Mr Vicente Fox, who assumes office in December, named a 20-member transition team this week "to consult, conciliate and execute" the nation's first change of government in 70 years.
Almost half the members of the transition team do not belong to Mr Fox's centre-right National Action Party (PAN), fulfilling the candidate's pledge to reach out beyond party lines in choosing his government team.
One of his first and most senior appointments illustrates this commitment. Mr Fox named Mr Porfirio Munoz Ledo as director of the Study Group for State Reform, a key instrument for adapting Mexico's jaded state institutions to their first changeover of power.
Mr Munoz Ledo is a veteran politician who was once president of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) before shifting allegiances to found the breakaway Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 1987.
Among the planned political innovations will be a second-round election run-off, a reform which would make it extremely difficult for the PRI to regain power in the near future.
The PAN's defeated mayoral candidate, Mr Santiago Creel, has been nominated to oversee the drawing up of a pact inspired by Spain's Moncloa Pacts in the 1970s, which helped create the consensus for the Spanish transition to democracy. The immediate priorities of the transition team will be to push through legislation permitting private sector investment in Mexico's energy and oil sector, along with the liberalisation of labour laws, tax reform and national micro-credit programmes.
Some of the suggested reforms will require constitutional changes, obliging Mr Fox to negotiate with one of the two main opposition parties to ensure a sufficient majority in congress.
The two main architects of fiscal reform will be Mr Luis Ernesto Derbez, a former World Bank economist, and Mr Eduardo Sojo, a business representative. Mexico's General Workers' Union (CTM) has threatened a national strike should Mr Fox attempt to privatise oil giant Pemex, but seven decades of union collaboration with the ruling party have considerably reduced its support base.
This week, however, a hint of trouble to come arose during a presidential speech commemorating the 128th anniversary of the death of Benito Juarez, a revered national hero who wrote Mexico's first Constitution (1867), separating church and state powers.
Mr Andres Sanchez Juarez, great-great-grandson of Juarez, interrupted President Ernesto Zedillo in parliament on Tuesday to denounce Mr Fox as "a traitor".
The incident occurred after Mr Fox spoke on television last weekend, saying that "it wouldn't hurt" to cede ground on Mexican sovereignty "for the greater good", drawing howls of outrage from both the PRI and PRD.
"I ask one thing of you," responded Mr Zedillo to Mr Juarez, a member of his own PRI party, "let us bear no prejudices against the next President, who will swear to uphold and respect our constitution." President Zedillo has won widespread praise for his co-operation with Mr Fox, but many PRI party faithful see such co-operation as treachery.
In addition, Mr Fox broke a second political taboo last weekend by participating in a religious service, a symbolic nod in the direction of the PAN's traditional support base - the Catholic Church.
It is widely agreed that while the incoming President's economic policies will vary little from the PRI's free-market orthodoxy, tension may well arise over church-state relations, as Mr Fox has expressed support for state-backed religious education, currently prohibited under Mexican law.
International affairs will be handled by Mr Jorge Castaneda and Mr Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, former advisers to Mr Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the defeated centre-left presidential hopeful.
Mr Castaneda and Mr Zinser were key strategists in promoting the "tactical vote" by which left leaning voters were convinced to swallow their distaste for Mr Fox in order to secure a change of government.
Mr Alfonso Durazo, private secretary to Luis Donaldo Colosio, the ruling party's 1994 presidential candidate, assassinated on the campaign trail, has been named personal secretary to Mr Fox, signalling the future President's desire to build bridges with the PRI.
A group of militant peasant farmers linked to the PRI hurled stones and bricks at the party's headquarters to protest the detention of one of their leaders, Mr Prudencio Casales, held for illegally squatting on public land in the state of Morelos.