Graduate School of Social Sciences
MSc International Development Studies 2016-2017
Title: “Barriers to participation and anti-corruption policy in Mexico:
assessing the role of participation for transparency and accountability”
Name: Juliana Martínez Martínez
Date: December, 2016
UvA ID: 11126582
Word Count: 26’628
Course: Research Project IDS - Fieldwork and Thesis
Supervisor: Ph.D. Courtney Lake Vegelin
Director, Master Programme International Development Studies
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
University of Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Outline
I. Acknowledgements ...7
II. Abstract ...8
V. Acronyms and Abbreviations ...9
VI. List of tables and figures ... 10
1. Introduction ... 11
2. Theoretical framework ... 21
2.1. Citizen participation and participatory governance ... 21
2.2. Conceptual understandings of transparency ... 24
2.3. Accountability as a goal ... 27
2.4. Anti-corruption policy ... 29
2.4.1. Human Rights approach to Anti-corruption ... 29
2.4.2. The aftermath: rebuilding trust ... 32
3. Methodology and research methods ... 33
3.1. Research question and subquestions... 33
3.2. Ontology and epistemology ... 33
3.3. Methodology and methods ... 34
3.4. Unit of analysis and sampling ... 35
3.5. Data analysis ... 35
3.6. Ethical considerations ... 36
3.7. Research limitations ... 37
4. The Anti-corruption agenda and its links to participation for transparency and accountability ... 39
4.1. Introduction ... 39
4.2. Framing participation, transparency and accountability through national policy ... 40
4.3. The political and social context that turned corruption into a development issue ... 44
4.3.1. The PRI, governing dynamics and corruption ... 44
4.3.2. “All these things have generated threats”, Anti-corruption and Human Rights ... 47
4.4. Civil society linkages to anti-corruption through participation, transparency and accountability ... 49
4.4.1. Information and participation ... 52
4.4.2. A note on Open Government ... 56
4.5. Chapter summary ... 59
5.1. Introduction ... 60
5.2. Expected outcomes of the implementation of the NAS and participation for anti-corruption ... 60
5.3. Overcoming possible challenges ... 65
5.3.1. Social ... 65
5.3.2. Political... 68
5.3.3. Logistics ... 72
5.4. Chapter summary ... 74
6. Conclusion and Reflection ... 75
6.1. Answers to Research questions ... 75
6.2. Methodological reflections ... 76
6.3. Theoretical reflections and further research ... 76
6.4. Implications for policy and practice ... 77
7. References ... 79
8. Annex ... 84
I. Acknowledgements
Hopefully, anyone with whom I have crossed paths in these last months is aware of how thankful I am for their support and help. First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Courtney L. Vegelin, for her kind guidance, especially during the last and most hectic days before completing this thesis. Also, to the people that have shared this masters with me, my classmates and friends, I am forever thankful for their willingness to go on at least four coffee breaks a day.
The months spent in Mexico represent a very special period for me for both academic and personal reasons, but they would have not been as remarkable had it not been for the people I met there. I have profound admiration and respect for Dr. Rosa María Olvera, from Por lo Derecho A.C., from whom I received thorough advice and support at every step during those months and who very generously agreed to help me before I even had a clear research proposal. Her help, along with Patricia Lechuga’s, allowed me to get in touch with several organizations in Mexico City during my first weeks there. I would like to thank as well Roberto Castillo and Lucía Petersen for their interest and time. Talking to them was at all times refreshing and encouraging. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Eduardo Bohórquez, director of Transparency Mexico, whose work and optimism I have come to admire. Many (many) thanks as well to all my wonderful participants in Mexico City, hopefully I will do justice to your words and stories. A warm thank you for Lilliane Ponce and Pedro Kumamoto in Guadalajara, two of the most cheerful and optimistic people I met.
I would like to thank as well all those who have endured endless talks and rants about this thesis, the friends that asked “how’s it going” and unleashed, without their knowledge or consent, a series of complaints and nervous reactions. It was a long year, we all wanted (needed?) it to be over. Finally, I will never be able to express enough gratitude to my loving family. To my cousin Verónica, who opened the doors of her home in Mexico City to me. To the most caring, strong and passionate woman, who I am lucky enough to call mom. To my father, the person I turn to and whose values and ethics I admire profoundly. To my sisters, Victoria and Carolina, whose humor and lightheartedness got me through some tough days. And to my uncle, Jorge, also unofficial counselor and guide on “how-on-earth-am-I-supposed-to-go-through-this?” moments.
Juliana Martinez December 2016
II. Abstract
Increasing interest in transparency mechanisms as a possible enhancer of better governance have brought relevance to the concept. However, it has been widely understood together with accountability (T/A). This assumption is problematic in that it does not define when, where and why T/A happens. In the particular case of Mexico, these concepts can be understood separately but hold ties with two other components: citizen participation and anti-corruption. At the same time, participation’s role in the national anti-corruption agenda has been mainly assessed through the access to information component traditionally related to transparency.
Corruption is one of the main public issues in Mexico. Control mechanisms for corruption and transparency legislation are present in the legal framework since 2002, but expectations of their efficiency have not been met and the general perception tends to be that corruption is ever more evident and citizens are limited in their possible action against it. However, a series of recent events in the political and social scene emphasize the need for more accountable institutions. In response, assessment by the national government led to relevant anti-corruption measures in 2016: the creation of a National Anti-Corruption System. This thesis sets out to develop on the way in which active citizens in Mexico get involved in debates and action regarding transparency and accountability and the limitations they face, and the effects this has on anti-corruption policy. The analysis relies mainly on a qualitative data set based on policy and media content, as well as interviews with active members of Mexican society pertaining to CSOs, academia, media, or public service. There is a considerable discrepancy between policy, legislation, and outcomes, regarding which forms of participation are considered more efficient, as well as the definitions of transparency and accountability that should be at the core of these policies. Addressing this differences and what feeds them through the lenses of participation and human rights has allowed to find that there is an array of dynamics, ways of abuse of power and characteristics of the relation between civil society and institutions that may potentially take a toll on policy effectiveness.
