Corruption and Democracy in Latin America

Chapter2: The Crisis of the Democratic State

During the 1980s, most Latin American countries experienced thirdwavedemocratization .Formaldemocracieswereinauguratedthrough competitive elections and full-fledged respect for political freedoms.1 However, many Latin American democracies subsequently showed creeping signs of political corruption, a malaise threatening democratic legitimacy. Democratic inauguration gave way to constitutional accusations and the impeachment of presidents Fernando Collor de Mello in Brazil and Abdalá Bucaram in Ecuador. In Venezuela, the corruption of the political class undermined a once stable democracy , brought the downfall of Carlos Andrés Pérez, and catapulted Hugo Chávez to power. Systemic corruption in Mexico unleashed unrestrained power struggles and political crimes within the PRI, undermining the party’s ability to remain in power for the first time in seventy years. President Carlos Menem in Argentina was accused of corruption when he decreed most privatizations without congressional approval and impeded the intervention of the judiciary to investigate . President Alan García fled Peru on charges of corruption and after a landslide election; Fujimori eventually followed the same fate (Aguirre 2001; Bailey and Godson 2000; Flynn 1993; Galarza 1999; Morris 1999). Despite the region’s long history of corruption, democratization and neoliberal reforms in the eighties initially nurtured theoretically sound expectations that corruption would fall and become 46   Alfredo Re hren 2 The Crisis of the Democratic State the crisis of the democratic state   47 a thing of the past. The available data, however, suggest otherwise. Not only do the data fail to confirm much of a decline, but in many cases they show the exact opposite: an increase in corruption. But rather than seeing corruption as purely a legacy of the region’s authoritarian past, this chapter explores how recent political and economic changes—couched within the context of historically weak institutions, personalismo, and a culture of secrecy—have helped forge new patterns and new forms of corruption. It examines how historic practices of clientelism—and its attendant corruption —have given way to new patterns of clientelism; how the neoliberal shrinking of the state has perhaps eliminated one type of corruption, but forced parties to rely even more on state resources from privatization to create new political linkages; and how the proliferation of elections has prompted new demands from parties and candidates for resources. The increase in corruption brought on by democratization and neoliberal reforms , in turn, threatens the foundations of democracy itself, undermining the public’s perceptions of parties, politicians, and institutions. The challenges to these struggling democracies are clear. The Enthroneme n t of Cor ruption in L atin America Despite some problems with measurement discussed by Morris and Blake in the introduction, the available data reveal high levels of corruption throughout Latin America. The 2002 Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International, for example, shows seven Latin American countries—Guatemala, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Haiti, and Paraguay—among the twenty most corrupt countries in the world. Despite minor improvements in the others, Haiti and Paraguay maintained similar positions during the 2003–2005 period. According to TI’s 2003 Global Corruption Report and data from the Latinobarómetro poll, 71 percent of citizens in the region consider public officeholders in their respective countries as corrupt; only countries with a solid democratic path such as Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay fell below the 60 percent figure (Lagos 2001a, 313; 2003, 283). Data from the World Bank, in turn, place Argentina , Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Paraguay, and Venezuela within the quintile of countries in the world with the least control over corruption in 2002 (Transparency International 2003b, 264–65; Kaufmann et al. 2003b). Evidence also suggests that matters have hardly improved in recent years. In the Latinobarómetro survey in 2002, 72 percent of respondents in seventeen countries of the region believed that corruption had increased a 48   alf r edo rehren lot. In the 2003 Global Corruption Report, between 80 and 95 percent of those interviewed in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Paraguay estimated that corruption had increased significantly in 2002. Direct experience with corruption—as opposed to perceived corruption —is less frequently observed, though it too may be on the rise. Twentyseven percent of those interviewed in 2002 recognized that they or a member of their families had been a victim of corruption. However, in some countries of the region, the percentage of members within a household who paid a bribe in any form during 2004 had increased over the prior year, especially in Mexico and Paraguay...