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“Dedicated anti-corruption agencies are a favorite prescription for
improving the quality of government, but their global track record
is indifferent-to-dismal. Such agencies are rarely transformative
interventions; rather, they are immersed in the systems, institutions,
and procedures they are intended to change. This essential collection
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America, offering a fresh view of reforms in the region and reassessing
contemporary reform thinking.”
Michael Johnston, Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science,
Emeritus, Colgate University, USA

“The case studies by a dream team of country experts examining anti-

corruption agencies at both the national and international levels in
Latin America provide critical insights into the political challenges these
agencies face during their creation and operation; their interactions
with economic, social and political dynamics; and the conditions
behind success and failure. This must-read contribution to the literature
brilliantly reveals the political context surrounding the on-going fight
against corruption.”
Stephen D. Morris, Middle Tennessee State University, USA

“Devising successful strategies to reduce rampant corruption is critical

everywhere, especially in Latin America. The chapters in this important
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activists can learn how to improve their attacks on wholesale kleptocracy
as well as on standard forms of state capture, money laundering, and
graft. The anticorruption battle is ongoing and this can be one of its
guides.”
Robert I. Rotberg, Harvard Kennedy School, USA;
Anticorruption (2020), Corruption in Latin America (2019)
The Politics of Anti-Corruption
Agencies in Latin America

This book investigates the history, development, and current state of anti-
corruption agencies in Latin America.
In recent decades, specialized anti-corruption agencies have sprung up as
countries seek to respond to corruption and to counter administrative and
political challenges. However, the characteristics, resources, power, and
performance of these agencies reflect the political and economic environment
in which they operate. This book draws on a range of case studies from across
Latin America, considering both national anti-corruption bodies and agencies
created and administered by, or in close coordination with, international
organizations. Together, these stories demonstrate the importance of the
political will of reformers, the private interests of key actors, the organizational
space of other agencies, the position of advocacy groups, and the level of
support from the public at large.
This book will be a key resource for researchers across political science,
corruption studies, development, and Latin American Studies. It will also be a
valuable guide for policy makers and professionals in NGOs and international
organizations working on anti-corruption advocacy and policy advice.

Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez is specially appointed associate professor, School of

Human Sciences, Osaka University, Japan.
Routledge Corruption and Anti-Corruption Studies

The series features innovative and original research on the subject of corruption
from scholars around the world. As well as documenting and analyzing
corruption, the series aims to discuss anti-corruption initiatives and endeavors,
in an attempt to demonstrate ways forward for countries and institutions where
the problem is widespread. The series particularly promotes comparative and
interdisciplinary research targeted at a global readership.
In terms of theory and method, rather than basing itself on any one
orthodoxy, the series draws broadly on the tool kit of the social sciences in
general, emphasizing comparison, the analysis of the structure and processes,
and the application of qualitative and quantitative methods.

Corruption and Informal Practices in the Middle East and North Africa
Edited by Ina Kubbe and Aiysha Varraich

Corruption and the Lava Jato Scandal in Latin America

Edited by Paul Lagunes and Jan Svejnar

The Conundrum of Corruption

Reform for Social Justice
Michael Johnston and Scott A. Fritzen

Comparing Police Corruption

Bulgaria, Germany, Russia and Singapore
Leslie Holmes

The Politics of Anti-Corruption Agencies in Latin America

Edited by Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez

Curbing Corruption
Practical Strategies for Sustainable Change
Bertram I. Spector

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

Routledge-Corruption-and-Anti-Corruption-Studies/book-series/RCACS
The Politics of Anti-
Corruption Agencies
in Latin America

Edited by Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez

First published 2022
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
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without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 978-0-367-70768-2 (hbk)
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ISBN: 978-1-003-14788-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147886
Typeset in Bembo
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Contents

List of contributorsx

PART I
National commissions, agencies, and systems1

1 Introduction: locating anti-corruption agencies within

the politics of anti-corruption in Latin America 3
JOSEPH POZSGAI-ALVAREZ

2 Anti-Corruption Whack-a-Mole: Costa Rica’s

de-centralized agencies and increasingly sophisticated
corruption 16
BRUCE M. WILSON AND EVELYN VILLARREAL FERNÁNDEZ

3 Combating corruption in Chile: the Presidential

Advisory Commissions on public probity, 1994–2015 33
PATRICIO SILVA

4 Promise, invisibility, politicization: the waving path of

the anti-corruption office in Argentina 51
MANUEL BALÁN

5 The politics of building anti-corruption institutions:

the case of anti-corruption agencies in Peru 71
SOFIA VERA AND JOSEPH POZSGAI-ALVAREZ

6 The anti-corruption agency and its policy role in

Colombia: improvement in institutional capacity
or political symbolism? 92
PABLO SANABRIA-PULIDO AND CLAUDIA N. AVELLANEDA
viii Contents
7 Corruption control under fire: a brief history
of Brazil’s office of the comptroller general 108
FERNANDA ODILLA AND DENISSE RODRIGUEZ-OLIVARI

8 Mexico’s national anti-corruption system 134

BONNIE J. PALIFKA, MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES ESTRADA, AND
INGRID VALERIA GALICIA GONZÁLEZ

9 Dealing with the “original contradiction” in fighting

corruption in countries with systemic corruption:
a critique of the cases of Brazil and Mexico and their
multiorganizational strategies 155
DAVID ARELLANO-GAULT AND GABRIEL S. ROJAS

PART II
International missions and commissions177

10 Unprecedented success and entrenched opposition:

the complicated legacy of the International
Commission against Impunity in Guatemala 179
JEFFREY T. HALLOCK

11 The Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption

and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH) and its new
integrated criminal investigation model 201
ANA MARÍA CALDERÓN BOY

12 Ten key lessons from the OAS mission in support of

the fight against corruption and impunity in Honduras 218
CHARLES T. CALL

13 The role of the United Nations and the Organization

of American States in delegation of governance
agreements: the case of hybrid anti-corruption
agencies in Central America 235
LAURA ZAMUDIO-GONZÁLEZ

14 The illusion of CICIES in El Salvador 251

ÚRSULA INDACOCHEA AND JESSICA ESTRADA
 Contents ix
15 Empty promises to fighting corruption in Ecuador:
the failure of the International Experts Commission
against Corruption in Ecuador (CEICCE) 266
CLAUDIA ESCOBAR MEJÍA

16 Conclusion: the Anti-Corruption Agency Space in

Latin America 290
JOSEPH POZSGAI-ALVAREZ

Index297
Contributors

David Arellano-Gault is Professor at the Public Administration Department

of CIDE, in Mexico City. He has a Ph.D. in Public Administration from the
University of Colorado. He is also the author of Corruption in Latin America,
published by Routledge in 2020.
Claudia N. Avellaneda is Associate Professor in the O’Neill School of Public
and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. She specializes in govern-
ance and public management in developing countries, with an emphasis on
local governments in Latin America.
Manuel Balán is Associate Dean (Faculty of Arts) and Associate Professor
in Political Science and International Development at McGill University.
He specializes in the study of Corruption, Media, and Democracy in Latin
America.
Ana María Calderón Boy is a Peruvian lawyer, magister in Constitutional
Law, university professor and current general coordinator of the OAS Anti-
Corruption Project in Haiti, former superior prosecutor, former head
of the support Mission Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras
(MACCIH).
Charles T. “Chuck” Call is Associate Professor and Chair of the Interna-
tional Peace and Conflict Resolution program in the School of Interna-
tional Service of American University.
Dr. Claudia Escobar Mejía is a former magistrate of the Court of Appeals
of Guatemala. She is a visiting professor and researcher at the Terrorism,
Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at George Mason University
and the executive director of Be Just.
Jessica Estrada is a Salvadoran economist who has specialized in transparency
and anti-corruption issues. She is currently the director of the Transparency
Area of the National Foundation for Development (FUNDE), Transparency
International’s chapter in El Salvador.
 Contributors xi
María de los Ángeles Estrada is the executive director of the Transparency
and Anti-Corruption Initiative at the School of Government and Public
Transformation of the Tecnologico de Monterrey and a member of the
Selection Committee of the National Anticorruption System.
Ingrid Valeria Galicia González is an instructor in the Department of Eco-
nomics, School of Social Sciences and Government, at the Tecnologico de
Monterrey, Campus Monterrey. She has a master’s degree in public admin-
istration from the Escuela de Gobierno y Transformación Pública.
Jeffrey T. Hallock is a doctoral candidate studying international relations and
anti-corruption reforms at American University in Washington, DC. He
holds a master’s degree in migration studies from the University of Oxford.
Úrsula Indacochea is a Peruvian lawyer, researcher, and expert on Latin
American justice systems from a comparative perspective. She is currently
the director of the Judicial Independence Program of the Due Process of
Law Foundation (DPLF).
Fernanda Odilla holds a master’s degree in criminology and a Ph.D. in Social
Science and Public Policy from King’s College London and is currently a
research fellow at the University of Bologna, where she researches anti-
corruption technologies.
Bonnie J. Palifka is Associate Research Professor in the Economics Depart-
ment at Tecnologico de Monterrey (Mexico), Visiting Associate Professor
at Yale University, and the founder of the Academia against Corruption in
the Americas conference.
Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez is a specially appointed associate professor at Osaka
University (Japan) and founder of the Japan Network of Anti-Corruption
Researchers (JANAR). He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Uni-
versity of Tsukuba (Japan).
Denisse Rodriguez-Olivari is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Hum-
boldt University. She holds a master’s degree in International Development
from University of Manchester and BA in Political Science from Pontifical
Catholic University of Peru (PUCP).
Gabriel S. Rojas is Associate Professor at the Public Administration Depart-
ment of CIDE, in Mexico City. He has a master’s degree in Public Admin-
istration from CIDE.
Pablo Sanabria-Pulido is Associate Professor and Director of graduate pro-
grams at the School of Government Universidad de los Andes (Colombia)
and Affiliate Professor of the Public Administration Division of the Centro
de Investigación y Docencia Económicas of CIDE (Mexico).
xii Contributors
Patricio Silva is Professor of Modern Latin American History at Leiden Uni-
versity in the Netherlands. He is the author of In the Name of Reason: Tech-
nocrats and Politics in Chile, and Public Probity and Corruption in Chile.
Sofia Vera is Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University
of Kansas. Her research interests include political behavior, party competi-
tion, representation, and political institutions. Dr. Vera received her Ph.D. in
Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2019.
Evelyn Villarreal Fernández is a research coordinator at the State of the
Justice Report and the Report State of the Central American Region (2008
and 2012). She is also President at Costa Rica Íntegra, the Transparency
International chapter.
Bruce Wilson is Professor, University of Central Florida and Associated
Research Professor, Chr. Michelsen Institute, Norway. He leads a Norwe-
gian Research Council project on the human right to water. His research on
corruption, LGBT+ and ESC rights litigation and SoTL is widely published.
Laura Zamudio-González is a full professor at the International Studies
Department, Iberoamericana University, México City. She is a Ph.D. in
Social Sciences and member of the National Research System.
Part I

National commissions,
agencies, and systems
1 Introduction
Locating anti-corruption
agencies within the politics of
anti-corruption in Latin America
Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez

Despite the strong negative emotions aroused by corruption, the academic and
political interest in addressing this scourge in any systematic way only sprung
out in the past three decades. Before that, corruption was considered a matter
entirely of domestic political affairs and, consequently, taboo among profes-
sionals from international organizations. Corruption produced political scan-
dals, recurrent calls for prosecution and reform, and sporadic academic interest;
but its discussion remained (for the most part) confined to national borders,
and its study largely anecdotal. However, beginning around the first half of the
1990s as a result of new conditions created by the end of the Cold War, the
global spread of neoliberal ideas, and the work of international NGO Transpar-
ency International and the World Bank, anti-corruption action began a hectic
period of growth that saw it develop into a full-fledged international move-
ment within the short span of ten years. Popularly spelled out in a speech deliv-
ered by World Bank’s President James D. Wolfensohn in 1996—Corruption is a
problem that all countries have to confront” (Wolfensohn, 1996, 11)—by 2020
this movement is composed of an ever-growing variety of organizations and
individuals in the public and private sectors, at the local, national, and inter-
national levels, to understand, prevent, and control corruption in all its forms.
Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain (Pozsgai-Alvarez,
2020; Eigen, 2002), and its consequences are, by now, publicly and scientifically
recognized. Among many other effects, corruption threatens political stability,
hinders economic growth, lowers popular trust in elected officials, deprives cit-
izens of equal access to public resources, inhibits their exercise of legal rights—
in short, its presence, be it occasional or pervasive, is felt throughout the
political, economic, and social spheres, even when not immediately perceived.
Despite it being most commonly used in practice to refer to acts of bribery
taking place in connection to the public sector, its forms are just as numerous as
their consequences, and the relative predominance of a given form will depend
on the setting (Ang, 2020; Johnston, 2005). In general, we find that corrup-
tion can take the forms of clientelism, electoral fraud, embezzlement, influence
peddling, nepotism, etc., and they can take on specific social accents based on
local culture. That is how we also speak of wasta (“connection”) in the Middle
East, baksheesh (“charitable giving”) in Central Asia, guanxi (“connections”) in

DOI: 10.4324/9781003147886-2
4 Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez
China, blat in Russia, and protekzia and combina in Israel, to name but a few. In
particular, we will find that the impropriety of relational forms of corruption
(such as patronage or nepotism) is more easily contested in local context than,
say, purely transactional forms (most significantly, bribery).

