Corruption and Democracy in Latin America

Introduction

   1 Stephen D. M orris and C h arles H. Bl a ke Introduction Political and Analytical Challenges of Corruption in Latin America In countries such as mine, gaining office . . . is akin to political plunder: the position offers a blank cheque and the guarantee of great personal enrichment. Rigoberta Menchú Corruption—usually defined as a violation of the norms of public office for personal gain (Nye 1967)—captures news headlines and the imagination, especially in a democracy. Since the celebrated return of democratic rule to most of Latin America beginning in the 1980s, scandals involving sitting or former presidents, governors, ministers, and other top government officials have rocked virtually every country in the region. The more spectacular cases have featured illegal campaign funds and expenditures; presidents bribing members of congress for their votes; the illegal sale of arms by top government and military officials; multimillion-dollar graft, fraud, kickbacks, and bribes involving government contracts, state concessions , and the privatization of state-owned enterprises; judges selling verdicts; law enforcement officials working for or protecting drug traffickers or engaged directly in kidnapping and theft; drug traffickers running their operations from prison or even walking free at will. 2   step hen d. morris and c harles h. bl ake Beyond the more high-profile cases—the tips of real and imagined icebergs—substantial evidence suggests that in much of Latin America corruption permeates daily life. From acquiring varied licenses and permits to dealing with a routine traffic violation, corruption is often the rule rather than the exception. Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer 2005 survey, for instance, found 43 percent of respondents in Paraguay and 31 percent in Mexico admitting to having paid a bribe just within the past twelve months. In Latinobarómetro’s regional survey in 2004, an average of 42 percent of respondents ranked the probability of paying a bribe to the police as high, while 35 percent expressed the same ease of bribing a judge. One poll in 2003 even calculated the average bribe in Peru at sixty-four soles (about eighteen dollars): six dollars to slip merchandise past customs agents or speed up the installation of water services; fifteen dollars to obtain a building permit, a driver’s license , or to work as a street vendor; and fifty cents to visit a hospital patient outside regular visiting hours (cited in Fraser 2003). The perception that Latin American politicians and government institutions are corrupt runs even deeper than actual involvement or victimization rates (see Seligson 2006). When the European Values Study Group and World Values Survey Association (EVSG & WVSA 1995–1997) asked people in seven countries about the extent of corruption, substantial majorities in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela considered “almost all” or “most” public officials to be corrupt. Argentina led with 89 percent of respondents holding this view (EVSG & WVSA 2005). Only in Chile and Uruguay did a slim majority claim that only “a few” were corrupt. Similarly, when asked to calculate the percentage of civil servants who are corrupt, the average for seventeen Latin American countries surpassed 70 percent (Lagos 2003). Congress, the police, and political parties are held in similarly low (if not lower) esteem as are the bureaucrats. And the public is not alone in holding such views. Surveys of legislators, outside experts, and business executives all say basically the same thing (see Brinegar 2003; Canache and Allison 2005). Using polls measuring the perceptions of business executives and development experts , Transparency International has classified the countries of Latin America among the most corrupt in the world since they began elaborating their Corruption Perception Index (CPI) in 1995. In the 2007 CPI, the twenty countries of the region registered an average score of just 3.4 on a scale of 10 (low corruption) to 0 (high) scale. Whether referring to the fantastic, the quotidian, the real, or the imag- political and analytical challenges of corruption in latin america   3 ined, most would agree that corruption has haunted the countries of Latin America from the beginning. It is neither new nor unique to the current democratic governments. Historical analyses—by Burkholder and Johnson (1994), Ewell (1977), Gibson (1966), Hopkins (1969, 1974), McFarlane (1996), Nef (2001), Posada-Carbó (2000), Phelan (1960), Whitehead (2000a, 2000b), and others—all point to elaborate networks of corruption, rampant paternalism, extensive use of government revenues for personal use, and weak rule of law permeating both colonial and postcolonial Latin America under civilian...