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156 This Constitution was regarded as provisional. As soon as the struggle for independence was over, the leaders planned to call another convention for the purposes of effecting the final organisation of the country. During the period between 1815 and 1857, the country was torn by internal strife and almost every conceivable form of Constitutional systems was tried, ranging from a republican triumvirate to the imperial system of Iturbide.

The development of Federalism in Mexico stands in marked contrast with the political evolution of the United States. In Mexico, Federalism meant the sub-division of what had been, under Spanish rule, a centralised, unified system; in the United States, the establishment of a federal system signified a closer union between separated political units. In spite of the adoption of a federal system by Mexico in 1857, the highly centralised traditions of Spanish rule perpetuated themselves and finally resulted, under the Diaz administration, in the complete subordination of the individual states to the national government.

The leaders of the revolutionary movement against the Diaz regime were convinced that the Constitution of 1857 had been used by self-seeking politicians for personal ends and that its provisions had contributed toward the domination of the country by a self-constituted oligarchy. It is not surprising, therefore, to find radical changes in the Constitution of 1917. The revolutionary