Understanding the nature, causes, and consequences of corruption in Latin America persists as a challenge fraught with difficulties, including fundamental conceptual and measurement problems. Corruption and Politics in Latin America and Corruption and Democracy in Brazil help resolve these and other methodological and theoretical issues in the study of corruption. A key theme that emerges from a combined reading of these volumes is the need for greater attention to 1) how structural and cultural factors condition the effect of anticorruption institutions, and 2) how anticorruption institutions interact with each other. I return to these points later.
In the introduction to Corruption and Politics in Latin America, Stephen Morris and Charles Blake offer an excellent survey of the major causes and consequences of corruption, and they highlight several challenges facing students of corruption: 1) the persistence of corruption despite pervasive anticorruption sentiment and policies; 2) the need for deeper attention to historical sequences and conditions (e.g., path dependence); 3) the lack of regional comparative studies; 4) the need for further conceptual work that disaggregates forms and locations of corruption (e.g., institutional, societal); and 5) the measuring of corruption in disaggregated ways and in ways that differentiate between new and old types of corruption (p. 26).
The volume includes chapters on Argentina (Blake and Sarah Lunsford Kohen), Bolivia (Daniel Gingerich), Brazil (Matthew Taylor), Cuba (Sergio Diaz-Briquets and Jorge Perez-Lopez), Mexico (Morris), and Venezuela (Leslie Gates), as well as a chapter that addresses regional anticorruption efforts (Florencia Guerzovich and Roberto de Michele) and a concluding chapter that examines regional determinants of corruption (Blake and Morris). One of the strengths of the volume is the similar structure across chapters, covering a) patterns of corruption, b) impact of corruption, c) influences on corruption, d) anticorruption efforts, and e) prospects for change.
Returning to the challenges identified by the authors in the introduction, each of the chapters contributes to the broader project of examining variation in patterns of corruption, and the volume as a whole addresses the third challenge mentioned earlier by offering a regional comparative study of corruption. Provocative, counterintuitive findings in several chapters include the new opportunities and incentives for corruption generated by what are conventionally considered to be factors that reduce corruption, including democratization and decentralization, as well as neoliberal, market-oriented reforms.
Discussions of the multiple structural, cultural, and institutional explanations of corruption raised throughout the volume suggest interactive relationships among explanatory factors, but these interactions could be explored more systematically. For instance, the analyses of Argentina and Bolivia both highlight the pernicious incentives generated by closed-list proportional representation (CLPR) electoral rules. These incentives are magnified in Argentina by candidate rotation and in Bolivia by a fused ballot. However, in Argentina, a key feature of the system is the downward redistribution of benefits to voters, whereas in Bolivia, a key feature of the system is upward redistribution and a trend toward increasing exclusion. What structural, cultural, or institutional factors condition the effect of electoral rules in a way that accounts for this variation? Is Argentine federalism or Bolivian inequality to blame?
Further, if CLPR is so bad, what is the alternative? Gingerich suggests that open-list PR (OLPR) might be better, but Taylor highlights OLPR rules as a key part of the problem in Brazil. There, the rule's incentives for personalistic campaigns combine with large, multimember districts and no minimum thresholds to generate a fragmented system of weak parties. So CLPR rules are bad because they create parties that are too strong, and OLPR rules are bad because they create parties that are too weak. Changing multimember districts to single-member districts may be a solution, but in Bolivia this did not alter the patterns of corruption (according to Gingerich, p. 65).
The discussion of political polarization in Bolivia and Venezuela also raises thorny issues about conditional relationships. Does polarization cause corruption, or do high levels of inequality and exclusion cause corruption? Or did corruption cause the polarization in the first place? Indeed, Gates notes how very difficult it is to make clear arguments about the positive or negative influences of standard explanatory variables of corruption in contexts of intense political polarization like that in Venezuela. In sum, a question lingers at the end of this volume: How might structural, cultural, or institutional factors condition the performance of anticorruption institutions?
Corruption and Democracy in Brazil can be read as a partial reply to these questions, as interactive relationships are central to this volume. Timothy Power and Matthew Taylor build explicitly on Scott Mainwaring and Christopher Welna's notion of the interdependent “web” of accountability institutions (Mainwaring and Welna, eds., Democratic Accountability in Latin America, 2003), as well as on prior work that emphasizes the systemic nature of corruption and the need for “national integrity systems” (Jeremy Pope, Confronting Corruption: The Elements of a National Integrity System, 2000). In the introduction, Power and Taylor offer a useful framework for understanding different types of interdependence: 1) across phases of the accountability process (oversight, investigation, and sanction), 2) across different institutions, and 3) across types of sanctions (electoral, civil, and criminal). The volume's strengths include a) the ability to largely set aside cultural variables given the focus on a single country (p. 10), and b) a sustained emphasis on interactions flowing from interdependence.
The sustained attention to institutional interactions pays off in rich insights. Chapter 2 (Carlos Pereira, Power, and Eric Raile), examines the mensalão scandal, grappling with the extraordinarily complex institutional environment of coalitional presidentialism. Regarding the challenges of coalition management in fragmented party systems with weak party organization and low party discipline, the authors also highlight the causal role of coalition and cabinet composition, including proportionality between coalition and cabinet composition, ideological heterogeneity of coalition members, and the additional complications specific to the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) (e.g., history of being excluded from the executive, internal divisions, and commitment to a particular policy agenda). The PT-specific points offer fascinating instances of the interaction between ideology and strategic incentives; at least in part, the events reflect a narrowing of strategic options due to commitment to a program, demonstrating that programmatic parties face even more difficulties than nonprogrammatic ones in this institutional setting.
