the State of Mexico over the last two decades, even without alternation. Although the Institutional Revolutionary Party continues to govern, relations between powers have gone through profound changes, due to an intense competition among parties and in elections. Pluralism has spread, and the society, through different organizations and types of participation, has managed to intervene and monitor government workings. This pluralism has led to increasingly democratic conditions, with party alternations limited to the state Congress and the town halls.