1 Corruption in Latin America

In Latin America, corruption appears most gently in the Mexican palanca, the
Chilean pituto, and the Brazilian jeitinho, all of which describe the exchange of
favors and connections nurtured (Arellano-Gault, 2019); however, the com-
bined impact of corruption is nothing short of devastating for the overall state
of the region and for most of the countries therein. According to Transpar-
ency International’s (2019) latest Global Corruption Barometer survey, one
in five citizens in Latin America reports having paid a bribe over the previous
12 months, with occurrence reaching as high as one in two in Venezuela and
one in three in Mexico. Unsurprisingly, only 21% express confidence in their
government. The misallocation of resources caused by corruption forces (or
allows) firms and workers to remain in the informal market, with levels reach-
ing over 60% in Guatemala, Mexico, and Paraguay (OECD, 2020); this, in
turn, has done nothing to help improve the disappointing levels of economic
growth seeing over the past few years (which has prompted observers to call
the 2010s Latin America’s “second lost decade”). Ironically, the easiest way
to estimate the extent and impact of corruption is by considering the most
compelling examples of anti-corruption efforts: the numerous high-level cases
prosecuted and the mass mobilizations seen.
First, the Operation Car Wash—and its multiple offshoots—represents one
of the largest cases of corruption in the world. Launched in Brazil in 2014, it
quickly unraveled from a national scandal to an international event, sweeping
through ten other countries in the region and leaving political (and economic)
devastation in its wake. The network of bribes paid to win public contracts
involved nine Brazilian construction firms, prominently Odebrecht, Camargo
Correa, and Constructora OAS, and billions of dollars in bribes. According to
the plea agreement of Odebrecht alone, 35 million were paid in Argentina;
11 million in Colombia; 91 million in the Dominican Republic; 33 million
in Ecuador; 18 million in Guatemala; 10 million in Mexico; 59 million in
Panama; 29 million in Peru; and 98 million in Venezuela (Pinotti, 2020). The
scandal saw several former Latin American presidents arrested, including Bra-
zil’s Lula da Silva and Michel Temer, and Peru’s Ollanta Humala and Pedro
Pablo Kuczynski. The wave of scandals, added to the effects of lower exports,
had a chilling effect on public investments, which in 2017 represented only
1.6% of GDP in Latin American and Caribbean countries (OECD, 2020, 27),
an amount lower than in other regions and with a significant negative impact
on the prospects for economic growth (Cavallo and Powell, 2019).
Second, scandals have also sparked massive protests across the region over the
past decade. In 2015, Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina was forced to
 Introduction 5
resign from office (and was later arrested) after months of increasing national
unrest over allegations of corruption. In Bolivia, allegations of electoral fraud
ended too in the ousting of President Evo Morales—who then flee the coun-
try and was granted asylum in Mexico—in 2019, after three weeks of civil
protests. Likewise, the involvement of Peru’s Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in the
Odebrecht scandal, as well as the irregular pardon of former President Alberto
Fujimori, sparked mass demonstrations in the capital and further exacerbated
a political conflict with Parliament, ultimately causing his resignation amidst
a second impeachment in early 2018. While these three cases are emblematic
of the effects of popular unrest over a country’s political stability, plenty of
anti-corruption mobilizations have taken place across the region, with various
degrees of effectiveness. To illustrate the frequency of such events, it suffices to
consider the major protests that took place in the Dominican Republic in Janu-
ary of 2017 (“March for the End of Impunity”), August of 2018 (“March of
the Million”), July of 2019, and February–March of 2020 (“Trabucazo 2020”).
It is also important to highlight the potential for a broader impact on anti-
corruption that popular discontent and demonstrations can have, perhaps
nowhere better exemplified than in the “Torch-lit Marches” that took place
in Honduras throughout the second half of 2015, and which resulted in the
creation of the Organization of American States (OAS) Mission to Support the
Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH).

2 The political nature of (anti-)corruption

The strong emotional reactions generated by the fight against corruption over
the past decade contrast sharply with the reported persistence of corruption
tolerance among citizens. This tolerance is evidenced through their direct par-
ticipation in petty corruption (mostly in the form of bribery or nepotism), and
their electoral support of politicians involved in corruption scandals (Pozsgai-
Alvarez, 2015). Having already mentioned the frequency of petty bribery in
the region, let’s review the second, high-level form of corruption tolerance.
All things being equal, we would normally expect people to choose the non-
corrupt option; however, seldom do elections in Latin America allow for such
a straightforward evaluation, and too often voters are forced to weight the
honesty of candidates to public office against more mundane records. After
all, this is the land of the infamous “rouba mas faz” (“he steals but gets things
done”), first used by Brazilian scholars to describe former Sao Paulo Gover-
nor Ademar de Barros in the 1950s (Pereira and Melo, 2015), and since then
adopted across Latin America. Tolerance is not only expressed through sup-
port despite scandal, but it also takes the form of permissiveness, meaning the
lack of active electoral opposition. Administering a vignette experiment in
Colombia, Carreras and Vera (2018) report that voters are less likely to cast a
vote when candidates are marred by accusations of corruption. Similar results
of voter apathy in Mexico are described by Chong et al. (2015) as “quashing
the hope” instead of “inspiring the fight,” and explain this by suggesting that
6 Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez
“incumbent corruption information taints all candidates” (2015, 70). How-
ever, tolerance does not appear to be ubiquitous across events and locations,
and while other characteristics of the candidate—importantly, their work
performance—mitigate the effect of negative information, corruption does
appear to reduce support for the offending candidate (Vera, 2020). Tolerance
of corruption is expressed in the rationalization of unethical behavior: mini-
mizing the consequences of their acts and/or displacing responsibility. Such
rationalization is common, as stated by De Sousa and Moriconi (2013, 495):
“there is widespread perception by the public that, in order to be successful in
politics, one has to be corrupt.” Putting it into everyday terms, the idea that
“they all steal” (Hummel, 2018, 224) is all too frequently used to explain away
their disengagement from moral action.
However, we should not make the mistake of interpreting this tolerance or
permissiveness to be a popular endorsement of corruption. While the precise
moral weight of different acts of corruption may be open for debate in Latin
American as much as anywhere else, there is abundant agreement that corrup-
tion is, in general, antithetical to the ideals of a properly running society. To
Latin America we could apply the words of Hess and Dunfee (2000): “cor-
ruption is universally disapproved yet universally prevalent.” The key to under-
standing this seeming paradox lies in the meaning that corruption—and more
precisely that which involves the public sector—has to the functioning of the
political and economic systems. In addressing this point and others, I shall refer
hereinafter simply to corruption to mean public corruption.
In general terms, corruption may be described as an output failure on the
part of the government: tasked with satisfying societal demands, the admin-
istration carries out actions that are deemed unsatisfactory by either missing
their target or breaking procedural norms. In cases of corruption, this condi-
tion is observed under two distinct and broad forms: (1) direct negative effects
on the levels of efficiency and effectiveness of the public apparatus, caused
by the misallocation of public resources and the redirection of efforts towards
rent-seeking activities, and (2) indirect negative effects through the erosion of
regime legitimacy. The first is technical; the second, political, and arguably the
most relevant to an exploration of corruption in Latin America. After more
than two decades of increasing international and national investment in anti-
corruption initiatives, the prevalence of malfeasance in the region cannot be
regarded solely as a matter of administrative capacity—although human capital
is certainly lacking in many areas—or social norms. The significance that cor-
ruption holds for decision-makers makes reform efforts a potential threat to
their survival due to what Arellano-Gault (2019) calls one of the “paradoxes”
of anti-corruption: it has to be advanced by the same group that it is meant to
monitor and punish.
As the ideal of anti-corruption makes decision makers a potential target for
sanctions, the control of corruption becomes appealing to leaders only to the
extent that it generates popular support, and otherwise dangerous whenever
their particular interests are threatened (Pozsgai-Alvarez, 2018). The most crude
 Introduction 7
insight into the structure of incentives behind anti-corruption initiatives is pro-
vided by “cleanup” campaigns, which are more often than not launched to
discredit political rivals (Zhu and Zhang, 2017). More generally, the result is a
constant threat of falling into politically driven cycles of anti-corruption efforts,
each iteration launched by the emergence of a corruption scandal and the
resulting political and social upheaval it creates. The surge in anti-corruption
demands by members of civil society and opposition groups produces a decrease
in the government’s reserves of political capital, which makes it harder for deci-
sion makers to continue advancing their plans and agendas. To fix the situation,
leaders can concede to demands and adopt proposals to strengthen the state’s
anti-corruption capabilities, such as developing anti-corruption action plans,
passing new legislation criminalizing corruption actions and increasing penal-
ties, making decisions more transparent, facilitating access to public informa-
tion, and securing the independence of prosecutors and judges, among many
others. It is at this point in the cycle where the concept of “political will”
(Brinkerhoff, 2000) becomes most prominent, as it is in the extent and quality
of the anti-corruption reform that we can assess the extent of the ultimate goal
of the government in resolving the impasse: is it simply a matter of recovering
their popularity, or is the reform a genuine effort to control corruption? The
answer does not become immediately apparent, as there is normally a time lag
marked by a strong anti-corruption discourse from leaders and a reduction in
popular demands. For some time, the issue appears settled; however, the true
nature of the reform emerges during the last stage of the cycle, when the supply
of resources dedicated to sustaining the adopted policy is kept at appropriate
levels, or is increasingly threatened until being finally cut. In the latter case, the
deficit causes an inevitable policy failure, signaling the exhaustion of the anti-
corruption initiative (Pozsgai-Alvarez, 2018, 5) and the end of the current cycle
of anti-corruption efforts.

3 A framework for anti-corruption agencies

Among the number of anti-corruption policies available to leaders to respond
to scandals of corruption, the most emblematic today are anti-corruption agen-
cies (ACAs). Meant to centralize key aspects of the fight against corruption,
ACAs gained international attention after the success stories of the Independ-
ent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in Hong Kong, established in
1974, and the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) in Singapore,
established in 1952 but significantly strengthened in 1960 (Quah, 1994). How-
ever, according to Meagher (2005), the history of these agencies can be traced
back to the creation of the City of New York’s Department of Investigation
(DOI) in 1873. As the cycle of anti-corruption previously discussed would lead
us to expect, the DOI was created following a number of scandals involving
hundreds of millions of dollars and key city figures, including Mayor Abra-
ham Oakly Hall (1869–1872), the comptroller, the commissioner of finance,
and William “Boss” Tweed (the infamous leader of Tammany Hall), then
8 Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez
commissioner of the department of public works (Hearn, 2003). By and large,
however, the modern identification of ACAs was spurred by the growth of
this kind of organization in Asia—this region alone saw the establishment of
16 ACAs between 1952 and 2006, with Singapore being followed by India
in 1963 and Malaysia in 1967 (Quah, 2009, 174), and most recently China’s
decision to create the National Supervision Commission for initial operations
in the provinces of Beijing, Shanxi, and Zhejiang. With important variations,
ACAs have sprouted across the globe—sometimes with several iterations in a
single country—and were counted at nearly 150 agencies by 2012 (De Jaegere,
2012, 80), and (at least) 171 agencies across 114 countries in 2019 (AFA, 2020,
80). Following this trend, most Latin American countries have also created one
or more ACAs under a number of schemes. To mention some examples:

• Argentina: The “Anti-Corruption Office” was created in 1999 under the

Ministry of Justice and Human Rights.
• Ecuador: Adding to the “Council for Citizen Participation and Social
Control” (in place, by another name, since 1998), the country has more
recently created the “Commission of International Experts to Fight Cor-
ruption in Ecuador” in coordination with the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
• Guatemala: Created in 2007 by agreement with the United Nations, the
“International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala” was a hybrid
ACA until its dissolution in 2019.
• Honduras: Backed by the Organization of American States, the “Mission
to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras” was
created in 2016 following the example of Guatemala’s commission; it was
terminated in early 2020.
• Mexico: The “National Anti-corruption System” was launched in 2015,
headed by a coordinating committee; its implementation has required a
number of legal reforms.
• Peru: The “National Commission to Fight Against Corruption” was cre-
ated in 2001 under the Presidency of the Council of Ministers; it was
replaced in 2007 by the “National Anti- Corruption Office,” which lasted
less than a year before being dissolved. Since 2010, the “Anti-Corruption
High Level Commission” coordinates these activities across different levels
of government.