V. Acronyms and Abbreviations
CSO Civil Society Organization
CIDAC (in Spanish) Research Center for Development CPI
ENGASTO (in Spanish)
Corruption Perception Index
National Household Spending Survey
GDP Gross Domestic Product
HR ICHRP
Human Rights
International Council on Human Rights Policy IMCO (in Spanish) Mexican Institute for Competitiveness
INAI (in Spanish) National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Data Protection
LGTAIP General Law of Transparency and Access to Public Information OECD Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development
OGP Open Government Partnership
ONC (in Spanish) National Citizen Observatory PAN (in Spanish) National Action Party PRD (in Spanish) Democratic Revolution Party PRI (in Spanish) Institutional Revolutionary Party RRC (in Spanish)
SAI
Accountability Network Supreme Audit Institutions
TI Transparency International
TM Transparency Mexico
VI. List of tables and figures
Figures:
Figure 1: Annual household spending by quintiles (2013). Source: INEGI.
Figure 2: Survey data visualization, levels of trust in the NAS among respondents. Source: own. Figure 3: Survey data visualization, respondents’ motivations to engage in participatory action. Source: own.
Images:
Image 1: Protests in the roundabout of the monument to Independence. Image 2: Inauguration event of local Open Government exercises 2016.
Image 3: Map of Mexico with administrative divisions. Source: Manuel Balarezo - File: Mexico blank.svg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37873345
Image 4: Newspaper clipping, long piece published on June 26, 2016 in Reforma Fondo, weekly special of the national newspaper Reforma.
Image 5: personal notes taken during the opening of local Open Government exercises 2016, the diagram shows the relation between OG (center), transparency and participation (overlapped with OG) and innovation and accountability.
1. Introduction
As governance challenges become more complex for developing nations, their institutions must adapt to new paradigms and demands from fractions of the population that develop into critical masses and demand to be included in decision making processes. At the same time, these institutions are confronted with the task of renovating themselves in the midst of structures that still allow for unequal power relations to emerge and to become entrenched. For civil society organizations (CSOs), the challenge stands in finding that today’s context has sometimes outgrown the theory that most academics propose about transparency, participation, accountability or corruption. In this chapter, the importance of corruption for development will be discussed, along with a general overview of anti-corruption initiatives in Mexico and how they touch upon the three concepts mentioned above. This chapter will also provide a general context that shows the relevance of the topic in the chosen location.
1.1. Introducing key debates: corruption as a development issue
One of the main reasons that corruption is important to development comes from Johan Galtung’s argument of structural violence (ibid, 1969). Though it will not be thoroughly discussed, the reader should be aware that the arguments developed in this chapter stem out of the idea that systemic and ongoing corruption does not enable a clear subject-action-object relation, but it is nevertheless built into the structure and results on unequal power and unequal life chances. This indirect kind of violence manifests itself most clearly in the power of distributing resources and aggravates living conditions for already vulnerable groups (ibidem: 171). The case for corruption as structural violence can be understood looking at a country such as Mexico, with considerable levels of inequality. The National Household Spending Survey (ENGASTO, for its name in Spanish), for instance, divides households in five quintiles according to their general spending per year, where the first quintile corresponds to households with the lesser spending levels. The difference in spending between quintile I and V in 2013 was of 323’961 MXN (INEGI, 2013), or the equivalent to over 17’000 at the time (see figure 1). Though indicators such as spending are not reflective of the complexity of poverty and inequality levels in the country, they are only a guide as to how wide is the gap between vulnerable and less vulnerable groups of Mexican society.
Figure 1: Annual household spending by quintiles (2013). Source: INEGI.
Over time, corruption has been addressed as a problem by the United Nations for around fifty years and by economic development institutions such as The World Bank for more than twenty years. The first actions and discourses against it emerged in the 70’s in countries such as China or Mexico, which launched anti-corruption campaigns and set up anti-corruption offices. Another relevant example came when the US government enacted the first strict anti-corruption act in foreign trade in 1977 (Sampson, 2005). By the beginning of the 21st century anti-corruption had gone global: the UN Convention against Corruption adopted the resolution 58/4 of October 21, 2003, by which it placed corruption as a priority, concerned about “the seriousness of problems and threats posed by corruption to the stability and security of societies”, which, according to this document, undermine the institutions and values of democracy, ethical values and justice and jeopardize sustainable development and the rule of law (UN, 2003). Nonetheless, while the Convention and resolution brought corruption to the development discussions, it was still necessary to pinpoint the specific ways in which they relate to each other and to develop a framework that could help understand them.
It was also fundamental to work with a definition of corruption that could provide enough context and at the same time avoid being too broad and leaving too much room for interpretation on what exactly constitutes an act of corruption. Perhaps the most widespread definition is the general one provided by Transparency International (TI), by which corruption is “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain” (ibid, 2016). Within this definition, corruption can be categorized in many ways, being the most common by scope (grand and petty corruption) or by type (political, administrative, corporate, institutional, and operational). This definition has been criticized for being imprecise and narrow (Harrison, 2010). Thanks to this kind of criticism one
can assess corruption in multiple levels and attempt to understand the complexity of the phenomenon.
A definition that suits development, for instance, should be able to acknowledge the multiple actors involved in corruption and how it affects all of them, as well as being able to point out why is it that it is negative beyond the political sphere (see chapter 6). This is why the conceptual linkage between corruption and development may be better understood through the Human Rights approach. When the International Council on Human Rights Policy (ICHRP) adopted the task of theorizing about corruption and human rights (HR), it paid particular attention to the legal definitions, which made possible to argue for the HR approach (ICHRP, 2009). This approach considers the relationship between corruption and HR as dual. The first dimension in this dual relationship is a negative one, it delves into how corruption can foster HR violations within vulnerable groups that lack political leverage. The second dimension is positive up to the extent that anti-corruption and HR activism are considered as complementary agendas with an essentially practical nature (ICHRP, 2011: iii). Furthermore, the HR approach can be extended and applied to several aspects of the anticorruption agenda such as corruption measurement, public acquisitions, funding for politics, and service provision (ibid: 3). The following chapters will delve into the linkages between corruption and development through the lenses of HR, then taking a leap forward and connecting it to transparency, participation and accountability through information-based rights in Mexico.
1.2. Anti-corruption initiatives and civil society in Mexico
In terms of perception of corruption, Mexico ranks 95 out of 168 in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) –between Mali and the Philippines– and scores 35/100 where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. The average score worldwide is 43, and average for the Americas is 40. According to TI, Longstanding corruption has been known to affect investments in security, education and health, which have a direct impact in the citizen’s quality of life (2016), little attention is paid to the fact that the most relevant metrics on corruption, such as the CPI, are only based on perceptions and not in actual corruption acts (Harrison, 2010). In spite of this critique, the International Monetary Fund was able to show a correlation between corruption and public investment, government revenue, quality of infrastructure, and operations and maintenance (Tanzi & Davoodi, 1997). Particularly in Mexico, it is the effects over the economy, measured in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), that have been studied the most. It is estimated, for instance, that corruption costs around 146’628 million pesos per year (Vázquez,
2010), the equivalent to around €7’266 million1. Recent events in the national political and social scene since 2012 have fueled mistrust of the population towards authorities and sparked a series of both protests and constructive initiatives against practices that hinder development and the achievement of democratic decision-making.
