Corruption in Latin America

Abstract

Editor’sNote 5 EDITOR’S NOTE CORRUPTION IN LATIN AMERICA Stephen D. Morris, Guest Editor Universityo f SouthAlabama Introduction After decadesof dissimulation,political corruptionhas become a priority for voters, politicians, social organizations,international institutions, and even scholars. Many factors triggered this turnaround that dates to about the mid-1990s. Domestically, growing dissatisfaction with democracy, weak rule of law, persistent authoritarianenclaves, impunity, and numerous high-profile corruption scandalshave all helped crystallizethe issues of accountability , transparency, governance, and corruption.’ The nineties thus saw corruption recast throughout Latin America as an obstacle, if not a direct threat, to democracy. Internationally as well, the end of the Cold War and the triumph of neoliberalism eliminated the taboo once enveloping the topic, thereby clearing the stage for concerted multilateral projects to fight corruption. Increasingly, international institutions, particularly the IMF and the World Bank, began to focus their attentions, resources and influence on strengthening domestic institutions of governance, casting corruption as a fetteron the globaleconomyand capitalist development.ThroughoutLatinAmerica these forceshave forged an array of high-profile national and internationalanti-corruption programs. Scholarlyattention to corruption has also increased dramatically duringthese years2Much of this stemsfrom the burgeoning social,politicaland internationaldiligenceand attendantresearch funding. But a key impetus to the “new focus” on corruption has been the compilationof data measuring corruptionat the national level.Turning this furtivephenomenoninto numbersbreathed life into the study and unleashed a wave of cross-national empirical research testing the causes and consequencesof corruption. 6 The Latin Americanist Spring 2006 Assessing Levels of Corruption in Latin America Data and related studies have tended to confirm what most knew or at least suspectedall along with respect to LatinAmerica: that corruption is widespread, deeply entrenched, seemingly on the rise, and stubbornly resistantto change.Table 1presents data for Latin America from the 2005 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) produced by the Berlin-basedNGO Transparency International (TI).Compiled and published annually since 1995,the CPI pulls togetherthe resultsfrom numerous national surveysgauging perceptions of corruption among country experts, development officials, and businesses executives.The most widely used source of comparative data on corruption, the CPI scores countries on a scale from 0 (most corrupt) to 10 (least corrupt) and ranks the countriesinternati~nally.~ Table 1. 2005 Corruption Perception Index with ranking (n=158), number of polls, and confidence intervals. Source: Transparency International (www.ti.org) Editor'sNote 7 As aregion,LatinAmericaexhibitshigh levelsof corruption, certainly more than expected based on its level of development. Withinthe region,corruptionlevelsvary. Chileconsistentlyexhibits the lowest levelsof corruption.In 2005,Chileranked 21'' globally ,placing it in the company of such developed nations as Japan (7.3) and Belgium (7.4). With the exception of Uruguay's score of 5.9, however, all the other countries of the region fell below the mid-point with scores ranging from a low of 1.8to a high of 4.2. Brazil, for instance, ranked 62"dglobally in the company of Thailand; Mexico placed 65" along with Turkey; and Argentina occupied the 97" spot together with Algeria and Mozambique. And with a score of 1.8Haiti received the lowest ranking among Latin American nations,placing it 155" among the 158countries in the index,just between Bangladesh and Paraguay. Data from Latinobummetro polls confirm and add some depth to these measures. The much-cited annual regional survey of public opinion covers almost all the countries of the region and, depending on the year, contains a number of corruptionrelatedquestions .These includewhethercorruption has increased or decreased over the prior year; the extent to which corruption is seen as a political problem; direct participation in corruption; the ranking of institutionsin terms of the existenceof corruption; and the number of civil servantsconsideredto be corrupt. Table 2 provides a selectionof data. It shows increases in corruption and direct experience in paying bribes as opposed to simple perceptions of corruption from the 2002 polls, and the probabilities of bribing a police or ajudge taken from the 2004 surveys.The data confirm the perceptionamong the public-as opposed to experts, business executivesand countryanalystsas depicted in the CPIthat corruption is indeed widespread and on the increase, at least in the early part of the decade. Note here that measures of direct experience in corruption contrasts the CPI and other indicators based on perceptions...