Measuring the risk of corruption in Latin American political parties. De jure analysis of institutions

Abstract

Research that examines the impact of economic, social, and political factors on political corruption uses expert’ and citizen’ perceptions for measuring corruption and testing arguments. Scholars argue that the perception of corruption is a good proxy for actual corruption because data on actual corruption are limited and not entirely trustworthy. However, perception indexes do not allow for testing separate mechanisms driving citizen’ perceptions of corruption from actual levels of corruption in different government branches. To address this issue, I introduce a new index based on Latin American countries to measure the risk of corruption in political parties. Using a de jure analysis of laws and regulations, the Risk of Corruption (ROC) index evaluates the likelihood of political parties engaging in corrupt activities. Instead of measuring corrupt activities or perception directly, the ROC measures the risks of involving in corruption. The index has important implications for academics and practitioners in anti-corruption issues. First, it allows us to test arguments about the role of political parties and legislatures in reducing political corruption. Second, it helps to understand how political parties could improve their internal organization to decrease the risk of corrupt activities. Finally, it is a valuable instrument for cross-national studies in diverse fields that study political parties.