Image 1: Protests in the roundabout of the monument to Independence, located in one of the most important streets of Mexico City, Paseo de la Reforma. Protesters were residents of one of the poorest areas of the city, where a new
airport is projected to be built in the next few years. Source: Own.
Oddly enough, these rising demonstrations of mistrust and indignation apparently coexist with contradicting views on political participation and the desirability of democracy. A survey carried out in 2015 by the Latinobarómetro shows that more than 60% of the respondents claimed that they never or almost never spoke about politics with friends or acquaintances. While the trend shows a slightly higher level of engagement with these topics compared to previous years, Mexico is one of the countries in Latin America with the lowest levels of alleged support for democracy and the values it promotes, with only 48.4% preferring democracy over any other form of political regime.
1Calculations were made according to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) econometric model developed
by Mauro (1997), by which one can estimate opportunity costs of not improving corruption perceptions. Data used for this specific amount corresponds to 2010 GDP figures.
Furthermore, 74.2% of the respondents claimed that they perceived the State as having very little transparency or as not transparent at all (Latinobarómetro, 2015). While the perceptions on transparency are relevant enough for the purpose of this research, the seeming lack of trust in the responses leads one to believe that only a fraction of the population would be willing to participate actively in political processes, if given the opportunity. Accountable, well-functioning institutions are needed, but the way in which they can be demanded and achieved by Mexico’s citizens is still unclear.
In the Mexican context, representative of Latin America in general, participatory approaches to urban governance have almost always looked upon issues of service provision and the development of the living space. Urban citizens are extremely involved in Mexico, but they are organized towards obtaining better goods and services because of the informal way cities have developed in Mexico (Lombard, 2013: 140).
There is, however, a rising concern for innovation, participation, transparency and accountability and how it can be applied to governance. These concepts may come together under the Open Government (OG) label. Formally launched in 2011 and promoted to a large degree by the government of the United States, this initiative seeks to “build commitments that contribute to transparency, accountability, participation and innovation in governments, aiming at strengthening governance and fighting corruption” (Barrera, 2015: 5). Mexico was one of the eight founding countries of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), and the efforts for the implementation of this initiative have required a series of actors to sit at the same tables and negotiate to set the environment for a new type of relationship between society and government. The OGP recognizes the need for problems to be solved with a collaborative focus that involves both civil society and government actors. The first challenge of OG comes with the development of the concept, which is considered by many to be vague or too encompassing. Although this thesis does not focus specifically on the OG principles and how they come to practice, it is a significant agenda that develops into several action fields that intersect with the anti-corruption agenda and are still worth considering, bearing in mind that most of the principles on which it is based are not necessarily new, but have been integrated into a same perspective and given the name of OG in the international sphere. National agendas adapt their policy in different ways that may or may not use the concept, but could be serving the same purpose and promoting the same values. According to several participants of this research (see section 4.2), in the case of Mexico, the OG agenda has taken off to a certain degree, but it is not yet completely established and, to the eyes of many CSOs, the discussions that form part of the process are to be approached carefully.
Image 2: Inauguration event of local Open Government exercises 2016 on June 20, 2016, at the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Data Protection. Source: own.
Perhaps more ambitious than any project discussed in the OG, the National Anticorruption System (NAS) was recently approved by the Mexican national Senate. Data from the research confirms that the ideas that fostered this initiative have been present and spoken about for around a decade now in politically active circles, but it is only recently that it became an open discussion (see section 4.4.2). The system is composed by seven laws, the first two being completely new: General Law of Administrative Responsibilities, General Law of the National Anticorruption System, Organic Law of the Federal Court of Administrative Justice, reforms to the Organic Law of Federal Public Administration, reforms to the Auditing and Accountability Law, reforms to the Penal Code, and Law of the General Prosecutor of the Republic (for the creation of an Anticorruption Prosecutor). In the Manifesto about the National Anticorruption System2, subscribing CSO’s agree upon that corruption has damaged democracy, plummeted economy, deepened social inequalities, increased violence, and undermined institutions’ trust (RRC, 2015: 1). Thus, the goals of these institutional tools are to “improve mechanisms that prevent, inquire, and sanction corruption cases with clear mechanisms of responsibility allocation based on meritocracy, certainty, stability and public ethics; with inquiry procedures based on strengthening capacities and the professionalization of empowered bodies, not to be confused with the competencies of internal control and auditing” (Senate, 2015). The system includes a
2The Manifesto for the National Anticorruption System was signed by 40 organizations, both academic and social,
and published on November 2015 by the Accountability Network (Red por la Rendición de Cuentas or RRC, in Spanish), an organization that groups other CSOs around the topic of accountability in Mexico.
Citizen Participation Committee, whose competences and structure will be further discussed in chapter four, section 4.2. Moreover, the particulars of this system will be discussed thoroughly in the data analysis chapters (chapters 4 and 5), in the hope to present it as an exercise of participation, transparency, and accountability and to assess its strengths and possible weaknesses. Further on, chapter 5 presents the main challenges that have already appeared or are expected to emerge for its implementation, considering the need to implement it at the local level.
In spite of the above, it would be inaccurate to say that there has been a cultural transformation that leads to solid participation and deep political engagement, but rather there are signs that information demands and the desire to get involved in decision-making from the population is fragmented by topic and fueled by particular situations (see sections 4.3 and 4.4) Generally speaking, the heritage of a hegemonic and authoritarian structure seems to hover upon government-society relations (see 4.3.1.).