Unsurprisingly given their ubiquity, ACAs represent a highly heterogeneous

group, which makes even a single definition a matter of contention. This situ-
ation can be explained by the variety of tasks it can be delegated, which fall
under four main categories: (1) investigation and prosecution of corruption;
(2) prevention of corruption; (3) education and awareness raising; and (4) co-
ordination, monitoring, and research (OECD, 2013, 23). On the basis of their
functions, the OECD (2013) suggests a simple typology of models to classify
ACAs: the multi-purpose model, which follows Honk Kong’s ICAC in combining
 Introduction 9
all anti-corruption functions under a single agency (albeit in collaboration
with other state actors); the law enforcement model—such as Belgium’s Central
Office for the Repression of Corruption within the federal police (Schöberlein,
2020)—which focuses on investigation and/or prosecution, normally embedded
in a larger organizational structure and, therefore, characterized by significantly
lower levels of autonomy and visibility; and the preventive model, which repre-
sent the most diverse type as it includes “specially created, dedicated corruption
prevention agencies, commissions and units, but also existing state institutions
which contribute to prevention of corruption as part of their normal responsi-
bilities” (OECD, 2013, 26), such as Brazil’s Office of the Comptroller General.
To these three, we can add the parliamentary model as described by Quah
(2008, 87), which “includes commissions that report to parliamentary commit-
tees and are independent from the executive and judicial branches.” Therefore,
while ACAs under the multi-purpose, single-agency model may be the most
common reference, this organizational manifestation of anti-corruption drive
take on many forms and a country might choose to develop its anti-corruption
system around multiple ACAs, making an equally broad and flexible definition
of such agencies a requirement. For example, although De Sousa (2010, 12)
provides a list of requisites identified by previous literature to classify an agency
as ACA, he recognizes that “very few ACAs have fulfilled these requirements.”
Still, he defines them as “public (funded) bodies of a durable nature, with a
specific mission to fight corruption . . . through preventive and/or repressive
measures” (De Sousa, 2010, 5). The specificity of their mission is further elabo-
rated as an integral element of ACAs by Schöberlein (2020), who describe them
as “established with the express purpose to prevent and/or counter corruption”
(2020, 2), which then becomes its sole task (2020, 3). However, more tradi-
tional agencies often become ACAs by developing—or being delegated—key
anti-corruption functions in the course of their organizational life cycle; and/or
combine a number of tasks besides key anti-corruption functions.
Thus, in allowing for a more diverse group of agencies who may be iden-
tified as ACAs by merit of the function and role they play within the larger
anti-corruption system of a country, I shall define an ACA as an organization or
organizational unit leading the execution of one or more key anti-corruption functions or
tasks, which then become the ACA’s defining role within the state apparatus. By focus-
ing on their role, we can further differentiate regular ACAs—tasked with key
anti-corruption functions—from “dedicated” ACAs—agencies whose singular
task is to perform anti-corruption functions. Furthermore, the identification of
anti-corruption as their defining characteristic makes it possible for us to speak of
anti-corruption systems without ACAs, as well as of systems with multiple ACAs.
Having highlighted the execution of anti-corruption functions, I turn now to
the pressing question of how to properly evaluate an ACA’s performance in terms
of “success.” This is another contentious point in the literature, as ACAs repre-
sent but a single—albeit prominent—element within the entire anti-corruption
system, which in turn is only partially responsible for the level of corruption
in a country. In Europe, for example, ACAs rarely are delegated prosecutorial
10 Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez
powers (Schöberlein, 2020). Across the globe, the creation of an ACA responds
(or should respond) to an identified deficit in the way the anti-corruption sys-
tem is running, making the creation of new agencies more appealing where they
are most needed, but also where conditions are more hostile to their work and
the ultimate goal steeper. Several authors have contended with this issue. Doig
et al. (2005) consider two ways of describing success: First, “in the broad sense
of a discernible or measurable impact on levels of corruption” (2005, 7); and
second, “in terms of the organisation’s ability to devise and deliver strategies”
(2005, 8). Following the latter, they adopt a relativistic approach which empha-
sizes the role of country-specific and realistic performance indicators, arguing
that the level of success must be established “in relation to available resources,
level of capability employed and degree of difficulty in the operating environ-
ment” (Doig et al., 2005, 6). Quah (2009) takes a similar approach, producing a
list of indicators to benchmark ACAs; however, the list errs in combining per-
formance indicators with others that are, in fact, requirements for the achieve-
ment of high performance, such as budget, staff, and independence.
Meagher (2005) suggests that the performance of functions be understood
as an output measure, and that this should only be taken as a limited proxy
for assessing the ACA’s intermediate outcomes within the ultimate goal of
decreasing the level of corruption. In other words, the performance of del-
egated functions would be separated by two degrees from the popularly and
politically expected outcome of reducing corruption in a country. While
this perspective is analytically sound, I do not believe that an ACA’s success
should be disassociated from changes in the level of corruption to such an
extent. If success is limited to the gap between objective and result, a mini-
mally delegated—or functionally stripped down—ACA would be inherently
more likely to “succeed” than a more complex agency; but, would it hold any
meaning for the fight against corruption in general? Arguably, an ACA’s success
should be defined by the degree to which it is able to contribute to the fight
against corruption, even if not to its reduction; and its performance, on the
other hand, should represent the optimal execution of its mandate. Meagher
(2005, 80) explicitly suggests this approach, considering success as “an overall
improvement in the performance of anti-corruption functions” of the state—
something that has also been hinted at by Quah (2015), but ultimately left
unexplored. Improving on Meagher, then, I understand an ACA’s level of suc-
cess as the scope of its delegated functions, and the degree to which they are effectively
carried out. Thus, keeping performance stable, a larger mandate translates to
higher success, which makes for a larger contribution to the fight against cor-
ruption—and, potentially, its control.
Having resolved the conceptual issue, we can also more easily understand
now the role of indicators such as independence, resourcing, staffing, and oth-
ers, often identified as “principles,” “conditions,” or “requirements” for effective
ACAs (Schöberlein, 2020; De Jaegere, 2012): they measure the organizational
strength of an ACA, representing its capacity to accomplish its mandate. How-
ever, regardless of the technical veil commonly attached to discussion over
 Introduction 11
ACAs, their creation commonly reflects the administration’s desire to address
the political—rather than the technical—consequences of corruption scandals,
as observed earlier in this chapter. De Sousa (2010, 13) is forthright about it,
unequivocally describing some ACAs as “window dressing institutions or at
best they function as a governmental anti-corruption discourse mechanism.”
The latter political function is proposed by Smilov (2010) as an explanation
for the adoption of these agencies in Eastern Europe, positing that govern-
ing parties create them to hijack the anti-corruption discourse away from
opposition actors and increase their electoral chances. Indeed, the nature of
ACAs can be said to belong to the political dimension of their functions,
reflected in the way that the quality of government and regime characteristics
impact their performance—and the degree of instrumentalization they risk.
The potential for abuse of an ACAs power is evident in cases such as that of
the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC), set up by the
Fiji army after taking control of the country through military coup in 2006.
The FICAC soon took the lead in the government’s “clean-up campaign”
and proceeded to target a number of individuals without sufficient evidence
of wrongdoing (Larmour, 2010). On the other hand, the political nature of
ACAs is also evident in the challenges they face from incumbents throughout
the last stages of the cycle described earlier. Already warned by Maor (2004)
over a decade ago, the effective empowering of an anti-corruption agency to
arrest popular outrage often exceeds the degree of corruption control that
incumbents are willing to tolerate over the long term, and, “when investiga-
tions come close to home, they retract and try to undermine the credibility of
anticorruption mechanisms, and when deemed necessary, to terminate their
operation” (2004, 23). This inherent vulnerability of ACAs has been called the
“Icarus Paradox”: their survival depends on their capacity to identify

a level of performance which provides sufficient success to satisfy and sup-

port the evolution of an operating environment that gradually becomes
less corruption-tolerant, without producing a level of political hostility
that increases the degree of prevailing political resistance to combating
corruption
(Doig et al., 2005, 47)

Their failure in resolving the Icarus Paradox seems to be behind the dissolu-
tion of many ACAs, as exemplified by the International Commission against
Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) (Call and Hallock, 2020) and the MACCIH
in Honduras (both of which will be explored in detail in later chapters). Con-
cerning these, Zamudio-González (2020) appropriately assesses that their suc-
cess created the opposition that ultimately brought about their downfall.
Thus, the political dimension of an ACA can be explored to understand the
interests behind its creation, the challenges and opportunities it faces during
the execution of its mandate, and the ultimate reasons for its preservation or
dissolution.
12 Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez
4 The discussions ahead
In the rest of this book, contributors address the history and current state of
ACAs in a number of countries in Latin America, drawing from detailed case
studies to provide a succinct account of the political dynamics that are responsible
for their performance and degrees of success. While the conditions for an effec-
tive ACA are certainly important, as they reflect a number of contextual factors—
for example, economic, cultural, and legal—meaningful to the implementation
of anti-corruption tasks, the chapters ahead look deeper, exploring the politics
behind those organizational weaknesses and strengths. The exploration of indi-
vidual and comparative cases allows the authors to offer a deeper reflection over
the local realities that constrain the work of an ACA, departing from a pure focus
on benchmarking and measuring of indicators, and giving us a look into the rea-
sons for their state: the interests and agendas of stakeholders, the role of civil soci-
ety and the media, the priorities of the staff, the role of supporting agencies, etc.
The cases reviewed in this volume are divided into two sections. The first
focuses on anti-corruption agencies created and managed entirely at the
national level, which represents the most common approach to date. Easing the
reader into the role of anti-corruption agencies, in Chapter 2 Bruce M. Wilson and
Evelyn Villarreal Fernández review the historical experience of dealing with
corruption and anti-corruption in Costa Rica and the efforts of recent govern-
ments to respond to new forms of malfeasance through dedicated institutions.
Reviewing an early comer and loose approach to anti-corruption agencies
in Chapter 3, Patricio Silva provides a critical analysis of the nature and the
achievements of several Presidential Advice Commissions that were established
during the successive Frei, Lagos, and Bachelet administrations in Chile. Turn-
ing to neighboring Argentina, Manuel Balán introduces the reader to the first
fully fledged experience with anti-corruption agencies in Latin America—the
Anti-Corruption Office—in Chapter 4, showing that the agency’s political and
social role has undergone multiple changes over time. In Chapter 5, Sofia Vera
and I provide a brief review of the historical evolution of the anti-corruption
apparatus in Peru and the ways in which popular demands, political support,
and hidden interests impacted its development. Looking at Colombia in Chap-
ter 6, Pablo Sanabria-Pulido and Claudia Avellaneda identify the structure,
capacity, and scope of anti-corruption efforts in this country, as well as the
conditions under which the Colombian ACA emerged and operates. Then,
Fernanda Odilla and Denisse Rodriguez-Olivari explore the creation of the
Brazilian Office of Comptroller General (CGU) and its anti-corruption appa-
ratus in Chapter 7. Next, Bonnie J. Palifka, María de los Ángeles Estrada, and
Ingrid Valeria Galicia González discuss Mexico’s National Anti-Corruption
System (NAS) in Chapter 8, a complex ACA designed in conjunction with
civil society, comprising a national-level committee and 32 state-level com-
mittees. Closing this section, David Arellano-Gault and Gabriel S. Rojas take a
comparative look at Brazil and Mexico in Chapter 9, reviewing their approach
to ACAs as multiorganizational anti-corruption structures.
 Introduction 13
The second section deals with “hybrid” anti-corruption agencies, delegated
with local anti-corruption functions but created by international agreement
and administered by external actors. First, Jeffrey Hallock explores the work
of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and
its indelible mark on the country’s politics in Chapter 10. In Chapter 11, Ana
María Calderón Boy provides an insider’s look at the work of the Mission to
Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH),
describing the characteristics of this international cooperation mechanism as an
effective instrument against corruption. Extracting key lessons from the MAC-
CIH experience in Chapter 12, Charles T. Call offers an insightful review
and commentary to future hybrid ACAs in Latin American and beyond. The
experiences of CICIG and MACCIH cases are taken together and compared in
Chapter 13, where Laura Zamudio-González explains the key factors behind
the origins, evolution, and abandonment of the two hybrid ACAs. Moving on
to El Salvador, in Chapter 14, Úrsula Indacochea and Jessica Estrada address
the political and social contexts in which a new hybrid ACA was born in the
country, as well as the difficult road that remains ahead. Closing this section,
Claudia Escobar Mejía offers a final insider’s look in Chapter 15, this time into
the process of establishing a new hybrid ACA in Ecuador.
Finally, the concluding chapter revisits the key points and lessons discussed
throughout the volume and points out the emergence of an institutional space
reserved for ACAs in Latin America.
Following the earlier structure, the discussions ahead are a political analysis of
the reasons behind ACAs’ performance—as well as success—in Latin America.

