Combating Corruption in Latin America

Latin American Politics and Society, Winter 2001 by Collier, Michael W

Tulchin, Joseph S., and Ralph H. Espach, eds. Combating Corruption in Latin America. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2000. Tables, notes, and bibliography, index, 230 pp.; hardcover $45, paperback $16.95.

This book is for anyone who wants to understand more about corruption in Latin America. Those new to the corruption literature will find an informative, balanced approach to the subject, as the book contains articles by a number of scholars, journalists, and officials in international and nongovernmental organizations. Those familiar with the corruption literature will find several excellent theoretical chapters, supported by empirical analyses of Latin American cases that contribute to explaining the causes of corruption.

Corruption became a hot topic in post-Cold War development research especially after several 1990s World Bank and International Monetary Fund studies confirmed that high corruption levels reduce economic growth by decreasing investment and misusing government resources. Other studies have revealed that high corruption levels increase political instability and retard democratic consolidation. While providing a cursory discussion of these adverse economic and political effects, the aim of this book is to explain the causes of the corruption phenomenon, which crosses the social science disciplines of politics, economics, and cultural studies.

This book originated in a September 1996 roundtable, "After Caracas: Strategies for Combating Corruption in Latin America," organized by the Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. In 1994, "Combating Corruption" was one of 23 action items in the final declaration of the Miami Summit of the Americas. Several South American states, including Venezuela and Ecuador, fought to place this action item on the summit agenda. After the Miami Summit, Venezuela and the Organization of American States coordinated the development of the Inter-American Convention Against Corruption, which was opened for signature in Caracas in March 1996. This book includes a series of papers and speeches presented at the Wilson Center's roundtable, a follow-up to the Caracas signing.

The first challenge in any corruption study is to define corrupt behavior. This book's editors point out that most analysts use a version of the basic definition of corruption as "the application of public property or license for private gain"; in other words, the use of public office for private gain. This is a Westernized definition of corruption adopted by most developed states. Such broad definitions capture a number of potentially corrupt behaviors by public officials ranging from a state's chief executive to a junior customs inspector. Being Western-oriented, however, this definition has cultural relativity problems. Societies define corruption in very different ways, as they have different social rules for defining the boundaries between public and private domains. In Latin America, many societies expect, or at least understand, that their public officials will benefit from their public office. One major significance of the Inter-American Convention Against Corruption is that for the first time, an organization of regional states accepted a Westernized version of the definition of corruption to be used by policymakers across the hemisphere.

This book's most important contribution is its chapters explaining the persistence of corruption in Latin America. The editors' introduction highlights how, after the Cold War, an idealistic vision developed that the consolidation of newly emerging Latin American democracies, combined with government's reduced role in state economies following the implementation of free market and neoliberal reforms, would lessen regional corruption. A chapter by Alberto Ades and Rafael Di Tella, using a rational choice economic analysis, provides theoretical support to the idea that open, free market economies will foster less corruption.

The opposite appears to have occurred in Latin America, however. Despite trends toward liberalization of economies in the region, corruption has actually increased. The perception across most of Latin America is that by the mid- to late 1990s, corruption was at an all-time high, higher even than the corruption that occurred when most of the region suffered under military dictatorships. Chapters in this book by Susan Rose-Ackerman, Lawrence Whitehead, and Luigi Manzetti, all well-known scholars in the political-economic corruption literature, provide significant material to explain why Latin American corruption has not decreased.

These three theoretical chapters, supported with empirical analyses, refute idealistic assumptions that democratic transitions and neoliberal reforms will automatically lead to less corruption. Rose-Ackerman uses a political economy, rational choice framework to investigate whether smaller government will result in reduced corruption levels. Her agency-based analysis challenges the assumption that smaller government means less government intervention in a state's economy and thus fewer opportunities for corruption. Her analysis reveals that while smaller government may lead to cleaner government, that result is not inevitable; even in small governments, piratical officials will attempt to gain resources at public expense.