In order to understand how civil society operates in Mexico, the reader must be familiar with the ruling party and the historical context in which it emerged, obtained power and managed to hold it for almost a century. The Institutional Revolutionary Party ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century and only recently returned to power in 2012 with current president Enrique Peña Nieto. While Mexico City is the cornerstone for center-left political ideas and has been ruled by the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) since 1997, nation-wide, many of the political practices left little room for participatory approaches, considering them unnecessary and chaotic (see 4.3.1 and 4.4). Presidentialism3 pushed away the involvement of civil society in political decisions and led most citizens to become passive when it came to solving public issues. Citizen councils, neighborhood associations, the Advisory Council for Mexico City (Consejo Consultivo de la Ciudad de México, CCCM), and boroughs’ Advisory Councils; originally instruments for the citizens to voice their concerns and demands or participate in public decision-making, became institutions through which the PRI’s paternalist regime was legitimized (Espinosa, 2004: 33-4). Octavio Paz, Mexican writer, described the PRI of the 20th century as the osmosis of two parallel bureaucracies:
“Unsatisfied by boosting and modeling at their image both the capitalist and labor sectors, the post-revolutionary State completed its evolution by creating two parallel bureaucracies. The first one is integrated by administrators and technocrats; it
3 By presidentialism, Espinosa refers to the exclusive responsibility of the State over Mexico City, a centralist and
constitutes government staff and it is the legacy of neo Hispanic and Porfirist4 bureaucracy. It is the mind and arm of modernization. The second one is composed by professional politicians and it is the one that drives, at all levels, the PRI. Both bureaucracies live continuously in osmosis and go back and forth incessantly between party and government and vice versa” (Paz, 1978: 16).
Regardless of the harsh critiques it has received as a party, the role of the PRI as a strong and influential structure will be touched upon in following chapters, exploring its practices and pointing to the specific aspects that influence participation for transparency and accountability.
1.3. Empirical Context
“Most of our government authorities do not establish a dialogue with society, they don’t have democratic aims nor interest for accountability. State actors have forgotten that spaces for dialogue and debate within civil society generate instruments to find novel solutions to existing problems”.
Francisco Rivas, Director, National Citizen Observatory (Observatorio Nacional Ciudadano)
The choosing of Mexico, as a research location can be explained by several reasons that have to do with established political practices and recent turns of events concerning corruption, citizen participation, and anti-corruption policy. In the present, Mexican authorities face issues of loss of credibility and trust, serious attacks to freedom of speech and accusations for human rights violations at an international level. All of this contributes to create a sense of a violent context in which the possibility of improving the relationship between government and civil society seems feeble. Mexico is a presidential republic, but to classify the country as strictly democratic or undemocratic would be to ignore all the nuances of current challenges. Since president Enrique Peña Nieto was elected in 2012, one of the most present agendas is the anti-corruption agenda. This has to do with various reasons, one of them being the promise at the beginning of the presidential period by which Peña agreed to launch the National Anti-Corruption System (NAS), later to be implemented by each of the 32 states that make up the country.
4 Porfirist is the term used to describe the sort of political practices carried out by Porfirio Díaz, a military
member who served as president seven times between 1876 and 1911, a period marked by capitalist growth and authoritarian practices.
Image 3: Map of Mexico with administrative divisions. Clarification: DF has changed its political status and is no longer a Federal District. Source: Manuel Balarezo - File:Mexico blank.svg, CC
BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37873345
Separate from the national agenda, and regardless of the region, citizen initiatives have emerged all over the country to advocate for transparency and/or accountability, in the hope that corruption will diminish by promoting such concepts and mechanisms as social auditing and observatories, activism, participatory budgeting, open parliament, monitoring, and so on. These demonstrations come as no surprise when, for example, around 43 programs out of a total 161 that conform the social policy of the Mexican national government are labeled as “the black box” of public expenditure (INDEP, 2015). They are not transparent in terms of the scope of the program nor accountable of their goals and results. These programs have been evaluated in terms of design, goals, and scope and present a score of less than 80 in a scale of 0-100 where 100 indicates full capacity to solve the problem that it responds to (ibidem)5. Considering that they took on approximately 13.22% of the total budget on 2015 –569’422 million Mexican pesos or over € 28’470 million– this would mean that over € 3’762 million are destined to opaque projects that are able to get away with not providing all the information on their approach and performance (ibid). By approving a budget, the political body becomes responsible of their implementation. Practices such as these prevail in a daily basis, they go unpunished and mostly hidden from public scrutiny. Without addressing topics such as access to information, transparency and accountability, opacity gets normalized.
5 The Federal Public Programs’ Performance Index (Índice de Desempeño de Programas Públicos Federales,
INDEP), created the scale in order to assess the performance of each public program, understood as its capacity to address the public problem it is supposed to tackle, based on three variables: quality of the program design, capacity of the program to achieve its goals, scope of the programme
Examples such as the one above draw attention to the need for more transparency and accountability in governance at all levels. In a general sense, transparency is perceived by opinion leaders and active citizens in Mexico as an increasingly necessary mechanism that needs to be strengthened if the country is to achieve better accountability and lower levels of corruption. Moreover, several corruption scandals at the national level in which public officers of the executive have been notably involved represented for many a tipping point in the relationship between civil society and government; and a trigger for looking into new and better ways of doing politics.
Though private actors such as corporations play a considerable role in corruption narratives and have been directly involved in corruption acts in Mexico in the past6, chapters 1 and 2 will only address this in terms of whether or not neoliberal policies that allow for the growth of the private sector foster or not corruption and its pre-eminence in the international discourse (Harrison, 2010). Their roles will be taken into consideration only in relation to how they affect anti-corruption efforts and participation to achieve better accountability.
Most of the time, active efforts to promote a shift towards transparent practices both in the public and private sector are integrated into the discourse and even included in legislation but fail to have a “transformative” effect. They are, somehow, incomplete. In spite of being present both in political discourse and legislation, the implementation of transparency is nowhere near to be seen in larger governing dynamics or in institutional practice. Meaning that, for several reasons, opacity is still present in practice (Ávila, 2016). In the following pages, I will delve into the need to pinpoint the factors that hinder actual and observable development in this matter. In order to do this, I will explore the conditions that allowed for the most recent example of anticorruption policy in Mexico — the National Anticorruption System —, as well as the needs to which it responds, the discourse surrounding anticorruption and transparency, and the general expectations and challenges that it poses in the near future. Thus, in such a relevant moment for the country in terms of anti-corruption, this thesis aims to shed light into the dynamics that are in place and prevent the desired governance outcomes, despite an increasingly conscious society, a growing demand for transparency and an existing legal framework that protects both citizen participation and transparency.