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2 Anti-Corruption
Whack-a-Mole
Costa Rica’s de-centralized
agencies and increasingly
sophisticated corruption
Bruce M. Wilson and Evelyn Villarreal Fernández

Introduction
In 2004 Costa Ricans were shocked by a live TV broadcast of a former president1
being arrested, handcuffed, driven off in a police van, and charged with corrup-
tion. Later the same year another former Costa Rican president was similarly
indicted, tried, and sentenced to prison.2 A third former president, José María
Figueres Olsen (1994–1998) of the PLN party, was also implicated in acts of
corruption, but ultimately was not prosecuted due to a lack of evidence (Ruiz
Ramón, 2007). These three events, happening in rapid succession, clashed with
Costa Rica’s well-earned reputation as one of the least corrupt countries in the
Americas,3 where “anticorruption laws are generally well enforced” (Freedom
House, 2020) and are regularly cited as “Good-practices” (IDEA, 2019).4
This presents a paradox of a country with famous anti-corruption agen-
cies co-existing with a series of major corruption scandals (Caryl, 2015) and
a population that believes corruption is a wide-spread problem. On the one
hand, Costa Rica is routinely ranked among the most successful countries
in the Americas in combating corruption. In 2019, a Transparency Interna-
tional survey, Barometer of Corruption in Latin America, reveals only 7% of
Costa Ricans paid a bribe to receive a public service; this is the lowest level
in Latin America.5 Yet, more than 80% of the population still believes that
“corruption in government is a big problem,” 49% think it has increased over
the previous 12 months, and the majority (59%) believe the “government is
doing a bad job at tackling corruption” (Pring and Vrushi, 2019). This chapter
explores this paradox by mapping the historical development of Costa Rica’s
specialized anti-corruption agencies, laws, and initiatives from the immedi-
ate post-independence period with a particular focus on the last 70 years.
Across these different periods it is possible to identify and trace the factors
that helped advanced Costa Rica’s anti-corruption efforts as well as the chal-
lenges of increasingly sophisticated corruption that elicit even stronger anti-
corruption measures. The chapter situates these changes within the country’s
political and historical context to highlight the motivation for and impact of its
anti-corruption successes as well as their unforeseen shortcomings that facilitate
increasingly sophisticated forms of corruption. Unlike its Central American

DOI: 10.4324/9781003147886-3
 Anti-Corruption Whack-a-Mole 17
neighbors, Costa Rica’s anti-corruption initiatives tend to be domestic initia-
tives designed to combat new domestic corruption scandals and are only occa-
sionally direct responses to demand from international agencies.

Context

Costa Rica historical context

As well as its anti-corruption successes, Costa Rica stands out from its neigh-
bors in many political, economic, and social ways. It has, for example, no
standing army, a well-developed and funded social welfare system that includes
universal health care, pensions, and free education that helped it achieve social
and economic development levels on par with those of many developed coun-
tries (OECD, 2017; Rodriguez et al., 2018). Indeed, the Bertelsmann Status
index (2021) consistently ranks Costa Rica third in Latin America and as the
only “consolidated democracy” in Central America. IDEA (2020) concludes
that “Costa Rica presents a case of high-performing democratic endurance in
a democratically weak subregion (Central America).”
Costa Rica, though, did not always perform so well. During the colonial
period, Costa Rica was a poor, remote, corner of the Spanish empire where
public office was routinely sold to the highest bidder (Creedman, 1991, 234), a
practice that blurred public function with private benefit. The country’s politi-
cal life was as undemocratic as the rest of Central America and not an idyllic
democracy often retold in political hagiographies (Molina, 1989).6 Indeed, it
was not until 1889 that a defeated incumbent presidential voluntarily relin-
quished office (Salazar, 1990; Molina and Lehoucq, 1999). Even after that elec-
tion until the end of the country’s final dictatorship in 1919, political power
was more likely to come through military force than through democratic means
(Wilson, 1998). As a result, the post-independence period was characterized by
presidents taking office by undemocratic means and frequently using that office
to build personal fortunes.
Costa Rica’s modern democracy and the foundations of its economic, social,
and political successes are generally agreed to have been born out of the tur-
moil of the 1948 civil war, the immediate post-war political settlement, and
cemented by the promulgation of the 1949 Constitution. The 1953 elections
were the country’s first free, fair elections under the supervision and control of
the newly created Supreme Elections Tribunal (Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones,
TSE) (Wilson, 1998, 47). It marked the successful end to the pre-Civil War
electoral fraud and helped restored citizens’ faith in democracy and the electoral
process over the next 17 elections held regularly every four years.

Advancing Costa Rica’s anti-corruption effectiveness

Previous work illustrates the slow transformation and consolidation of Costa
Rica’s anti-corruption institutions as responses to different waves of corruption
scandals (Wilson, 2011; Wilson, 2014; Wilson and Villarreal, 2017). Most of the
18 Bruce M. Wilson and Evelyn Villarreal Fernández
major scandals resulted in renewed efforts by the state to combat the latest corrupt
practices and helped move the country closer to “ethical universalism” (Mungiu-
Pippidi and Johnson, 2017, 19–20). The state’s response with new rules, laws,
and agencies further restricted known types of corrupt practices and spawned
new rounds of more sophisticated corruption practices to circumvent the newly
created rules. Over the last 100 years, at least four distinct periods of anti-
corruption institutionalization can be identified as delineated in Table 2.1.
The first period accounts for the first half of the 20th century. In 1917,
General Federico Tinoco engineered a coup d’état and led a despotic, corrupt

Table 2.1 Anti-corruption agencies and periods

Period Characteristics Institutions & legislation

First half of 20th Legal controls, entities 1937 Judicial Branch

century within the Executive, 1871 Political Constitution
beginning of the Rule of 1879 y 1937 Ley Orgánica del
Law consolidation process. Poder Judicial
1922 Control Office (Presidency),
then in 1945 Control Centre
(Legislative dependency)
From 1949 to 1980s: Financial and legal controls Two specialized institutions for that
Specialized ACAs Highly dependent on purpose: General Comptroller
the executive for Office (Contraloría General de la
appointments and budget. República, CGR)
Had limited powers. General Attorney Office
(Procuraduría General de la
República, PGR).
Banks Audit—belonged to the
Central Bank.
National Electricity Service (SNE).
Transition period: New legal framework Human Rights Office (1984), the
1980s, 1990s includes more powerful Constitutional Court (1989),
mechanisms and a General Audit of Financial
significant expansion in Institutions (AGEF, 1988),
the subjects under control, National Committee in Defense
from human rights to of the Consumer Rights (1994),
environment protection Regulator Authority of Public
and corruption. More Services (1996), Ombudsman
independence, more (1994), superintendents (1995
technical appointments, and 1998), internal comptrollers
informatization, etc. (1996), etc.
Consolidation period: Consolidation of the new Law of Financial Management and
from 2000 to 2020 institutional framework Public Budget (2002), the Law
Dedicated ACAs, and the efforts to enforce of Internal Controls (2002) and
internal control, the legislation created the Law against Corruption and
judicial role. in the previous period. Illicit Enrichment in the Public
Increase in budget and Sector (2004). Fiscalía Penal de
personnel. Citizen Hacienda y Función Pública and
participation. then Public Ethic Office.
 Anti-Corruption Whack-a-Mole 19
administration that was overthrown two years later, becoming Costa Rica’s last
military dictator (Fernández, 2010). The new government introduced reforms
to tackle Tinoco’s corruption, including an independent Budget Comptrol-
ler’s Office (Oficina de Control) with power to audit all government spending
and contracts: a major step in limiting a president’s capacity to control public
finances and engage in corruption (Wilson and Villarreal, 2017, 192). Other
significant reforms included judicial reforms to remove all Tinoco-appointed
Supreme Court justices; Their replacements were granted life tenure, which gave
the courts a new level of political autonomy from the executive branch. This was
further strengthened in 1937 with the formalization of the separation of powers
in the Organic Law of the Judicial Branch (Ley Orgánica del Poder Judicial), judi-
cial review powers, and complete control over the judicial branch. The law also
created a judicial audit agency, the Judicial Inspection (Inspección Judicial) situated
within the judicial branch (PEN, 2015; Cascante, 2014). Taken together, these
measures further enhanced the professionalism of the judicial branch, cemented
the separation of powers, and afforded the court an accountability function it
could use to referee the actions of other branches of government.

Civil War and the modern state: the first independent ACAs
The second period, perhaps the most significant epoch in modern Costa Rican
political history, spans the period from the buildup to and fallout from the
1948 Civil War. The factors leading up to the war are well documented else-
where (Lehoucq and Molina, 1999), but in short, most explanations point to
the National Republican Party’s domination of national politics, its increasing
reliance on electoral fraud, and endemic government corruption (Cerdas-Cruz,
1992, 284–285) as the underlying causes. The war itself was short-lived but
resulted in a series of major institutional reforms to stamp out electoral fraud and
prevent the return of corrupt caudillo politics. In the immediate post-war period,
an interim Junta supervised the promulgation of a constitution that crafted the
new rules of politics. First, it weakened the Presidential office transferring many
of its powers to other branches of government, limiting presidential re-election,
creating new accountability institutions to fight corruption, and restricting the
actions of the executive, legislature, and bureaucracy to constitutional limits.
It also further professionalized the civil service and created the country’s first
“modern accountability mechanisms,” including many with remits to thwart a
return to the pre-civil war period by limiting the opportunities for politicians
and/or government officials to engage in corrupt acts (Wilson and Villarreal,
2017). The new institutions can be considered the first real, dedicated anti-
corruption agencies (ACAs) in Costa Rica and included the Comptroller Gen-
eral’s Office (Contraloría General de la República, CGR), an Attorney General’s
Office (Procuraduría General de la República, PGR), and an audit agency for the
newly nationalized state-owned agencies including the banking sector. In 1950,
a new law Ley No. 1166, Declaración de bienes de los funcionarios públicos (Declara-
tion of Public Officials’ Assets) required senior public employees to report their
20 Bruce M. Wilson and Evelyn Villarreal Fernández
assets annually to a state monitoring agency. The accuracy of this reporting
depended entirely on the honesty of the individual public employee, as no par-
allel state agency was created to monitor and audit the reports. Further weak-
nesses included that these declarations were not, and are still not, made public,
and that the highest level public officials and the judiciary were excluded from
the law’s reporting requirements (Wilson and Villarreal, 2017).7
Compounding the weakness of these accountability agencies was their
organizational home within the executive branch, their lack of specialization in
tackling corruption, and their general dearth of resources. Two contemporary
studies of the Comptroller General’s Office found that its remit included audit-
ing all 80 municipalities in the country and hundreds of public agencies but
employed only 25 staff members (Hernández, 1977; Vincenti, 1977; Huertas
and Rojas, 1998). Consequently, annual audit reports took two to four years to
complete, rendering their use as an anti-corruption tool ineffective (Wilson and
Villarreal, 2017, 196; World Bank, 2021). Other reforms included a Criminal
Procedure Code (1970), the General Law for Public Management (1978), the
consolidation of existing state investigative bodies, and their relocation from the
executive to the judicial branch. This relocation gave the Fiscalía the necessary
freedom and institutional independence to pursue corruption cases, even when
they involved senior politicians and public officials.

Electoral corruption
A major accomplishment of the new 1949 Constitution was to reign in elec-
toral corruption through the creation of a new, quasi-fourth branch of state, the
Supreme Elections Tribunal (Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones, TSE).8 The TSE is
widely respected as an effective referee of elections and maintains a level play-
ing field for political parties and supervises all Costa Rican elections, which are
ranked among the cleanest and freest in the Americas (Freedom House, 2020;
IDEA, 2020; Economist, 2021). The TSE enjoys political autonomy through
the appointment mechanism for its magistrates, and financial autonomy
afforded by a constitutionally guaranteed fixed funding level that cannot be
altered by Congress.9 According to the Global State of Democracy 2019, Costa
Rica’s democratic performance “has been consistently high for four decades”
and exhibits “the highest levels of Representative Government in the world,
with the maximum score” (IDEA, 2020). Yet, despite the well-funded, political
autonomy of the TSE, it has occasionally stumbled in its attempts to control
a key source of illegal influence: external campaign finance (Global Integrity,
2007, 36; Casas-Zamora, 2005, 2016; García and Villarreal, 2019). The dif-
ficulties of preventing illegal funding flooding into political parties’ coffers is
“one of the single biggest challenges” facing all democratic states, including
Costa Rica (Hamada, 2018). A couple of examples of political finance scan-
dals over the years illustrate the problem: In the 1980s, Oscar Arias Sánchez’s
successful presidential campaign was accused of smuggling $750,000 in drug
cartel-tainted money to support his first election campaign (El Tiempo, 1992),
 Anti-Corruption Whack-a-Mole 21
and in the early 2000s, President Abel Pacheco’s (2002–2006) campaign was
accused of illegal solicitation of large sums of money from international com-
panies (Global Integrity, 2007, 3–4) (La Nación, 2003). As a result, in 2009 the
Electoral Code (Código Electoral Ley 8765, articles 123 and 128) was reformed
to enhance the TSE audit powers of campaign expenses and banned campaign
contributions from companies and non-citizens. But, even with these tighter
controls, major loopholes remain, including political parties’ legal right to raise
funds by selling bonds to companies whose real owners can remain anony-
mous (BTI Foundation, 2012). Ironically, in the first general election after the
campaign funding reforms, TSE audits resulted in campaign finance charges
against nearly all the parties that contested the 2010 election, and after the 2018
campaign, the TSE 13 political parties (Pomareda, 2020) were investigated, and
judicial processes initiated against five (Muñoz, 2020).

