This volume edited by Robert Rotberg addresses anti-corruption policy in the region by focusing mainly on the role played by exceptional leadership in fighting corruption. Contributions from a mix of practitioners, law and public administration scholars, and social scientists are divided by sets of countries: the first part is devoted solely to Brazil, the second part clusters contributions on Argentina, Bolivia and Peru, and the third part on Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. This wide scope includes an informative chapter on Odebrecht's expansion towards Angola (Chapter 5 by Mathias Alencastro). The book is largely inspired by the anti-corruption task force Operação Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash), implemented in Brazil between 2014 and 2021. Using a ‘constitutional hardball’ approach, Lava Jato uncovered a massive cartel of companies and parties, and jailed a share of the country's elite, including the former president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, who at the time was favourite in the 2018 presidential elections.
If Rotberg knew then what we know now about Lava Jato, he probably would have been more economical in praising the task force, which soon after the book's publication was exposed in tragic irony as highly corrupt. Lava Jato was also key in the rise of the openly corrupt far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro (see Fabiano Santos and Talita Tanscheit, ‘Quando velhos atores saem de cena: A ascensão da nova direita política no Brasil’, Colombia Internacional, 99 (July 2019), pp. 151–86). Furthermore, leaked communication between Lava Jato judges and prosecutors revealed how they colluded in order to influence the 2018 elections.
By first uncovering massive bribes channelled to the country's main parties, and later exposing its own corruption and political ambition, the Lava Jato double scandal reminds us of the complexity of rent-seeking in Latin America. Although linkages between corruption in government and street-level crime may exist (see Chapter 9 by Stephen D. Morris on Mexico), corrupt elites are not the equivalent of crooks who run when they hear sirens. Oversight and prosecution often have little effect in changing elites’ behaviour, as described by Lucia Dammert and Katherine Sarmiento in their account of Peru (Chapter 8), by Claudia Escobar in her account of Guatemala (Chapter 10) and by Kai Enno Lehmann in his account of Honduras (Chapter 11). It is likely that this occurs because corruption is triggered more by economic and political incentives than by the unlawfulness of public officials (see, for instance, Valentín Figueroa, ‘Political Corruption Cycles: High-Frequency Evidence from Argentina's Notebooks Scandal’, Comparative Political Studies, 54: 3/4 (2021), pp. 482–517).
A major roadblock in the research of corruption is the scarcity of quality data. Spotting corruption cases is hard, as described in great detail by Rafael Velasco (Chapter 3), making it difficult to estimate their correlates. This leads some scholars to attribute corruption to imprecise causes such as culture. An example is found in Chapter 1 by Marislei Nishijima, Flavia Mori Sarti and Regina Célia Cati, who build on Brazil's social thought to frame corruption in the country as part of its political culture. Nara Pavão (Chapter 4) refutes this explanation, building on research by herself and others on how Brazilians’ endorsement of corrupt politicians is anchored in rational selection processes that account for (not tolerate) corruption. Natalia Volosin (Chapter 6) passionately disputes the narrative of culture as a cause of corruption, claiming that this common interpretation is itself part of the problem.
Although also claiming to dismiss cultural arguments, Rotberg nonetheless essentialises corruption by dividing politicians into ‘honest’ and ‘corrupt’, repeatedly crediting the prevalence of the latter to the ‘political culture’ of Latin America. As part of this framework, the editor sometimes transmits normative favouritism for right-wing parties in the region. Among the other authors, the most openly ideological framing comes from Ronald MacLean-Abaroa, a politician himself (Chapter 7).
Ideological biases aside, some aspects of Rotberg's discussion are disturbing for their Eurocentrism and clear-cut racism. In making an argument for ‘gifted leadership’ as the solution for corruption, the author claims that ‘those who seek cultural explanations […] might want to point to […] population composition’, by which he means ethnic composition (p. 11). In this context, Rotberg notes that Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay each have ‘a small percentage of its population being Native Americans’ (p. 11), and that Chile and Uruguay in particular were formed by more recent European migration. On the one hand, Rotberg dismisses these traits as causes of these countries’ performance; but on the other hand, the discussion of ethnic composition is unusual in the literature on corruption in Latin America, making it unclear whom the author is refuting. In the meantime, he is the one bringing these arguments to the surface.
After listing other uncomfortable factors that would allegedly prevent corruption, such as ‘influence of the enlightenment’, Rotberg claims that one day Brazil and Honduras could become ‘not so much copies of Denmark or Switzerland but, functionally at least, more similar to contemporary Uruguay, Chile, and Costa Rica’ (p. 19). The latter are celebrated as cases where enlightened leadership pushed for a transition from widespread corruption to clean politics, a conclusion that is largely ungrounded in research. The fact that the collusion between political and economic elites in Chile has recently fuelled massive upheavals is ignored, as are much more feasible causes of Uruguay's current stability, such as lower inequality and party-base synergy (on the latter, see Daniel Buquet and Rafael Piñeiro, ‘The Quest for Good Governance: Uruguay's Shift from Clientelism’, Journal of Democracy, 27: 1 (2016), pp. 139–51).
Overall, the book is not the best introduction to the study of corruption, as it frames the problem through a mix of voluntarism and culturalism (with the exceptions cited) and marginalises more accepted institutionalist approaches. Finally, the volume aged very fast given its celebration of Lava Jato.