6 Some of the most notorious cases have to do with construction or energy companies, such as Grupo Higa or
Sempra Energy, but they are not limited to those sectors. Walmart Mexico was involved in a payoff scandal in 2012 when journalists David Barstow and Alejandra Xanic published a piece about it in the New York Times. For more information, see www.sinembargo.mx/12-11-2015/1548005 and
2. Theoretical framework
This chapter is built around three main concepts and aims to address the theoretical gap between them. Participation, transparency, and accountability are or have been development buzzwords at some point, the use of one often steps into grounds of another, and the links between them seem to be an assumption guided by recent experiments which may lead to think that they are in fact related. This correlation is assumed without a certainty of up to what extent, under what conditions, where and which are the actors involved. Thus, this chapter aims to present to the reader in a clear way the connections between these concepts and the dynamics that enhance or hinder their linkages, to contextualize them in the anticorruption narrative and to place them in the larger development discourse through linkages with the Human Rights approach.
2.1. Citizen participation and participatory governance
Emerging mostly from political science, the concept of governance has been adopted by a number of disciplines in social sciences, including development. Understood broadly by Torfing et al, governance means “steering society and economy through collective action and in accordance with some common objectives” (2012:14). According to these authors, narrowing the definition to the processes of managing and regulating society and economy raises conceptual limitations and will not let it take many forms. On the other hand, general consensual meanings tended to refer to governance as the “exercise of power to manage a nation’s affairs” (Mkandawire, 2010: 265). As governance continues to emerge as one of the most popular buzzwords in development, it is also undergoing significant conceptual changes. For this reason, governance has begun to mean something more than just government.
Initially, understandings of governance emerging from developing countries, in particular African intellectual circles, called for the need of state-society relations to be “developmental, democratic, and socially inclusive” (ibidem). Later on, failed interventions by major development actors gave rise to the ideas of good and bad governance, where bad governance was the set of practices that hindered major development projects and that could divert them from what is considered to be democratic. Mkandawire argues that this process only turned governance into a matter of black and white, good and bad, adjustment programs, and, finally, “business as usual” (ibid: 267).
Nevertheless, the multiple spheres that governance reflects on do allow for less normative definitions that try to reflect and account for nuances and include those who are governed in the equation. Chatterjee, for example, understands governance as “the body of knowledge and set of
techniques used by, or on behalf of, those who govern” (ibid, 2004: 4). Yet, these conceptualizations remain too vague for the purposes of this research, which would risk governance to become overly encompassing. For this reason, I will be resorting mainly to participatory governance and urban governance.
Increasingly, the sole notion of democracy seems to be insufficient to achieve political representation and ensure citizen involvement in decision-making (Fung & Wright, 2001). The emergence of participatory approaches is very much related to this gap created by new contexts but somewhat obsolete forms of government. Hordijk (2005: 221) asserts that governance cannot be called participatory unless it meets two conditions: government should engage with groups that share a certain interest beyond the individual one and action must not be too limited in scope, scale, and place. Both the notions of state and citizenship are contained in participatory governance, and both have been changing significantly for the last decades. The focus of this section is on understandings of citizenship and what they mean for participatory approaches, rather than the role of the state.
Historically, citizenship has been almost constantly addressed in participation in development theory and practice (Hickey & Mohan, 2004), but if governance is going to be “less elitist”, the importance of citizenship has to increase, and understandings of what it means to be a citizen should be nuanced and complete. Citizenship in participatory governance should mean not only voicing an opinion but being able to play a role in decision-making processes (Hordijk, 2005). Substantive forms of citizenship call for the inclusion of marginal groups, for a space of consultation and debate more than just confrontation. Defining citizenship is, understandably, context-dependent. It is in constant redefinition by and through the way people exercise it (ibid, 2005). A conceptual overlapping between participation and citizenship implies that no participatory process will be carried out in the exact same way than others and that, therefore, effectiveness is not a given.
Delving into the particulars of participatory approaches, it could be said that they have been long present in the development field, first as an alternative and later mainstreamed into general discourses. Participation is often related to concepts such as “empowerment” or “transformation”, but also criticized for failing to engage with deeper issues of power and politics (Hickey & Mohan, 2005: 237-8) and for strengthening existing unequal patterns of distribution and depoliticizing previous political struggles (Lombard, 2013: 137). Getting both the powerful and the not so powerful to submit to the rules of deliberation processes is perhaps too optimistic, and ordinary citizens may find participation burdensome or less rewarding than they had imagined (Fung & Wright, 2001: 37-8).
As stated above, in the literature and in main discourses, participation is often related to democracy. Different manifestations of participatory democracy may be suitable for different
political moments in the democratic process and one should not be looking at concepts such as contestation and consensus as opposing, since both the top-bottom and the bottom-up approaches can overlap at a particular moment (Silver et al: 2010: 2007). Looking beyond criticism, Hickey & Mohan argue that what they call the “the participatory turn” has become expressed more deeply and diversely within development theory and practice over recent years (2005: 238). In more practical terms, nevertheless, whether a wider conception of it is a condition to achieve deeper democracy or an instrument for local populations to voice specific concerns, the concern is that participation in developing countries has been localized and depoliticized, turned into a matter or service provision, to be able to become a part of developing projects (Connelly, 2010: 335).
However, other meanings that have also emerged and gained relevance were used for the purposes of this research in regards to participation. These other meanings imply a certain way of understanding democratic politics, conceived beyond electoral democracy. Harbers (2007) states that in the context of participation, literature emerged stressing the need to deepen democracy and to address the variations within different democracies and their quality instead of classifying countries as democratic or not (ibid: 40). The question as to what aspects of these various democracies should be addressed is touched upon by Appadurai, who elaborated on the concept of deep democracy. In terms of semantics, he argues, deep democracy suggests roots, anchors, intimacy, proximity and locality. Such concepts, in turn, relate to inclusion, participation, transparency and accountability, articulated within and activist formation that forms part of this depth in that it strives to build networks at different levels –vertical for local and national, and horizontal or lateral for transnational and global– and achieve sustained exchange and learning (ibid, 2001: 42-3).
Thus, Fung and Wright consider the central ideas of democracy to be the “achievement of active political involvement of the citizenry, forging political consensus through dialogue, devising and implementing public policies that ground a productive economy and healthy society, and, in more radical egalitarian versions of the democratic ideal, ensuring that all citizens benefit from the nation’s wealth” (ibid, 2001: 5). Within this conceptualization, participation is to be part of a wider transformative scheme.