Changing role of the media

A major improvement in monitoring and investigating alleged corrupt acts by
elected officials and public employees was unrelated to any government anti-
corruption initiatives. Instead, it was changes in restrictive press laws, the emer-
gence of watchdog journalism, and the rise of social media that permitted the
media to function as a fourth estate. Newspapers, TV, radio, and more recently
social media became increasingly accessible, assertive, willing and able to investi-
gate powerful people and institutions and to report on their stories freely. In part
this was facilitated by the demise of the 1902 Printing Press Law that severely
restricted what journalists could publish and held them and their publishers
criminally liable for even unintentional reporting errors. By the beginning of
the 21st century, the law’s impact was undercut by an Inter-American Court
of Human Rights decision that held the law incompatible with the American
Convention of Human Rights.10 The law ultimately ruled unconstitutional by
the Constitutional Chamber in 2010. In the mid-1990s, for example, journal-
ists were fired for publishing a story detailing apparent financial irregularities by
President José Figueres (1994–1998), but no formal investigation of the sub-
stance of the accusations was carried out (Gudmundson, 1996, 80).
As a result of the loosening restrictions, starting in the early 2000s a core of
journalists working within a new investigative unit at the national daily news-
paper, La Nación, began using new, data-driven techniques to assess the impact
of a government anti-poverty program. Their investigation quickly revealed
that some recipients were well-placed politicians rather than the intended tar-
get (Caryl, 2015). The data analytical tools used in this investigation were at
the center of revealing the major corruption scandals referenced in this chap-
ter’s introduction that shattered the country’s decades old two-party political
system. A more recent scandal, the Cementazo, also started with reports in digi-
tal news media on CRHoy.com in 2014, but the General Prosecutor’s Office
dismissed an official investigation. In 2017, the media uncovered more facts
including the involvement of judicial authorities in the scandal, including the
22 Bruce M. Wilson and Evelyn Villarreal Fernández
general prosecutor who resigned; his replacement reopened the official investi-
gation. The rise of the Internet and social media greatly “helped democratize
access to information, notably through the creation of alternative news outlets
and blogs” (IDEA, 2020, 142) and as noted by Alejandro Urbina, the former
editor-in-chief of La Nación, the media has made it “much harder to keep a
corrupt act secret; therefore, it’s much harder to be a corrupt public servant
today than it was 15 years ago” (Caryl, 2015, 7).

Specialized accountability institutions, 1980s–1990s

Despite the accomplishments of the CGR, PGR, TSE, and the Constitutional
Court acting as anti-corruption agencies, new areas of corruption developed
outside their legal remits, which led to the opening of the third period noted in
Table 2.1. The third period began in the 1980s and 1990s with a wave of cor-
ruption scandals that pushed the state to create new institutions and to strength-
ening existing specialized accountability institutions, including the legislative
assembly’s efforts to reanimate existing moribund investigative committees that
were created by the 1949 Constitution. One major scandal, the bankruptcy of
the largest state-owned bank (Banco Anglo Costarricense, BAC) in 1994, illus-
trates the political roots of corruption in Costa Rica. Raventós (2004) observes
that the two-party system allowed a high degree of discretionary power and
focuses on the autonomous institutions, where controls and accountability are
enfeebled by hierarchical structures that defer to partisan loyalties.
In 1998, an anti-drug trafficking and money laundering law created the
Costa Rican Anti-Drug Institute that was later reformed to include terrorism
and related activities (Ley 8204). But as already noted about other institutions
created in the mid-fifties, a repeated problem during this period was a contin-
ued lack of specialization and resources dedicated to institutions with an anti-
corruption remit (Barahona, 2004; Vargas-Cullell et al., 2001). In 1989, a new
Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court was created, and although it
was not specifically designed to be an anti-corruption institution, its extensive
review powers have been used to limit the abuse of power by public officials
and politicians (Gloppen et al., 2010). The court’s jurisprudence also expands
existing anti-corruption laws including by widening the interpretation of
Article 281(a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP) that requires public
officials to report to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) all cases of prosecut-
able offences (including corruption) that they become aware of in their official
function (Decision No. 2015–10254). Even so, a 2018 OECD report notes that
in practice the level of certainty to report a crime was too high, leaving many
suspicious cases unreported, which is compounded by a lack of a whistle-
blower protection law (OECD, 2018).

Dedicated anti-corruption institutions in the 21st century

The fourth final period has been characterized by the consolidation of institu-
tional and legal frameworks created in the earlier periods, starting with a 2000
 Anti-Corruption Whack-a-Mole 23
constitutional reform that included for the first time the principle of account-
ability (rendición de cuentas) as a mandatory duty for all public servants. This
creation of accountability mechanisms took place during a period of political
party instability during which the two-party political system transitioned into
a multiparty system where no party has been able to secure a congressional
majority. The new party system saw the rise of smaller king-maker parties that
together helped create a political environment with more veto players in the
law-making process, which has resulted in a logjam of congressional activity
and a deterioration of public policies (PEN, 2004).
One positive aspect of this mistrust among politicians has been more sophis-
ticated, improved controls on public administration and the creation of the
first dedicated anti-corruption agencies (ACAs): in 2002 the Fiscalía Penal de
Hacienda y Función Pública, Fapta)11 within the General Prosecutor Office, and
in the same year, the Public Ethics Office (Procuraduría de la Ética Pública, PEP)
created within the General Attorney Office, PGR. These ACAs, along with
ten years of Constitutional Court jurisprudence and a massive popular march
against corruption (Por la Dignidad Nacional), resulted in the passing of four
significant pieces of accountability legislation: The Law of Financial Manage-
ment and Public Budget (LAFPP, Spanish abbreviation, approved in 2002), the
Law of Internal Controls (2002), the law of citizen protection against excessive
administrative procedures (2002), and the Law against Corruption and Illicit
Enrichment in the Public Sector (2004), and the reform to include account-
ability principle in Article 11 of the Constitution (2000). Nowadays most
of these norms require updating or regulations to improve their compliance
(Saborío, 2004). For example, the control institutions unanimously presented
an integral reform to the Law against Corruption in 2014, but the Congress
elected to ignore the reports. In response to previous budget shortages for
accountability agencies, the first decade of the 21st century saw an increase in
personnel and real operating budgets that has resulted in a significant increase
in citizens’ denouncements of corruption to these institutions.

Public Ethics Office (PEP): a multi-purpose mandate without resources

The Public Ethics Office, created in 2002, was a specific mandate from the
National Agreement Process (Concertación Nacional). This dialogue process
tried to generate a program for a more open and competitive economy, includ-
ing the opening of some state-control markets (Mideplan, 1998). The PEP
became operational in 2004 when a Sala Constitutional holding mandated
sufficient resources for the functioning of the office. That was the same year
that the scandals involving the former presidents became public. PEP-wide
tasks are to prevent, detect, and eradicate corruption and to promote integrity
and transparency within the public sector (Law No. 8242). The PEP enjoys
functional autonomy, but because it is located within the Attorney General’s
Office—appointed by the president and approved by Congress—there is a sig-
nificant risk to the PEP’s independence, and actually is not considered within
the president’s cabinet, thus it has no public policy initiative.12 The PEP four
24 Bruce M. Wilson and Evelyn Villarreal Fernández
main functions include 1) criminal prosecution of corruption cases; 2) resolve
direct citizen claims and to initiate administrative sanctioning procedure; 3)
educate, train, and increase public awareness; and 4) represent Costa Rica in
international and multilateral forums. Most of the PEP’s resources, though, are
used to investigate citizens’ accusations and generate non-compulsory resolu-
tions, which it must transfer to relevant agencies to investigate and act on the
complaint since it has no sanctioning powers. While it is unclear what receiv-
ing agencies do with the PEP resolutions, in some high-profile cases13 where
the PEP recommended administrative sanctions, no action was taken. Table 2.2
reveals a 60% increase in the number of PEP-resolved cases over the last five
years, but approximately 40% of those cases were concluded by simply dismiss-
ing the case (PGR, 2020b).
The impact of the PEP is difficult to quantify; in 2019, only 12 cases became
criminal procedures, although significantly higher than the four cases concluded in
2011, the conclusion rate remained low. Much of the PEP’s time is consumed with
its work helping the prosecutor in high-profile criminal processes. An innovative
part of that task has been calculating the “social damages” of corruption, which is
labeled a good practice in the international system (PGR, n.d.; PGR 2020a). This
can impose a fine or “community service” to reimburse the approximate cost of
moral, image, or political impacts of a particular corruption case (see Table 2.3).

Table 2.2 Public Ethics Office cases, 2014–2019

Current status 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Admission 3 1 1
Preliminary investigation 16 53 68 88 122 165
Appeals 4 1 1 4
Other 2 2 3 11 17
Concluded* 99 113 110 87 98 122
Total 120 172 180 180 231 308
Source: PGR, 2020b
* This includes resolutions that are Resolución (dismissed), Informe (Report), Recomendación (Rec-
ommendation), and inicio de denuncia penal (initiation of criminal complaint).

Table 2.3 Examples of PEP social damage fines

Year Proceedings Area of corruption Social Damages Fine (US $)

2006 06–16713–42-PE BERTHIER EBI, S.A. $19,083

2004 04–7707–647-PE INA—CMH $524,376
2004 04–5356–647-PE CCSS—Fischel $639,981
2005 05–37–618-PE Fischel R.—Tributario $8,019,841
2004 04–6835–647-PE ICE—ALCATEL $13,324,451
Source: Feingeblatt, 2019.
 Anti-Corruption Whack-a-Mole 25
A significant innovation has been the founding of a multi-actor group led by
the PEP that created the first National Strategy of Integrity and Anticorruption
(ENIPC, 2020), the PEP’s first attempt to promote a public policy tool focused
on its preventive function. Despite that initiative, a major weakness of the
PEP remains its role promoting prevention and citizen education about cor-
ruption, which has limited public activities or citizen participation (Costa Rica
Íntegra, 2012). A recent report by the Follow-Up Mechanism for the Imple-
mentation of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption (MESICIC)
notes that ordinary citizens are unfamiliar with the PEP’s work, which is likely
related to the lack of a widely available annual report,14 a dissemination strat-
egy, or any social media presence. As of April 2020, the PEP is the closest to
a dedicated ACA, but the institution has yet to fulfill the UNCAC-mandated
requirement to create a specialized, autonomous entity that oversees the anti-
corruption agenda. First, the PEP’s remit does not give it the legal authority to
coordinate the state’s anti-corruption efforts. Second, being part of the Gen-
eral Attorney Office, and by extension, the Justice Ministry, its political and
administrative autonomy is potentially compromised. Finally, as noted by the
MESICIC report, the PEP lacks sufficient specialized personnel and resources
to fulfill competently all its legal mandates including prevention, investigation,
sanction, and education against corruption (Ibid).

Anti-corruption Fiscalía (Fapta)

Before 2002, the Judicial branch housed the office Unidad de Delitos Económicos,
in charge of cases of economic malfeasances including fraud, tax evasion, and
corruption. After 2002, following the National Concertation recommenda-
tions, a new law established the anti-corruption Fiscalía that includes one office
specialized in tax evasion and another for corruption. In 2010, following the
creation of a special jurisdiction of fiscal and economic crime, the general pros-
ecutor reorganized the Fapta (MP, Circular 03-PPP-2010. Between 2005 and
2018, this anti-corruption office’s staff increased from 19 to 26, which is only
4% of the 583 prosecutors employed by the Fiscalía (PEN, 2020). The general
prosecutor determines how to organize the different and specialized offices, to
appoint the lead prosecutors, and to monitor their performance. At the same
time, the general prosecutor is appointed by the Supreme Court to renewable
four-year terms, which could potentially reduce the investigative independence
of the prosecutor’s office and could result in the Supreme Court appointing
a general prosecutor who has little interest in prioritizing that office’s anti-
corruption efforts.
The 26 prosecutors must investigate all crimes against public duties across
Costa Rica, from the smallest local government to the largest autonomous
institutions, and more than 400 public entities. The specialized nature of the
investigations has pushed up the costs considerably. In 2017, to better serve
outlying parts of the country, Fapta opened seven regional offices that currently
account for almost half of all new cases filed. In 2018, for example, Fapta’s 26
26 Bruce M. Wilson and Evelyn Villarreal Fernández
prosecutors investigated 563 new cases, an average of more than 21 cases per
prosecutor, not including the 17 cases per prosecutor that were carried over
from the previous year. In the same year, 20% of the cases finally reached the
trial process (PEN, 2020). A worrying trend is captured in Figure 2.1, which
shows an increasing inclination to reject cases (desestimaciones and sobreseimien-
tos) due to lack of proof or crime classification. For the first time, a study
from the State of the Nation Program (2020), based on a sample of cases from
Fapta, showed that only 7% of the cases completed in 2017 were sentenced and
only half of those resulted in guilty sentences. Despite the guilty sentences, no
defendant has served time in prison; instead, they have tended to receive lesser
sanctions (Ibid).
Additionally, there is the challenge of providing specialized resources for the
Judiciary to prosecute political corruption. These crimes are very sophisticated
in terms of social networks, financial transfers, international actors, etc., and
thus require specialized professionals with specific skills. A lack of resources for
transportation, computers and software, etc., present very real limitations for
the general performance of these offices (NCSC, 2018; PEN, 2020).
The Judiciary’s agenda already included some anti-corruption programs, but
as with other state institutions, they lack the necessary budget and specialized
personnel. It was only after the Cementazo scandal that the Supreme Court
approved a package of measures to strengthen their internal bodies to prevent

Figure 2.1 Fapta cases closed by type during preparatory stage,a/ 2015–2018
Fuente: Authors’ own elaboration with data from Fapta, 2019.
a/Not including cases referred to other jurisdictions.
b/“Others” category groups the closed issues by accumulation, opportunity criteria, and alternative
measures.
 Anti-Corruption Whack-a-Mole 27
corruption, including the Fapta, the new investigative police force (OIJ, Organ-
ismo de Investigación Judicial) anti-corruption unit and the Compliance Official
(PEN, 2020, Chapter 2).

