Corruption and Democracy in Latin America

Chapter9: Corruption and Democracy at the State Level in Mexico

Analysts have long acknowledged the prevalence of political corruption in Mexico. Most associated the corruption of the twentieth century with Mexico’s unique one-party hegemonic, authoritarian regime. With the PRI monopolizing control of all levels of government , the Mexican president and a powerful state operated virtually free of political constraints. Mechanisms of horizontal and vertical accountability were severely limited. Neither the courts, the congress , state and local governments, the bureaucracy, nor elections did much to check or to balance the power of the federal executive. Political opposition faced restrictions, the press was muzzled, and corporatist arrangements tied much of civil society to the official party in a strict top-down, clientelist fashion. Unchecked, corruption thus offered a system of spoils for members of the political elite who played by the (informal) rules of the political game; it facilitated an inclusive pattern of co-optation, allowing the regime to buy off political support or acquiescence; and it even provided the president a mechanism—the anticorruption campaign—to purge political enemies and periodically restore the public’s faith in the Mexican Revolution and its political party (Morris 1991). Yet in recent years Mexico has undergone a slow, gradual, and yet very real transition to democracy. Though analysts may dis169 Stephen D. M orris 9 Corruption and Democracy at the State Level in Mexico 170   step hen d. morris agree over the precise start and endpoint of that transition, it is marked by a slow erosion of electoral support for the dominant PRI, losses of key political posts, the concomitant rise in electoral support for opposition parties and their assumption of power at various levels of government— culminating in the presidency in 2000—the growth in the power of the legislature, the courts, state and local governments, and autonomous governmental institutions vis-à-vis the president and the federal government , increasing press freedoms, and the rise in the freedom and activity of civil society (e.g., Camp 2003; Chand 2001; Crandall, Paz, and Roett 2005; Eisenstadt 2004; Lawson 2002; Levy and Bruhn 2001; Mizrahi 2003; Peschard-Sverdrup and Rioff 2005). Mexico’s gradual transition to democracy—which improved the climate for the growth of key mechanisms of horizontal and vertical accountability —offers a distinctive setting to explore the impact of democratization and electoral competition on corruption as well as corruption’s impact on voting and the pattern of democratization. This chapter draws primarily on data from three national polls conducted in the 2000s to explore the impact of democratic changes at the state level on both the levels and changes in perceptions and participation in corruption and the impact of corruption on voting. I begin by building a series of hypotheses drawing on prevailing theory linking democracy to corruption. This is followed by a review of the nature of the current approach and how it departs from recent research on corruption. Democracy an d Cor ruption For years, analysts have held that democracy, electoral competition, and freedom all foster conditions that help reduce the likelihood of corruption . This takes place through a variety of mechanisms. First, elections give voters a means, though crude, to hold public officials accountable and thus the ability to punish with their vote those individuals found to be abusing the public’s trust by engaging in corruption. Second, from a rational choice perspective, electoral competition alters the fundamental incentives for those competing for public office. For those on the outside , competition provides incentives to expose the corruption of the incumbents in order to enhance their prospects of winning. Entrenched leaders facing limited competition, by contrast, are better able to buy off voters and manipulate the system (Johnston 2005a, 31). Third, the civil liberties accompanying democracy tend to make government more open cor ruption and democracy at the state level in mexico   171 and transparent. Such freedoms foster a more independent press and a more active civil society, both of which help expose official wrongdoing and channel demands for accountability, strengthening these important mechanisms of vertical accountability (see Rose-Ackerman 1999). And yet, despite this rather simple theoretical formula, the relationship linking democracy and corruption is not as clear or sharp as theory suggests, and empirical support is rather weak. For starters, corruption has been common in more mature democratic systems like Italy, Japan, and the United States (see Heidenheimer and Johnston 2002; Della Porta and Vannucci 1997; Johnston 2005a), so democracy does not always succeed in preventing...