As much as the premises on which it is founded are based on achieving consensus through deliberation spaces and aiming for the common good, participation does not necessarily mean inclusiveness, empowerment, or egalitarianism (Silver et al, 2007: 455). This is mainly because there is no ideal type of participation and its success or failure highly depends on contextual factors and on the way it is understood in particular settings (Lombard, 2013: 136). Efforts to take a step into a richer and deeper culture of engagement (ibidem) and to incorporate participation into regular decision making beyond the scope of the neighborhood or the borough can encounter
some of the mentioned critiques; but if participation is to recover a transformative sense, then it is crucial to understand the meanings that it is attached to. Some of the main challenges seem to be to extend the scope and to detach it from the service-oriented approach that understands citizens only as consumers; or look beyond that and integrate them into the definition of the public goods that they are entitled to as citizens and how they should be obtaining them. Stepping into the grounds of citizenship allows participation to be, at least conceptually, stripped of possible voluntaristic notes turning it into a right.
2.2. Conceptual understandings of transparency
Often tied to forms of governance, transparency has become an important concept in development only recently. The UN even makes an explicit call for it in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals adopted last year. The convenience of using the concept lies in how one is using it and in the scenario in which it is to be applied. According to the literature, it is widely believed that using transparency as a tool will improve effectiveness of the institutions and result in better governance. Indeed, transparency is considered one of the necessary conditions for a democratic decision-making. Nevertheless, transparency in the development field has tended to be more practiced than theorized (Fox, 2007: 665; Kosack & Fung, 2014: 70). The main reason for considering this as a problem is because the effects of transparency are not as self-evident as they may appear (Fox, 2007: 664) and transparency can mean many things, to many actors, in various contexts.
Problems of poor governance are also addressed by Kosack & Fung (2014), who propose that transparency can lead to better governance under certain conditions. They claim that “the intuitive idea underlying this enthusiasm is that information empowers citizens to hold public officials accountable—that disclosure of information about government institutions, policies, and programs empowers citizens to hold officials responsible for their spending and performance, thereby reducing corruption and mismanagement of public resources and leading, eventually, to more accountable, responsive, and effective governance” (ibid: 66). According to them, its potential effects lie on better service provision, reduction on corruption levels and greater accountability. This applies both for providers (which may be private) and policy makers or government.
In a similar way, Lindstedt and Naurin argue that the relationship between transparency and corruption can give a misleading picture of the significance of transparency applied to anti-corruption (ibid, 2010: 301). They hold that the link between both concepts is subject to two conditions: the possibility of released information to reach the public, or publicity condition; and the fact that the release of information has to have an effect of the behavior of potentially corrupt
officials, or the accountability condition (ibid: 303). Their argument is based on a mistaken understanding of the three concepts of transparency, publicity and accountability, where previous research of corruption has combined them without looking at the two conditions stated above. First, they clarify that transparency introduces itself into the equation as a possible determinant of the probability of accountability. Further on, they distinguish between transparency and publicity. As these authors put it, “with respect to citizens and political leaders, transparency implies that documentation of the actions of the political leaders is released, while publicity means that the content of this information has also become known by citizens. Clearly, transparency will most often increase the chances of publicity” (ibid: 303-4).
Though transparency is usually associated with positive outcomes, one may also wonder whether including it in governance projects will bring the desired or most convenient outcomes. In other words, why choose transparency over other tools? Surely there is no way of knowing for certain, but as Torfing et al point out, there have been situations in which “seclusion has been integral to a positive outcome”, especially in regards to security and sensitive negotiations (2012: 208). This observation leads them to a distinction between transparency in processes and in outcomes, which serves the purpose of discerning between the type of secrecy that protects autocratic regimes and the one that promotes efficiency and democracy in governance processes. While this research recognizes this distinction and the critical stance that these authors take towards the possible pitfalls of transparency, Torfing et al tend to equate transparency with provision of and access to information, a definition that falls short on reflecting the array of practices that draw on transparency and that definitely go beyond the underlying assumption that information means empowerment.
Thus, the use of this concept, as many other buzzwords in development, calls for a detailed definition. For a narrower focus and in order to refer to a theoretical anchor, I have chosen to reflect on the work of Kosack & Fung (2014), who distinguish between four varieties of transparency according to its users and its targets, the first of which is freedom of information (FOI) or right to information (RTI) legislation. The reasoning behind this first form of transparency is that it should enable people to be able to better govern themselves by being informed and having strong arguments. The second form of transparency refers to responsible corporate behavior, targeting the private sector instead of the government, and is closely tied to the third: regulatory transparency. In this third category, transparency is very much oriented to the citizens but this time also accounts for their role as consumers. By being provided with product and financial disclosures, consumers would eventually be able to protect themselves from the marketplace or negotiate from better positions. Finally, transparency for accountability is the most recent use for the concept and conceives citizens as “individual users or beneficiaries of public services” (ibid: 68-9). Its origins lie in grassroots movements and the concern for
corruption and underperforming services, but the focus of development funders and practitioners on community-based development has only brought more attention to it. Thus, according to this definition, T/A aims to improve poor quality of services in developing countries.
This research was planned upon the fourth category described above, which has been said to produce particular and tangible improvements in services, based on interventions with a very local and narrow scope. T/A experiments are still recent enough so that underlying mechanisms are underspecified, which leads to unclear results and calls for a theory on T/A’s impact, particularly regarding the assumption that transparency is directly linked to accountability (Fox, 2007). The first ‘dilemma’ is that transparency can be individual or institutional, to begin with, and it can have many goals aside of tackling corruption. While this is the case for transparency, accountability could have colliding goals that difficult establishing responsibility with precision – a ‘where does the individual become institutional’ question– (ibid: 666). The second dilemma can be the distinction between reliable information and data in a broad and general sense and the nature of the disclosure –if it is voluntary, desirable or really obligatory–. And the third, the need to explain how some forms of transparency lead to accountability and others do not (ibid: 667). For this third dilemma, Fox also suggests that there are two forms of transparency, which are clear and opaque. This distinction differs from the one made by Torfing et al., while the latter distinguishes between transparency in processes and outcomes, Fox’s distinction is based on the reliability and the quality of the information revealed throughout institutional behavior as a whole. Examples of clear transparency according to him would be “civil-society data about human-rights violations, certification of private sector compliance with environmental standards, independent ombudsman reports, publicly accessible third-party policy evaluations, and even the World Bank’s Inspection Panel reports” (ibid: 667). It I due to this distinction that he reflects on the relationship with accountability, which could acquire two possible meanings: answerability alone and answerability plus sanctions (soft and hard, respectively).
The possibility of both concepts fully overlapping is very low, for transparency should be clear and accountability hard and, most of the time, even if transparency is clear, accountability tends to be only soft (ibid: 669). Fox’s arguments lead to a thorough reflection on the limits of transparency as well as the need to strengthen the theoretical link between both concepts. Moreover, to provide answers to the question of when exactly does transparency lead to accountability, by stepping into governance practices and civil society being able to form part of this debate and push for a hard type of accountability.
