The Mexican White House: How to lose your legitimacy

Reputation management is different for public organisations. As said by Wæraas, A., & Byrkjeflot, H. (2012), it is a valuable political asset — used to generate public support, achieve delegated autonomy and discretion from politicians, to protect the agency from political attack, and to recruit and retain valued employees.

In the public sector, especially in Mexico, it is not strange to have a bad image or reputation, but it is not necessarily an indicator of low trust or legitimacy. Although, when a federal government contractor builds a 7million dollar mansion for the presidential family, legitimacy begins to fade.  

Even though reputation is commonly described as the “most valuable asset’’, legitimacy is crucial for public organizations. It is defined as an overall perception that the organization is following a set of norms. What we should ask ourselves is not how strong their reputation is but whether if they have legitimacy.

¡Hola!

In May 2013, a Mexican society magazine called ¡Hola!, published an article with photographs of a luxurious and modern mansion in Mexico City, along with an interview with the president’s wife.  The First Lady talked about her husband, their six sons… and the house:

The problem was that "the White House," as it was called on social media, was not registered under the name of the President nor the First Lady. According to an investigation published at Aristegui Noticias, the house was under another name to avoid being mentioned in the Assets Declaration, used in Mexico to prevent corruption among public officials. Due to its ‘controversy,’ ‘negative consequences,’ ‘surprise’ and ‘elite-ness’ of the news, it became inevitably viral. 

How to lose your legitimacy

The president's office responded to the investigation with a video that featured, again our First Lady Angelica Rivera, former soap-opera actress, and social-climber expert admitting that it was true the house was under another name but just because she was paying it off “in installments.” Yes. The video stated that “Her long career as an actress had allowed her to consolidate her personal assets.” 

How dumb do they think we actually are?

You do not need to be an expert in finance to know that it is IMPOSSIBLE for a Mexican soap-opera actress, who has been out of work for almost 10 years, to afford it. And, even if she did, why wasn’t it under her name then?

Afterward, in another video, President Enrique Peña Nieto admitted that the issue of the so-called "White House and making his wife perform in that video "negatively impacted on the credibility of the presidential institution," and accepted that he did not know how to "correctly" handle the scandal. 

The ‘format’ of bureaucracy is based on standards of correctness and precise information.  Additionally, legitimacy requires a particular but not maximum level of trust and acceptance, but these videos managed to put everything into question. They delivered different messages and explanations that confused and turned the Mexican population against them.

 What we learned:

To build a good reputation, an organization must make sure to unify its different elements and types of communication into one single identity expression as if it were one ‘‘body’’.  


Statements given in this article are based on these articles:

1.    Thorbjornsrud, K., Figenschou, T.U. & Ihlen, O. (2014). Mediatization in public bureaucracies: A typology. Communications – The European Journal of Communication Research, 39, 3‐22. 

2.     Wæraas, A., & Byrkjeflot, H. (2012). Public sector organizations and reputation management: Five problems. International Public Management Journal, 15(2), 186‐206.)

3.    Schafraad, P., van Zoonen, W., & Verhoeven, P. (2016). The news value of Dutch corporate press releases as a predictor of corporate agenda building power. Public Relations Review, 42(3), 451–458. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.11.014)

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Sissi Soraiz Gonzalez
Student at the University of Amsterdam
PR Media and Public