Recent scandals, recent responses

The most recent high-profile corruption scandal, the Cementazo, was revealed
in 2017 by investigative journalists rather than state anti-corruption agencies.
The scandal was a brazen, illegal business deal involving the complicit actions
of more than 30 people serving at the highest levels in all three branches of
the state. The scandal revealed a weakness of Costa Rica’s anti-corruption
measures and the importance of having removed restrictions on investigative
journalists (Freedom House, 2020). At the core of the scandal was a scam to
defraud a state-owned bank (Banco de Costa Rica, BCR) of $39 million by
a well-connected real estate developer, Juan Carlos Bolaños. For the scheme
to work, government functionaries had to bend rules or look the other way.
Political pressure and favors to politicians helped secure a congressional waiver
to allow the importation of tons of previously prohibited Chinese cement.
Unguaranteed loans from BCR that failed to follow its own lending protocols
were secured for more than $30 million. Over the course of the investigation,
officials from all three branches of government were implicated, including a
Supreme Court magistrate, the general prosecutor (Fiscal General), the board of
directors of the BCR, the vice minister of finance, and members of Congress.
After social medial publicized the apparent crime, a major judicial investiga-
tion was launched against more than 20 public officials involved; many are still
pending a final resolution. All the implicated ministers, advisors, and magis-
trates were forced to leave office, some retired early, others sanctioned or fired.
As with earlier corruption scandals, the Costa Rican state responded with
legal remedies. Congress created a special investigative commission that pro-
duced a wide-ranging, damning final report on the Cementazo. An overwhelm-
ing majority of Congress voted in January 2018 to accept the report and its
recommendations. The report accelerated long-waiting promises to expand the
Code of Conflict of Interest to the judiciary and the creation of a special anti-
corruption unit in the judicial police (OIJ) and a Compliance Official in the
Judiciary (PEN, 2020). In 2019, Congress passed a new law to strengthen the
existing Law against Corruption and Illicit Enrichment in the Public Service
(Araya Montezuma, 2019) (Law No. 9699).
While the Cementazo investigations continue to run their legal course, Costa
Rica, as a candidate to join the OECD, must meet key standards in its efforts
to fight corruption and bribery. In 2020 the OECD applauded Costa Rica’s
efforts to implement corporate liability laws but voiced “serious concerns”
about the country’s initiatives to detect and enforce laws on foreign bribery, its
failure to enact a “whistleblower” law (OCED, 2020), and the fact that between
2016 and 2018 only 2% of Costa Rican businesses were externally audited,
which makes identifying and prosecuting foreign bribery almost impossible
28 Bruce M. Wilson and Evelyn Villarreal Fernández
(OECD, 2020, 24). Most recent data show that between 2016 and 2019 only
two bribery investigations were initiated against Costa Rican companies oper-
ating abroad, neither resulting in a criminal prosecution (Transparency Inter-
national Secretariat, 2013; Transparency International, 2020).

Conclusion
The Economist (June 4, 2016) suggests that, perhaps, the resolution to the para-
dox of Costa Rica’s anti-corruption performance and its citizens’ poor per-
ception of that performance is because “the world often becomes aware of
corruption when someone is doing something about it. That leads people to
conclude that things are getting worse when they are, in fact, getting better.”
The Costa Rican case, though, appears more complex: there have indeed been
significant advances in the state’s anti-corruption capacity, but in a reactive
rather than proactive manner, with chronic paucity of resources, and focused
on high-profile cases revealed in the media.
Costa Rica’s legal and institutional anti-corruption framework has been
developed in a piecemeal fashion over many decades and was part of the coun-
try’s political journey to becoming one of the more consolidated democracies
in the Americas, a high level of respect for the rule of law, and a functioning sys-
tem of government with built-in checks and balances. New, stronger responses
to particularism by public officials tended to be responses to major scandals,
the scandals then acting as catalysts for new state action against corruption. But
corruption in recent decades has become increasingly sophisticated, requir-
ing the state to take a fuller, more active supervising, and investigating role.
Journalist and social media have similarly learned new investigative techniques
to identify graft and now enjoy better legal protections to write and publish
stories about corruption that have led to a series of major investigations by the
state’s institutions.
This chapter argues that the Costa Rica’s anti-corruption agencies and regu-
lations have expanded considerably, but they still lack an explicit, dedicated
anti-corruption focus and still lack the necessary expert personnel and budg-
ets. It is perhaps indicative that the most recent National Development Plan
fails to mention corruption or detail any strategy to combat it. Corruption
remains the only issue public opinion routinely includes as one of the top
five national problems that does not have a designated institution and tools to
address it. In parallel, the executive branch has no dedicated entity in charge
of its anti-corruption efforts, there is no official cabinet member charged with
this remit, and because of this institutional lacuna, no public policy, strategy,
or framework has been created to deal with corruption. Of all the government
agencies and institutions, only PEP and Fapta could be considered dedicated
anti-corruption agencies, but both are situated within other parts of the state’s
control institutions (PGR and MP), which does little to guarantee the inde-
pendence needed to prosecute public officials. That is one possible explanation
to understand why the citizen perception is so negative about the state’s efforts
 Anti-Corruption Whack-a-Mole 29
to combating corruption. Watchdog media and citizen monitoring have been
crucial to explain the rise of this subject in the public agenda, but there is a
pressing need to further involve civil society and the business sector in the
discussion.
The history of Costa Rica is marked by gradualism, rather than radical change.
Usually in Costa Rica, sustainable change has occurred in a very gradual man-
ner, and the creation of a strong anti-corruption structure and ACAs reflect
this characteristic. The creation of dedicated ACAs provoked by corruption
scandals at the beginning of the current century created a popular demand for
transparency and ethics in the government. This caused an intense modification
of the institutional framework (creating institutions, control mechanisms, and
felonies) to fight against corruption and promote transparency. This has taken
almost two decades and remains incomplete. Law proposals waiting in the Leg-
islative could foster that trend such as the integral reform to the Law Against
Corruption, National Strategy of Integrity and Anticorruption (ENIPC), Pub-
lic Procurement new law, etc., but most of them are law proposal in a complex
legislative scenario. If they are approved by Congress, the agencies would likely
face the same resource scarcity experienced by existing agencies. Indeed, the
ongoing economic crisis compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic will likely
worsen the impecunious situation of the state and its anti-corruption agencies.

Notes
1 President Miguel Ángel Rodríguez (1998–2002) was briefly OAS General Secretary.
His trial ended in 2016 with an acquittal.
2 Former President Rafael Angel Calderón was charged with corruption in 2009. Several
charges were dismissed, but he ultimately served three years of house arrest (Villarreal,
2006).
3 Costa Rica is consistently ranked as the least corrupt country in Central America and
the third least corrupt in Latin America (Transparency International, 2020).
4 The most recent scandal, discussed later, was uncovered in 2017, the “Cementazo,”
and involved politicians, bankers, a sitting president, and a Supreme Court magistrate,
among other high-place public officials.
5 This was a significant drop from the 2017 survey where 24% reported paying a bribe.
6 For the case against the rural democracy thesis, see Gudmundson, 1983; Wilson, 1998,
9–39.
7 In 2004, ley #8422, expanded the existing law to include magistrates and judges.
8 The TSE has three full-time magistrates elected to 6-year, renewable terms by a two-thirds
majority vote of the Supreme Court. Constitution Articles 100–101 increases this number
before elections. Sitting magistrates can only be removed by a two-thirds vote of the full
Supreme Court (Constitutional Articles 99–104); TSE Organic Law (Ley No. 3504).
9 Constitution Article 97 limits Congress’s legislative authority on electoral issues in the
six months before and four months after an election.
10 Sentencia de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos de 2 de julio de 2004. HU Vs.
C. R. The 2010 Sala IV decision was expected since the court routinely accepts IACtHR
holdings as binding on Costa Rica.
11 Currently known as the Fiscalía Adjunta de Probidad, Transparencia y Anticorrupción (Fapta).
12 In 2015, a law was proposed to transfer this appointment power to the Congress. Expe-
dientes N° 19.460, Proyecto de Ley Adición de un artículo 35 bis de la Ley Orgánica de
30 Bruce M. Wilson and Evelyn Villarreal Fernández
la Procuraduría General de la República, Ley n.o 6815, de 22 de setiembre de 1982, y
sus reformas, Asamblea Legislativa, Comisión de Asuntos Jurídicos, 2 de febrero de 2015.
13 A description of the two high-profile cases can be found at: https://iij.ucr.ac.cr/wp-
content/uploads/bsk-pdf-manager/evelyn_lopez_guerrero_y_yariela_delgado_rodri-
guez_tesis_completa_128.pdf
14 The PEP report is a just a small subsection of the Attorney General’s annual report.

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3 Combating corruption
in Chile
The Presidential Advisory
Commissions on public probity,
1994–2015
Patricio Silva

Introduction
Chile has been historically characterized for having high standards of public
probity. Sufficient to say that since its independence of Spain in 1818 until the
fall of the Allende government in 1973, no Chilean president or their govern-
ments had ever been formally or indirectly accused of corrupt practices (Silva,
2016). This exceptional tradition of public integrity was abruptly interrupted
by the military regime (1973–1990). Pinochet became the first Chilean presi-
dent who enriched himself during his mandate. During his authoritarian rule,
the main political and institutional mechanisms that had traditionally protected
public probity were deactivated.1 Following democratic restoration in 1990,
all these institutions and actors did gradually resume their role to oversight the
integrity of the public institutions. In this way, in post-authoritarian Chile,
the theme of corruption was for many years almost totally absent in the public
debate and the governmental policy agenda. However, since the early 2000s
a series of corruption scandals alerted both the governments and the public
opinion about the real dangers posed by this social scourge. A general aware-
ness emerged about the need to halt the further propagation of corrupt prac-
tices within the state institutions and in society at large. This has resulted in
the adoption of a series of legal and administrative measures against corruption
which are among the most comprehensive and toughest in Latin America.
Since 1990, Chilean presidents have created several ad hoc Presidential Advi-
sory Commissions (PACs).2 These temporary commissions have been mandated
to make recommendations to the president in a specific field of policymaking
(such as child protection, higher education, and public probity, among others).
Many of these recommendations have been incorporated in law proposals that
have been later voted in the Parliament.
Independently of the effectiveness of the PACs, the use of this mechanism of
public deliberation by the executive has not been free of criticism. These com-
missions have been questioned in Chile for their alleged elitist nature and the
lack of citizens’ representation among their members. According to some, these
commissions are simply an expression of the strong technocratic orientation

DOI: 10.4324/9781003147886-4
34 Patricio Silva
characterizing Chilean governments (Farías, 2008). Most of these commissions
possess indeed a strong technical profile as many of their members have been
chosen because of their expertise on a particular field of knowledge. Thus, the
PACs have often been questioned as they show a clear supremacy of expertise
over civil society’s voices, and because their members have been chosen by a
discretional decision taken by the president.
In the field of public probity, several Chilean presidents have also decided
to locate the formulation of anti-corruption policies in Presidential Advisory
Commissions. In this chapter I analyse four Presidential Advisory Commissions
that since 1994 have been established for this purpose. These commissions have
been created in response to a major scandal which has impacted the public
opinion. Attention is given to the specific political context in which these
PACs were established, their key features, as well as their main achievements
and limitations.

