Corruption in Mexico

Posted by Thomas Shaw on March 25th, 2019

Corruption in Mexico has permeated several segments of society - political, financial, and social - and has considerably impacted the country's legitimacy, transparency, accountability, and effectiveness. Several of those dimensions have evolved as a product of Mexico's legacy of elite, oligarchic consolidation of power and authoritarian rule. Get extra details about noticiero méxico corrupción

Transparency International's 2017 Corruption Perceptions Index ranks the country 135th location out of 180 countries.

PRI Rule

Even though the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) came to energy by means of cooptation and peace, it maintained power for 71 years straight (1929 to 2000) by establishing patronage networks and relying on personalistic measures. That is, Mexico functioned as a one-party state and was characterized by a system in which politicians supplied bribes to their constituents in exchange for help and votes for reelection. This kind of clientelism constructed a platform via which political corruption had the opportunity to flourish: small political competition and organization outdoors on the party existed; it was not possible to independently contest the PRI system. Political contestation equated to political, economic, and social isolation and neglect. The party remained securely in power, and government accountability was low.

PRI party
Hierarchization was the norm. Energy was consolidated within the hands of an elite couple of, as well as more narrowly, the president controlled virtually all of the sensible energy across the three branches of government. This central figure had each the formal and informal energy to physical exercise extralegal authority more than the judiciary and legislature and to relegate these other branches for the executive's person political will. Beyond this, couple of checks were set on elected officials’ actions throughout the PRI's unbroken reign. Consequently, sustained PRI rule yielded low levels of transparency and legitimacy inside the councils of Mexico's government. 71 years of power offered an opportunity for corruption to accumulate and come to be increasingly complicated. Civil society developed around financial interest aggregation that was organized by the clientelistic government; the PRI permitted citizens to collectively bargain beneath the condition that they would continue to supply political loyalty for the party. Anthony Kruszewski, Tony Payan, and Katheen Staudt clarify,

"Running by means of the formal structure of…political institutions was a well-articulated and complicated set of…networks…that deliberately manipulate governmental resources…to advance their political aspirations and to protect their private interests and those of their clienteles and partners… Beneath the political geometry of an authoritarian and centralized scheme corruption…grew and prospered."

With this sort of institutionalized corruption, the political path in Mexico was pretty narrow. There were specified political participation channels (the party) and selective electoral mobilization (party members). These problems, deeply engrained in Mexico's political culture soon after more than half a century's existence, have continued to produce and institutionalize political corruption in today's Mexico.