2.3. Accountability as a goal
When it comes to theorizing about transparency and accountability, it is not uncommon to find that transparency has been largely theorized while accountability is much more of a concept put to use in policy. Much of what needs to be clarified about accountability has been developed above (see 2.2). Thus, this section will deal with the issues that come with the conceptualization of accountability alone and the agendas in which it is currently present, its application on institutional processes such as auditing, and the distinction between horizontal and vertical accountability.
In the international scene, some of the most relevant efforts aiming to improve accountability come from the Open Government agenda, which has gained recognition since its formal emergence in 2009. For the last five years, monitoring progress of specific goals and objectives has been a focus of interest for actors involved. Since 2011, CSOs and public entities have taken on the task of developing a continuous, regular mechanism to follow progress and account for the results of the OG agenda. The distinction between transparency and accountability as two separate, different concepts, is due to several reasons. Many agree that transparency is supposed to generate accountability (Fox, 2007: 663). Generalizing effects of this assumption may ignore that transparency effects on accountability are not as straightforward as they appear to be, and that in order for accountability to take place, information made available through transparency must have an effect on justice and those possibly involved in power abuse. However, as Fox argues, the shameless can be oblivious to accountability if the relationship between that and transparency is based only on the “power of shame” (ibid, 2007: 664-5).
Accountability is inherently relational, the question of who is accountable to whom forces us to develop a definition or adhere to an existing one that is already encompassing enough to fit both parts of this relationship. And therein, in this breadth, lies as well its appeal. Conceptual attention to accountability becomes clear with Schedler’s efforts to apprise it. His claim is that accountability has two main connotations: answerability and enforcement (1999: 14). These two characteristics are linked to power and its abuse. If there is no power, it makes no sense to talk about accountability, according to Schedler. Since power can be abused in several ways, accountability can also be applied into a wide range of actual and potential abuses (ibidem). If and when accountability does not cover the enforcement connotation, then it will be deemed as weak, possibly only as window dressing, rather than as a real political exercise. Aside of those two connotations, there are also three dimensions: information, justification, and sanction —mainly an extended version of answerability and enforcement—. They may be present to different degrees and “do not form a core of binary ‘defining characteristics’ that are either present or absent and that must be present in all instances we describe as exercises of accountability” (ibid:
17), which implies that even if one or two are missing we may still be able to talk about accountability.
But there are more ways of categorizing accountability. While vertical accountability mechanisms such as vote are indeed a means for citizens to hold their authorities accountable, horizontal accountability has also been addressed in theory and policymaking. These kind of accountability depends on legally empowered state agencies that are willing and able to oversee possibly unlawful actions or omissions by other agencies of the state (O’Donnell, 1998). The former need not only the power to oversee the latter, but they must also have a degree of autonomy (ibidem; Hidalgo et al, 2016). It is of particular importance for the correct functioning of these auditing agencies the way in which officials appointed to the task of monitoring are assigned their positions; usually, literature focuses on the rules governing executives and legislatures, while auditing institutions’ assessments are few (Hidalgo et al, 2016). At least at an institutional analysis level, it is not uncommon that auditing outcomes are affected by political bias due to lack of autonomy and that the executive power, especially in relatively new democracies, undermines horizontal accountability (O’Donnell, 1998; Hidalgo et al, 2016). Although in the ideal situation there is not one but a network of agencies that are purposefully designed to hold other agencies accountable, overall, the question of how to design these institutions so that they can fulfill their promises and overcome political bias remains unanswered (ibidem). Most of the time, states opt for the constitution of Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs), which audit the legality, efficiency and effectiveness of spending behavior of the many government agencies. Almost every country has a SAI. Part of their activity is supposed to have an impact in government effectiveness and corruption (Blume & Voigt, 2010), based on the premise that SAIs can make acts of corruption seem risky to bureaucrats. However, before assuming that auditors are going to perform their job accordingly, one must consider the incentives they themselves have to set these kind of agencies and to deliver results. What is even more, SAIs have been criticized not only for the questionable autonomy of the appointing of its members, but also for their lack of veto and judicial power, as well as the fact that they often audit actions and behaviors that took place months or years before, when information —if published— may not be of any interest or use to the public (ibidem).
Overall, it is this kind of elusiveness that also warns about that accountability can be applied in an arbitrary way by using mechanisms that act as locks or barriers for its effective or optimal operation. In other words, the possibility of transparency leading to accountability does not depend on the efforts of so-called watchdogs, but on other actors’ responses to information that has been disclosed (Fox, 2007: 666). Another limitation of the concept is that it has a modest undertone. According to Schedler, “holding power accountable does not imply determining the way it is exercised; neither does it aim at eliminating discretion through stringent bureaucratic
regulation. It is a more modest project that admits that politics is a human enterprise whose elements of agency, freedom, indeterminacy, and uncertainty are ineradicable; that power cannot be subject to full control in the strict, technical sense of the word” (ibid: 19).
2.4. Anti-corruption policy
It could be said that corruption is an obstacle for development because it is an obstacle for democracy and all of the values it entails. The concept differs from other development buzzwords in the sense that it is does not talk about a path to achieve development but, similarly to poverty, intends to appraise something that hinders it (Harrison, 2010). From a different perspective, corruption can be a matter of not only democratic values and economic development but of trust and inequality (Uslaner, 2010).
Be it isolated or systemic, corruption has a direct effect over government's performance and undermines their ability to enact and implement policies in areas in which government intervention is needed (World Bank, 1997). There is, however, great difference between dealing with isolated and systemic corruption, while the first can be relatively easy to solve, systemic corruption implies that there is a corruption “trap” that normalizes corrupt behavior and allows for incentives that maintain this kind of system in place (ibid: 11). This thesis will work only considering the effects of systemic corruption, both grand and petty (Uslaner, 2010).
Moreover, the importance of studying such a phenomenon stems as well from a double action field: institutional and ideological work. Anti-corruption efforts focus mainly in institutional reform but often neglect the need to assess the narratives of corruption. If this is acknowledged, corruption, says Gupta “emerges as a critically important area to study, because narratives of corruption help shape people’s expectations of what states can and will do, and how bureaucrats will respond to the needs of citizens” (ibid, 2005: 190).