The Presidential Advisory Commissions: expertise versus

representation?
Until now the study of Presidential Advisory Commissions has not found a
fertile soil among political scientists. This is partly the result of the fact that
these commissions are mostly short-lived and are frequently surrounded by a
dense curtain of secrecy. As discussions conducted within those commissions
are generally confidential, scholars can hardly catch a glimpse of their internal
dynamics. The use of this consultation mechanism has also generated suspicion
and distrust among people about the presidents’ true motives to delegate pow-
ers to these advisory commissions and their effectivity (Tutchings, 1979). As
Zegart points out:

for most, the term “presidential commission” conjures up a particular

image: a blue ribbon panel of distinguished civilians, appointed directly by
the president, that defuses, deflects, or delays presidential action on some
controversial domestic issue without producing much in the way of sub-
stantive policy change
(2004, 366–367)

The fact that most of the CAPs are constituted by experts has also proved to
be controversial. Their presence is mostly justified as representing a guarantee
for the adoption of realistic and balanced recommendations based on the mem-
bers’ academic knowledge about the topic in question. By the same token, the
presence of members of political parties or representatives of interest groups in
those commissions is often seen as contra-productive. It could lead to an unde-
sirable politicization of the issue under scrutiny that can undermine the cred-
ibility of their work (Weingart, 1999, 151). Today, almost no one rejects the
idea that experts have to play an important role in these advisory commissions.
However, there is a growing demand for finding ways to incorporate voices
 Combating corruption in Chile 35
coming from civil society in their midst. The idea is that this could provide a
better balance in terms of the points of view represented in those commissions
(Brown, 2008, 548).
Fischer (2009) has explored several instruments that could help to close the
gap between experts and citizens in the policy-making process, as a way to
strengthen democratic governance. However, he stresses the point that a strong
democracy would not require participatory discussion of every issue. As he
argues

in significant part, the decision to deliberate or delegate would depend on

the nature of the issue or problem itself. In some cases, traditional patterns
of expertise may be fully consistent with the nature of particular forms of
problem-solving. In other cases, problem-solving might be collaborative
but not altogether democratic.
(2009, 45)

The complex and contentious nature of the corruption issue has often led
to the conformation of commissions based mainly on expertise. However, this
does not necessarily mean that any form of collaborative endeavour with voices
from civil society must be discarded. The principle of ‘embedded autonomy’
introduced by Evans can be illuminating to this respect. In his view, the deci-
sion-making of experts requires to be embedded in society. This means that
experts have to be in touch with the real world and construct some type of
communication channels with diverse stakeholders in the policy field they are
taking decisions. But at the same time, the experts should preserve their auton-
omy from these interest groups when making their final decisions. This is to
avoid being captured by them (Evans, 1995, 59). As I have argued elsewhere,
the presidential advisory commissions in Chile had usually tended to apply the
principle of embedded autonomy in the way they have operated. Although
experts have generally had the final say, they often have formulated their final
recommendation only after having consulted and considered the opinions of
relevant stakeholders (Silva, 2008, 233).
Since 1990 all Chileans governments have made a recurrent use of PACs as
an instrument to obtain technical input and ideas to deal with a particular policy
issue. As Aguilera points out, the decision by presidents whether to incorporate
social actors and interest groups to the PACs seems to be directly related to the
degree of social conflict and effervescence existing in the country with respect
to the topics handled by these commissions (2009, 14). Although the existence
of cases of public corruption was a point of concern in the public opinion, it
did not result in huge protests and mobilizations. Likewise, most political forces
were not inclined to make a big issue of the corruption scandals as many of the
cases in question were related to the illegal funding of political parties.
Finally, the degree of inclusion within the PACs of diverse voices existing in
society is not solely determined by the inclusion of laypeople to those commis-
sions. It is true that the experts who have been invited to be part of the several
36 Patricio Silva
PACs have constructed their prestige and reputation mainly based on their aca-
demic knowledge (Cisternas and Vásquez, 2018, 8). However, they are far from
being ‘apolitical’. Indeed, most of them show sympathies with specific political
orientations close to the government or the opposition. In addition to this, most
of them have developed during their professional career close connections with
specific actors in civil society. Thus, their sole presence in those PACs generates
trust and confidence among several political and social sectors in society who
feel identified with what in their view those specific experts represent (Aguilera
and Fuentes, 2011, 130). In addition to this, the particular modus operandi cho-
sen by PACs to gather information and opinions can also embrace participatory
components. This may include, for instance, the realization of audiences in
which a large variety of voices coming from civil society can be heard or a pub-
lic call to provide proposals to the commission. Also, the existence of a website
to keep the public informed about the progress of the commission can stimulate
a larger degree of citizen involvement (Aguilera, 2009, 34).

The National Commission for Public Ethics (1994)

Following democratic restoration, the government led by Patricio Aylwin
(1990–1994) was committed to the preservation of high levels of political sta-
bility and economic growth. These objectives were regarded as determining
factors for the consolidation of democratic rule in the country. However, dur-
ing his government the civil–military relations were tensioned as Aylwin tried
to establish the truth about the human rights violations committed during the
former military regime. This was certainly a sensible and difficult task to tackle
as Pinochet continued to be commander-in-chief of the army. In addition to
this, for the first time evidence began to emerge about misappropriation of
state property (including houses, buildings and public lands) by the army and
enrichment of members of the Pinochet family during the previous regime.
The Aylwin government did not make political use of the possible involvement
of the former military authorities in acts of corruption, leaving this entirely in
the hands of the judicial system (Otano, 2006, 173–186).
President Aylwin was conscious of the fact that he had not only to prove
his ability to generate socioeconomic prosperity but also to show high levels
of probity in the administration of public institutions (Boeninger, 2004). His
government clearly passed the test as no significant irregularities occurred dur-
ing the first democratic administration. However, only six weeks before the
end of his term, disturbing news came from the National Copper Corporation,
CODELCO. This giant state company generates huge financial resources for
the fiscal coffers. An internal investigation had concluded that a CODELCO
executive, Juan Dávila, who oversaw the selling of copper in future markets,
had generated a loss of US$ 200 million to the company. This scandal became
known as the ‘Davilazo’. It was finally established that he had colluded himself
with some international brokers who bought Chilean copper below the market
price. In exchange, Dávila received payments in a secret bank account in the
 Combating corruption in Chile 37
Cayman Islands. He was condemned to seven years in prison. Nevertheless,
it remained the doubt if this corruption case represented an isolated one-man
action, or if other company officials were also involved in this affair. This single
case alerted the national authorities about the need to introduce tighter con-
trols on the use of public resources (Muñoz Wilson, 2008, 116).
Only three weeks after his installation, President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle
(1994–2000), Aylwin’s successor, decided to constitute a National Commission
for Public Ethics.3 Among Frei’s top priorities was the modernization of the state
and the public administration in general. The CODELCO case gave him the
opportunity to start with his modernization efforts by adopting a series of meas-
ures to guarantee higher levels of accountability at all levels of the state apparatus.
This PAC consisted of 15 members who worked ad honorem for 83 days. The
purpose of the Commission was to formulate public policy proposals and legal
initiatives in the field of public probity. In the founding Decree the commission’s
goals are formulated in very general terms. Nevertheless, it makes an explicit ref-
erence to a series of acts of corruption such as conflict of interests and influence
peddling. The commission was also requested to suggest possible reforms to
the existing legislation concerning the funding of political parties and electoral
campaigns. In addition to this, the commission was asked to make a register of
acts and conducts which were at odds with public ethics but that were still not
classified as delicts by the existing legislation. The decree also established that all
the commission’s activities should follow the rules of strict confidentiality.4
It is important to pay attention to the specific political context in which
that commission was installed. At that time, the democratic authorities enjoyed
renewed public confidence as the citizens did not question their integrity in the
management of public resources. During the first years of democratic rule there
was virtually no news about cases of corruption. Even the CODELCO case was
perceived by many Chileans rather as an isolated issue circumscribed to the act
of a single official. In this way, the creation of this commission was not the result
of an intense pressure coming from civil society. A that time, Chile still had a
civil society which was not totally rearticulated as a result of the past authoritar-
ian period. Moreover, the country did not yet possess the technical capacity and
specialized agencies to cope with the corruption issue (Arís et al., 2019, 99). In
this particular scenario, the fact that this first anti-corruption commission did
not include representatives of civil society was not contested. This commission
had a clear preventive purpose, intended to reveal possible weak spots in state
institutions which could become sources of future acts of corruption.
The commission established by President Frei Ruiz-Tagle possessed a strong
institutional signature. It included the heads of several state bodies as well as
some prestigious political figures. The PAC for Public Ethics was presided by
the Head of the State Defence Council. It also included the minister, secretary
general of the presidency, the presidents of the Senate, the Chamber of Depu-
ties, the Supreme Court, the Comptroller General of the Republic, and some
respected personalities linked to the ruling coalition and the opposition forces.
As Muñoz Wilson indicates, one of the main merits of this commission was
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
northern and foreign immigration and capital into the country; the
cotton planter sought for a northern partner who could furnish the
capital. Owing to the almost religious regard of the negro for his
northern deliverers, many white landlords thought that northern
men, especially former soldiers, might be better able than southern
men to control negro labor. General Swayne, the head of the Bureau,
said that the negroes had more confidence in a “bluecoat” than in a
native, and that among the larger planters northern men as partners
or overseers were in great demand.[2043]
For a short time after the close of the war northern men in
considerable numbers planned to go into the business of cotton
raising. DeBow[2044] gives a description of the would-be cotton
planters who came from the North to show the southern people how
to raise cotton with free negro labor. They had note-books and
guide-books full of close and exact tables of costs and profits, and
from them figured out vast returns. They acknowledged that the
negro might not work for the southern man, but they were sure that
he would work for them. They were very self-confident, and would
listen to no advice from experienced planters, whom they laughed at
as old fogies, but from their note-books and tables they gave one
another much information about the new machinery useful in cotton
culture, about rules for cultivation, how to control labor, etc. They
estimated that each laborer’s family would make $1000 clear gain
each year. DeBow would not say they were wrong, but he said that
he thought that they should hasten a little more slowly. Northern
energy and capitol flowed in; plantations were bought, and the
various industries of plantation life started; and mills and factories
were established. Because of the paralyzed condition of industry the
southern people welcomed these enterprises, but they were very
sceptical of their final success. The northern settler had confidence
in the negro and gave him unlimited credit or supplies; consequently,
in a few years the former was financially ruined and had to turn his
attention to politics, and to exploiting the negro in that field in order
to make a living.[2045] Both as employer and as manager the
northern men failed to control negro labor. They expected the negro
to be the equal of the Yankee white. The negroes themselves were
disgusted with northern employers. Truman reported, after an
experience of one season, that “it is the almost universal testimony
of the negroes themselves, who have been under the supervision of
both classes,—and I have talked with many with a view to this point,
—that they prefer to labor for a southern employer.”[2046]
Northern capital came in after the war, but northern labor did not,
though the planters offered every inducement. Land was offered to
white purchasers at ridiculously low rates, but the northern white
laborer did not come. He was afraid of the South with its planters
and negroes. The poorer classes of native whites, however, profited
by the low prices and secured a foothold on the better lands. So
general was the unbelief in the value of the free negro as a laborer,
especially in the Bureau districts, and so signally had all inducements
failed to bring native white laborers from the North, that determined
efforts were made to obtain white labor from abroad. Immigration
societies were formed with officers in the state and headquarters in
the northern cities. These societies undertook to send to the South
laboring people, principally German, in families at so much per head.
The planter turned with hope to white labor, of the superiority of
which he had so long been hearing, and he wished very much to
give it a trial. The advertisements in the newspapers read much like
the old slave advertisements: so many head of healthy, industrious
Germans of good character delivered f.o.b. New York, at so much
per head. One of the white labor agencies in Alabama undertook to
furnish “immigrants of any nativity and in any quantity” to take the
place of negroes. Children were priced at the rate of $50 a year;
women, $100; men, $150,—they themselves providing board and
clothes. One of every six Germans was warranted to speak English.
[2047] Most of these agencies were frauds and only wanted an
advance payment on a car load of Germans who did not exist. In a
few instances some laborers were actually shipped in; but they at
once demanded an advance of pay, and then deserted. Like the
bounty jumpers, they played the game time and time again. The
influence of the Radical press of the North was also used to
discourage emigration to the South;[2048] consequently white
immigration into the state did not amount to anything,[2049] and the
Black Belt received no help from the North or from abroad, and had
to fall back upon the free negro.
In the white counties there had been little hope or desire for alien
immigration. The people and the country were so desperately poor
that the stranger would never think of settling there. Many of the
whites in moderate circumstances, living near the Black Belt, took
advantage of the low price of rich lands, and acquired small farms in
the prairies, but there was no influx of white labor to the Black Belt
from the white counties.[2050] Nearly every man, woman, and child
in the white districts had to go to work to earn a living. Many
persons—lawyers, public men, teachers, ministers, physicians,
merchants, overseers, managers, and even women—who had never
before worked in the fields or at manual occupations, were now
forced to do so because of losses of property, or because they could
not live by their former occupations.[2051]
While the number of white laborers had increased somewhat, negro
labor had decreased. Several thousand negro men had gone with
the armies; for various reasons thousands had drifted to the towns,
where large numbers died in 1865-1866. The rural negro had a
promising outlook, for at any time he could get more work than he
could do; the city negro found work scarce even when he wanted it.
[2052]