In Chapter 3, Lucio Rennó discusses retrospective voting as a mechanism of vertical accountability. In examining whether voters punished Luis Lula da Silva in 2006 for corruption scandals that came to light during his first administration, Rennó finds an interactive relationship between a) corruption, b) ideology, partisanship, and loyalty, and c) an electoral institution. Specifically, PT partisans preferred two other candidates to Lula in the first-round election, but “came home” to him once Lula advanced to the second round and was the only PT candidate remaining (p. 67). In an elegant research design, the author exposes this relationship by leveraging the double-ballot institution. A critical implication of the analysis is that the double ballot (i.e., two-round runoff system) allowed voters to express their displeasure with Lula—operating as a signaling device—without hurting the PT's eventual chances of winning (pp. 77–78).
Chapter 4 (Pereira, Rennó, and David Samuels) examines the relationship among the media, campaign finance, and corruption, finding that media attention to corruption reduces the likelihood of both a) running for reelection and b) winning reelection. The key finding that media accusations matter helps motivate Chapter 5, where Mauro Porto examines the sources of increased media attention to corruption and the conditions under which such attention is consequential (i.e., when the media “bark” actually has “bite”).
Taking a rare look at auditing institutions, Bruno Speck finds key weaknesses in a) the extent to which the National Accounting Tribunal (TCU) relies on courts and other institutions to implement sanctions and b) the political selection and composition of the TCU. Similarly, Taylor's analysis shows that electoral courts rely on federal courts to uphold many of their decisions, resulting in long delays. Diagnosing judicial weaknesses is important, therefore, because electoral courts and several other institutions mentioned in the volume rely on the judiciary to implement sanctions. Principal judicial weaknesses include multiple procedural delays and virtually unlimited appeals, and the fact that courts rely on other institutions (primarily the legislature) to set many rules that are inconsistent, contradictory, or ambiguous, opening spaces for discretionary or arbitrary behavior.
Writing on police and prosecutors, Rogério Arantes offers a rich account of the increase in the power of both institutions since the 1988 Constitution. Notably, Arantes offers one of the few examples in the volume where institutional interaction has increased accountability rather than diluted it (pp. 200, 211). If cross-institutional collaboration is so rare and difficult, this and any other positive instances of institutional interaction are worth studying in greater depth in order to understand the sources of collaboration.
Further, Arantes's examination shows that the federal police's (PF's) increasing use of public relations (the PF deliberately publicizes its operations in creative ways) has shaped public opinion, helping it to carry out additional operations and to build the institution. These dynamics resonate with existing scholarship on “judicial public relations,” whereby judges engage in the same deliberate framing tactics to expand their own behavioral and institutional power (e.g., Jeffrey K. Staton, Judicial Power and Strategic Communication in Mexico, 2010). Thus, Arantes points the way to a parallel area of future research that we might call “police public relations.”
Lastly, in Chapter 9, Fiona Macaulay examines subnational justice institutions—state-level police, courts, and other accountability institutions. Macaulay identifies ways in which the weakness of subnational institutions generates opportunities for the vertical penetration of corruption into federal institutions, and also identifies examples where the weakness of federal institutions led to additional weakening of local institutions.
In sum, Morris and Blake raise numerous issues regarding the study of corruption in Latin America, and Power and Taylor's focus on Brazil offers an excellent examination of the single theme of institutional interactions. Yet if there is a broader lesson from the fact that institutions do not operate in isolation, it is that the “web of institutions” itself does not operate in isolation from broader structural and cultural factors. Returning to points raised in Corruption and Politics in Latin America, why do OLPR rules cause so many problems in Brazil yet are seen as part of the solution in Argentina or Bolivia? How does polarization influence the effect of media attention to corruption? Why do multiple overlapping jurisdictions seem to cause so many problems in Brazil (Macaulay), while the same overlaps do not seem to cause such severe problems in the United States? Thus, while both of these volumes offer valuable contributions to the literature on corruption and politics, some of the key challenges raised by Morris and Blake, as well as Power and Taylor, remain. Regarding measurement challenges, Gingerich offers original data from a survey of bureaucrats in Bolivia, as well as original, comparative data on Brazil and Chile, distinguishing between different forms of personal and political corruption within Bolivian bureaucracies, and contributing to the broader project of conceptualizing and measuring corruption in a disaggregated fashion. However, there is no systematic use of original or existing data throughout either volume, and no sustained conversation about how best to measure different types of corruption. Efforts aimed at developing new measures for these types of systematic and sustained conversations will have much to offer.
Further, how can we examine the interactions among different anticorruption institutions while simultaneously examining how culture and structure condition these institutions? Work that more systematically examines how the same anticorruption institutions operate across different cultural and structural settings—or become operational across different stages of political and economic development—would be a welcome addition to the literature. Such work would also clarify why one-size-fits-all anticorruption packages tend to stumble, and also explain how comparative analysis can be paired with nuanced, country-specific knowledge to improve anticorruption reform agendas.
As should be apparent, I found both volumes informative, instructive, and extremely thought provoking. The range of difficulties that arise in studying the politics of corruption and accountability—conceptual, operational, theoretical, and methodological—poses daunting challenges, and both volumes meet these challenges in different ways. I would highly recommend both books for a wide range of audiences.
