How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru
@article{Mcmillan2004HowTS, title={How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru}, author={John Mcmillan and Pablo Zoido}, journal={CESifo Working Paper Series}, year={2004} }
Which of the democratic checks and balances - opposition parties, the judiciary, a free press - is the most critical? Peru has the full set of democratic institutions. In the 1990s, the secret-police chief Vladimiro Montesinos systematically undermined them all with bribes. We quantify the checks using the bribe prices. Montesinos paid television-channel owners about 100 times what he paid judges and politicians. One single television channel's bribe was four times larger than the total of the…
266 Citations
Yesterday’s heroes, today’s villains: Ideology, corruption, and democratic performance
- Political Science
- 2014
This paper develops a game-theoretic model for assessing the relationship between ideological divisions in a society and prospects for good governance. Synthesizing the insights of the literature on…
The Politics of Illusion: The Collapse of the Fujimori Regime in Peru
- Political ScienceTheatre Survey
- 2018
Peru approached the twenty-first century a polarized country. In the year 2000, with increased authoritarian control over the legislative and judicial branches along with constitutional reforms…
Votes and Violence: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Nigeria
- Political Science
- 2014
Following the wave of democratization during the 1990s, elections are now common in low-income societies. However, these elections are frequently flawed. We investigate the Nigerian general election…
Silencing Critics
- Political Science
- 2016
The media hold democratically elected leaders accountable by exposing corruption and policy failures. Although many politicians accept media criticism as intrinsic to liberal democracy, some…
What Research Reveals: Deficits of Electoral Accountability
- Political ScienceSmarter Ballots
- 2019
This chapter explains how, since the end of the Cold War, academic research has advocated increasing levels of skepticism about the empowerment of voters through the electoral accountability of…
Reflections on Putin and the Media
- Political Science
- 2010
A political scientist investigates the extent to which, under Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin consolidated control over the Russian media. Conceptually, a contrast is drawn between the Soviet and…
Legislative Malfeasance and Political Accountability
- Political Science
- 2010
Utilizing a unique data set from the Italian Ministry of Justice reporting the transmission to the Chamber of Deputies of more than the thousand requests for the removal of parliamentary immunity…
Guardians of accountability: a field experiment on corruption and inefficiency in local public works
- Political Science
- 2018
In the construction of public works, the lack of accountability manifests as corruption and inefficiency. Will civil society oversight that is explicitly supported by the relevant authority…
Informational Autocrats
- Political ScienceJournal of Economic Perspectives
- 2019
In recent decades, dictatorships based on mass repression have largely given way to a new model based on the manipulation of information. Instead of terrorizing citizens into submission,…
Propaganda and Protest in Autocracies
- Economics
- 2020
Does propaganda reduce the rate of popular protest in autocracies? To answer this question, we draw on an original dataset of state-run newspapers from thirty countries, encompassing six languages…
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 33 REFERENCES
The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government
- Political Science
- 2003
We build a simple model to capture the major virtues and drawbacks of making public officials accountable (i.e., subjecting them to reelection): On the one hand, accountablity allows the public to…
The Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of the Law
- EconomicsAmerican Political Science Review
- 1997
This paper develops a game-theoretic approach to the problem of political officials' respect for political and economic rights of citizens. It models the policing of rights as a coordination problem…
Handcuffs for the Grabbing Hand? Media Capture and Government Accountability
- Political Science
- 2002
It is widely recognized that active media can play a role in enhancing political competition by informing voters. Collusion between government and media can, however, undermine this role. We extend…
Separation of Powers and Political Accountability
- Political Science, Economics
- 1997
Political constitutions are incomplete contracts and therefore leave room for abuse of power. In democracies, elections are the primary mechanism for disciplining public officials, but they are not…
Judicial Checks and Balances
- Law, EconomicsJournal of Political Economy
- 2004
In the Anglo‐American constitutional tradition, judicial checks and balances are often seen as crucial guarantees of freedom. Hayek distinguishes two ways in which the judiciary provides such checks…
Are You Being Served?: Political Accountability and Quality of Government
- Political Science, Economics
- 2000
This paper explores, both formally and empirically, the political accountability mechanisms that lie behind the varying levels of public corruption and of effective governance taking place across…
Who Owns the Media?*
- Political Science, EconomicsThe Journal of Law and Economics
- 2003
We examine the patterns of media ownership in 97 countries around the world. We find that almost universally the largest media firms are owned by the government or by private families. Government…
The United States and Peru
- Political Science
- 2002
General Preface 1. Introduction 2. U.S-Peruvian Relations Prior to 1990 3. Bilateral Policy-Making During the 1990s: Trends and Actors 4. The Bilateral Agenda from the 1980s to 2000: National…
High Anxiety in the Andes: Peru's Decade of Living Dangerously
- Political Science
- 2001
Massive protest by indigenous groups in both 2000 and 2001 have overthrown one president and weakened another. Though such conflict poses a short-term threat, it may ultimately contribute to…