2.4.1. Human Rights approach to Anti-corruption
A Human Rights analysis elucidates power relations in a society paying special attention to discrimination, equity and removal of economic, legal, and political obstacles that keep marginalized groups’ rights from them. As a result, a Human Rights analysis may contribute directly to the design and implementation of anti-corruption policy. ICHRP, 2011
While conceptualizing transparency and accountability can be helpful to distinguish their goals, it is mainly through transparency and its information component that it links to anti-corruption efforts, at least theoretically. One of the main goals of transparency is precisely to diminish corruption, the second one being to encourage better performance of institutions in a general way (Fox, 2007). From a Human Rights (HR) perspective, access to information is a condition to the exercise of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Also, exercising participation depends at a certain degree to the level of access to complete, valid, and understandable information (ICHRP, 2011). In this subsection, two ways of approaching human rights in regards to corruption will be discussed. First, from a legal perspective, which brings freedom of expression and access to information to the center of the anti-corruption discussion. Second, through Sen’s capability approach, which focuses on how lack of information and tools to act upon it can affect wellbeing.
Though it is highlighted in the SDGs, there is no explicit recognition of the importance of transparency in international HR documents. However, its essential components can be found in the combination of the right to freedom of expression and to access to information, which are thoroughly discussed both in international and national legal documents7. For instance, article 13.1. of the American Convention on Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought and expression. This right includes freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing, in print, in the form of art, or through any other medium of one's choice” (Organization of American States, 2011). Today, anti-corruption movements and the access to information movement can pride on the emergence of a legal framework that can be enforced at the national level and can be approached by international human rights organizations (ICHRP, 2011).
Access to information highlights the importance of information being the rule and privilege and secrecy the exception (ICHRP, 2011; Pasquier & Villeneuve, 2007). As useful as the information component may be to theorize around transparency and corruption, there is also considerable criticism towards the information approach. Critical authors sustain that the release of information to evaluate institutions is simply not enough (Lindtstedt & Naurin, 2010) and that empowerment through this disclosure does not necessarily occur on its own, if at all (Kosack & Fung, 2014).
7 At least four relevant international documents have explicit articles to protect freedom of expression
(International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, American Convention on Human Rights, and European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms), according to the ICHRP (2011).
As of 2013, at least 95 countries had nationwide laws establishing the right of, and procedures for, the public to request and receive government-held information. For more and updated information visit right2info.org/access-to-information-laws.
Furthermore, it is also worth mentioning that approaching corruption and the mechanisms to counter it with a HR focus implies that we need to look into the rights of those accused of corruption, particularly speaking about the right to privacy (Ávila, 2016). This consideration sheds light into a somewhat constant tension between access to information and freedom of expression and the right to privacy, which is usually solved by judging the quality of information for each case through a public interest and/or harm test.
While the legal approach described above focuses on processes, the capability approach focuses on freedom of opportunity. Human Rights and capabilities tend to have common motivations, in spite of their differences (Sen, 2005). The application of Sen’s capability approach in relation to information based rights is also helpful for the arguments developed throughout this thesis, especially considering that freedom to access information can be labeled under “fundamental freedom” within this approach (Britz et al, 2012).
Starting off from the idea that we live in a society that assigns considerable value to information, a lack of access and means to act upon it may mean that information cannot be transformed into meaningful opportunities or fulfill valuable ends (ibid, 2012: 108). By applying Sen’s capability approach, a normative notion of justice that could measure the impact of human rights violations in terms of utilities and resources is replaced by a measurement that recognizes and addresses issues that prevent human development in terms of the freedom to be what one wants to be. This can be done because capabilities allow to distinguish between (1) whether a person is able to do the things that she values, and (2) whether she has the means or instruments to do what she would like to do (Sen, 2005: 153). Additionally, recognizing the importance of opportunities entails as well that two persons can have entirely different opportunities even if they have the exact same set of means.
To illustrate this relationship between information-based rights and capabilities it is important to point out that individuals must possess more than just freedom to achieve an information-based goal. According to Britz et al, the availability and usability of products and services to enable human functioning is “tied to the complex arrangement of capabilities that are, in turn, individually and contextually determined. Therefore, a clear understanding of individual, social, structural and environmental conditions and circumstances is a prerequisite for understanding and knowing the abilities of people not only to put available products and services to use to enable certain functionalities but also to allow them to exercise and actualize their basic information rights” (ibid, 2012: 110).
Although approaching corruption in these terms is useful, if it were to be at the core of policy, then it would require deep knowledge of people’s actual needs and their context in order to support the claim that corruption has a direct impact on development. Additionally, citizens would need to have an interest in using information in order to change that. This relates to the
question of what should be prioritized in which context and the unfixed nature of some capabilities (Sen, 2005). Gathering data of this nature is usually a difficult process due to that those most affected by corruption are also the ones that traditionally lack representation and have less opportunities to voice their concerns. Allegedly, these groups are inherently less prepared to demand their rights and defend their interests. This lack of representation and voice, in turn, adds to the burden of already existing vulnerabilities.
2.4.2. The aftermath: rebuilding trust
Uslaner argues that corruption is not significantly shaped by democracy, electoral systems, or levels of centralization and decentralization (ibid, 2010). Moreover, Ariely and Uslaner propose that corruption is strongly linked to unfairness and inequality, and that it deviates resources that should be spent in public goods, penalizing those with fewer resources by unfairly distributing society’s resources (ibid, 2016). For the most part, trust is highly related with perceptions, and both authors see the connection between fairness and corruption “as part of a larger syndrome of “positive” attitudes and outcomes that include greater equality and trust in others. When inequality is high and trust is low, people are more likely to perceive higher levels of corruption” (ibid, 2016: 5).
The process of rebuilding trust in institutions, which is key for most anti-corruption policies, has to undergo a parallel opening process. The links between trust and corruption are explored by Uslaner in his “inequality trap thesis” (2010), where corruption rests upon a foundation of unequal resources and leads to greater inequality. In turn, inequality and corruption lead to lower levels of service delivery, further resulting in lower trust in governments, higher tax evasion and weaker infrastructure and, again, exacerbating inequality.
Rebuilding trust in public institutions would therefore be, according to the inequality trap thesis, a process which is strictly linked to corruption. Dishonest leaders will hardly be perceived as trustworthy. “These leaders help their constituents, but more critically they help themselves. Inequality breeds corruption–and to a dependency of the poor on the political leaders. Inequality leads to clientelism–leaders establish themselves as monopoly providers of benefits for average citizens. These leaders are not accountable to their constituents as democratic theory would have us believe” (ibidem: 4). In these scenarios, policies advocating for transparency and/or accountability are considered crucial.