Attempts to organize a New System

Several attempts were made by the negroes in 1865 and 1866 to
work farms and plantations on the coöperative system, that is, to
club work, but with no success. They were not accustomed to
independent labor, their faculty for organization had not been
sufficiently developed, and the dishonesty of their leading men
sometimes caused failures of the schemes.[2053]
In the summer of 1865 the Monroe County Agricultural Association
was formed to regulate labor, and to protect the interests of both
employer and laborer. It was the duty of the executive committee to
look after the welfare of the freedmen, to see that contracts were
carried out and the freedmen protected in them, and, in cases of
dispute, to act as arbitrator. The members of the association pledged
themselves to see that the freedman received his wages, and to aid
him in case his employer refused to pay. They were also to see that
the freedman fulfilled his contract, unless there was good reason
why he should not. Homes and the necessaries of life were to be
provided by the association for the aged and helpless negroes, of
whom there were several on every plantation. The planters declared
themselves in favor of schools for the negro children, and a
committee was appointed to devise a plan for their education. Every
planter in Monroe County belonged to the association.[2054] An
organization in Conecuh County adopted, word for word, the
constitution of the Monroe County association. In Clarke and Wilcox
counties similar organizations were formed, and in all counties where
negro labor was the main dependence some such plans were
devised.[2055] But it is noticeable that in those counties where the
planters first undertook to reorganize the labor system, there were
no regular agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau and no garrisons.
The average negro quite naturally had little or no sense of the
obligation of contracts. He would leave a growing crop at the most
critical period, and move into another county, or, working his own
crop “on shares,” would leave it in the grass and go to work for
some one else in order to get small “change” for tobacco, snuff, and
whiskey. After three years of experience of such conduct, a meeting
of citizens at Summerfield, Dallas County, decided that laborers
ought to be impressed with the necessity of complying with
contracts. They agreed that no laborers discharged for failure to
keep contracts would be hired again by other employers. They
declared it to be the duty of the whites to act in perfect good faith in
their relations with freedmen, to respect and uphold their rights, and
to promote good feeling.[2056]
 Development of the Share System
At first the planters had demanded a system of contracts, thinking
that by law they might hold the negro to his agreements. But the
Bureau contracts were one-sided, and the planters could not afford
to enter into them. General Swayne early reported[2057] a general
breakdown of the contract system, though he told the planters that
in case of dispute, where no contract was signed, he would exact
payment for the negro at the highest rates. The “share” system was
discouraged, but where there were no Bureau agents it was
developing. And so bad was the wage system, that even in the
Bureau districts, share hiring was done. The object of “share”
renting was to cause the laborer to take an interest in his crop and
to relieve the planter of disputes about loss of time, etc. Some of the
negroes also decided that the share system was the proper one. On
the plantations near Selma the negroes demanded “shares,”
threatening to leave in case of refusal. General Hardee, who was
living near, proposed a plan for a verbal contract; wages should be
one-fourth of all crops, meat and bread to be furnished to the
laborer, and his share of crop to be paid to him in kind, or the net
proceeds in cash; the planter to furnish land, teams, wagons,
implements, and seed to the laborer, who, in addition, had all the
slavery privileges of free wood, water, and pasturage, garden lot and
truck patch, teams to use on Sundays and for going to town. The
absolute right of management was reserved to the planter, it being
understood that this was no copartnership, but that the negro was
hired for a share of the crop; consequently he had no right to
interfere in the management.[2058]
On another plantation, where a share system similar to Hardee’s was
in operation, the planter divided the workers into squads of four men
each. To each squad he assigned a hundred acres of cotton and
corn, in the proportion of five acres of cotton to three of corn, and
forty acres of cotton for the women and children of the four families.
The squads were united to hoe and plough and to pick the cotton,
because they worked better in gangs. Wage laborers were kept to
look after fences and ditches, and to perform odd jobs. A frequent
source of trouble was the custom of allowing the negro, as part of
his pay, several acres of “outside crop,” to be worked on certain days
of the week, as Fridays and Saturdays. The planter was supposed to
settle disputes among the negroes, give them advice on every
subject except politics and religion, on which they had other
advisers, pay their fines and get them out of jail when arrested, and
sometimes to thrash the recalcitrant.[2059]
Several kinds of share systems were finally evolved from the
industrial chaos. They were much the same in black or white
districts, and the usual designations were “on halves,” “third and
fourth,” and “standing rent.” The tenant “on halves” received one-
half the crop, did all the work, and furnished his own provisions. The
planter furnished land, houses to live in, seed, ploughs, hoes, teams,
wagons, ginned the cotton, paid for half the fertilizer, and “went
security” for the negro for a year’s credit at the supply store in town,
or he furnished the supplies himself, and charged them against the
negro’s share of the crop. The “third and fourth” plan varied
according to locality and time, and depended upon what the tenant
furnished. Sometimes the planter furnished everything, while the
negro gave only his labor and received one-fourth of the crop; again,
the planter furnished all except provisions and labor, and gave the
negro one-third of the crop. In such cases “third and fourth” was a
lower grade of tenancy than “on halves.” Later it developed to a
higher grade: the tenant furnished teams and farming implements,
and the planter the rest, in which case the planter received a third of
the cotton, and a fourth of the corn raised. “Standing rent” was the
highest form of tenancy, and only responsible persons, white or
black, could rent under that system. It called for a fixed or
“standing” rent for each acre or farm, to be paid in money or in
cotton. The unit of value in cotton was a 500-pound bale of middling
grade on October 1st. Tenants who had farm stock, farming
implements, and supplies or good credit would nearly always
cultivate for “standing rent.” The planter exercised a controlling
direction over the labor and cultivation of a crop worked “on halves”;
he exercised less direction over “third and fourth” tenants, and was
supposed to exercise no control over tenants who paid “standing
rent.” In all cases the planter furnished a dwelling-house free, wood
and water (paid for digging wells), and pasture for the pigs and
cows of the tenants. In all cases the renter had a plot of ground of
from one to three acres, rent free, for a vegetable garden and “truck
patch.” Here could be raised watermelons, sugar-cane, potatoes,
sorghum, cabbage, and other vegetables. Every tenant could keep a
few pigs and a cow, chickens, turkeys, and guineas, and especially
dogs, and could hunt in all the woods around and fish in all the
waters. “On halves” was considered the safest form of tenancy for
both planter and tenant, for the latter was only an average man, and
this method allowed the superior direction of the planter.[2060] Many
negroes worked for wages; the less intelligent and the unreliable
could find no other way to work; and some of the best of them
preferred to work for wages paid at the end of each week or month.
Wage laborers worked under the immediate oversight of the farmer
or tenant who hired them. They received $8 to $12 a month and
were “found,” that is, furnished with rations. In the white counties
the negro hired man was often fed in the farmer’s kitchen. The
laborer, if hired by the year, had a house, vegetable garden, truck
patch, chickens, a pig perhaps, always a dog, and he could hunt and
fish anywhere in the vicinity. Sometimes he was “found”; sometimes
he “found” himself. When he was “found,” the allowance for a week
was three and a half pounds of bacon, a peck of meal, half a gallon
of syrup, and a plug of tobacco; his garden and truck patch
furnished vegetables. This allowance could be varied and commuted.
The system was worked out in the few years immediately following
the war, and has lasted almost without change. Where the negroes
are found, the larger plantations have not been broken up into small
farms, the census statistics to the contrary notwithstanding.[2061]
The negro tenant or laborer had too many privileges for his own
good and for the good of the planter. The negro should have been
paid more money or given a larger proportion of the crop, and fewer
privileges. He needed more control and supervision, and the result
of giving him a vegetable garden, a truck patch, a pasture, and the
right of hunting and fishing, was that the negro took less interest in
the crop; the privileges were about all he wanted. Agricultural
industry was never brought to a real business basis.[2062]
An essential part of the share system was the custom of advancing
supplies to the tenant with the future crop as security. The universal
lack of capital after the war forced an extension of the old ante-
bellum credit or supply system. The merchant, who was also a
cotton buyer, advanced money or supplies until the crop was
gathered. Before the war his security was crop, land, and slaves;
after the war the crop was the principal security, for land was a drug
in the market. Consequently, the crop was more important to the
creditor. Cotton was the only good cash staple, and the high prices
encouraged all to raise it. It was to the interest of the merchant,
even when prices were low, to insist that his debtors raise cotton to
the exclusion of food crops, since much of his money was made by
selling food supplies to them. Before the war the planter alone had
much credit, and a successful one did not make use of the system;
but after the war all classes of cotton raisers had to have advances
of supplies. The credit or crop lien system was good to put an
ambitious farmer on the way to independence, but it was no
incentive to the shiftless. Cotton became the universal crop under
the credit system, and even when the farmer became independent,
he seldom planted less of his staple crop, or raised more supplies at
home.

Negro Farmers and White Farmers

At the end of the war everything was in favor of the negro cotton
raiser; and everything except the high price of cotton was against
the white farmer in the poorer counties. The soil had been used
most destructively in the white districts, and it had to be improved
before cotton could be raised successfully.[2063] The high price of
cotton caused the white farmer, who had formerly had only small
cotton patches, to plant large fields, and for several years the negro
was not a serious competitor. The building of railroads through the
mineral regions afforded transportation to the white farmer for crops
and fertilizers,—an advantage that before this time had been
enjoyed only by the Black Belt,—and improved methods gradually
supplanted the wasteful frontier system of cultivation. The gradual
increase[2064] of the cotton production after 1869 was due entirely to
white labor in the white counties, the black counties never again
reaching their former production, though the population of those
counties has doubled. Governor Lindsay said, in 1871, that the white
people of north Alabama, where but little had been produced before
the war, were becoming prosperous by raising cotton, and at the
same time raising supplies that the planter on the rich lands with
negro labor had to buy from the West. This prosperity, he thought,
had done more than anything else to put an end to Ku Klux
disturbances. Somers reported, as early as 1871, that the bulk of the
cotton crop in the Tennessee valley was made by white labor, not by
black.[2065] As long as there was plenty of cheap, thin land to be
had, the poor but independent white would not work the fertile land
belonging to some one else; and before and long after the war there
was plenty of practically free land.[2066] Therefore the tendency of
the whites was to remain on the less fertile land. Dr. E. A. Smith, in
the Alabama Geological Survey of 1881-1882, and in the Report on
Cotton Production in Alabama (1884), shows the relation between
race and cotton production, and race location, with respect to
fertility of soil: (1) On the most fertile lands the laboring population
was black; the farmers were shiftless, and no fertilizers were used;
there the credit evil was worse, and the yield per acre was less than
on the poorest soils cultivated by whites. (2) Where the races were
about equal the best system was found; the soils were medium, the
farms were small but well cultivated, and fertilizers were used. (3)
On the poorest soils only whites were found. These by industry and
use of fertilizers could produce about as much as the blacks on the
rich soils.
The average product per acre of the fertile Black Belt is lower than
the lowest in the poorest white counties. Only the best of soil, as in
Clarke, Monroe, and Wilcox counties, is able to overcome the bad
labor system, and produce an average equal to that made by the
whites in Winston, the least fertile county in the state. In white
counties, where the average product per acre falls below the
average for the surrounding region, the fact is always explained by
the presence of blacks, segregated on the best soils, keeping down
the average product. For example, Madison County in 1880 had a
majority of blacks, and the average product per acre was 0.28 bale,
as compared with 0.32 bale for the Tennessee valley, of which
Madison was the richest county; in Talladega, the most fertile county
of the Coosa valley, the average production per acre was 0.32, as
compared with 0.40 for the rest of the valley; in Autauga, where the
blacks outnumbered the whites two to one, the average fell below
that of the country around, though the Autauga soil was the best in
the region. The average product of the rich prairie region cultivated
by the blacks was 0.27 bale per acre; the average product in the
poor mineral region cultivated by the whites was 0.26 to 0.28; in the
short-leaf pine region the whites outnumber the blacks two to one,
and the average production is 0.34 bale, while in the gravelly hill
region, where the blacks are twice as numerous as the whites, the
production is 0.30, the soil in the two sections being about equal. In
general, the fertility of the soil being equal, the production varies
inversely as the proportion of colored population to white. Density of
colored population is a sure sign of fertile soil; predominance of
white a sign of medium or poor soil. Outside of the Black Belt, white
owners cultivate small farms, looking closely after them. The negro
seldom owns the land he cultivates, and is more efficient when
working under direction on the small farm in the white county. In the
Black Belt, nearly all land is fertile and capable of cultivation, but in
the white counties a large percentage is rocky, in hills, forests,
mountains, etc. Many soils in southeast and in north Alabama,
formerly considered unproductive, have been brought into cultivation
by the use of fertilizers, hauled in wagons, in many cases, from
twenty to a hundred miles. Fertilizers have not yet come into general
use in the Black Belt. In the negro districts are still found horse-
power gins and old wooden cotton presses; in the white counties,
steam and water power and the latest machinery. In the white
counties it has always been a general custom to raise a part of the
supplies on the farm; in the Black Belt this has not been done since
the war.[2067] Though many of the white farmers remained under the
crop lien bondage, there was a steady gain toward independence on
the part of the more industrious and economical. But not until
toward the close of the century did emancipation come for many of
the struggling whites.
In other directions the whites did better. They opened the mines of
north Alabama, cut the timber of south Alabama, built the railroads
and factories, and to some extent engaged in commerce.[2068]
Market gardening became a common occupation. Negro labor in
factories failed. It was the negro rather than slavery that prevented
and still prevents the establishment of manufactures.[2069] The
development of manufactures in recent years has benefited
principally the poor people of the white counties. “For this mill
people is not drawn from foreign immigrants, nor from distant
states, but it is drawn from the native-born white population, the
poor whites, that belated hill-folk from the ridges and hollows and
coves of the silent hills.”[2070] The negro artisan is giving way to the
white; even in the towns of the Black Belt, the occupations once
securely held by the negro are passing into the hands of the whites.
In the white counties, during Reconstruction, the relations between
the races became more strained than in the Black Belt. One of the
manifestations of the Ku Klux movement in the white counties was
the driving away of negro tenants from the more fertile districts by
the poorer classes of whites who wanted these lands. For years
immigration was discouraged by the northern press. Foreigners were
afraid to come to the “benighted and savage South.”[2071] But in the
’80’s the railroad companies began to induce Germans to settle on
their lands in the poorest of the white counties. Later there has been
a slow movement from the Northwest. As a rule, where the
northerners and the Germans settle the wilderness blossoms, and
the negro leaves.
After ploughing their hilltops until the soil was exhausted, the
whites, even before the war, decided that only by clearing the
swamps in the poorer districts could they get land worth cultivating.
This required much labor and money. After the war, with the
increase of transportation facilities, fertilizers came into use, the
swamps were deserted, and the farmers went back to the uplands.
“By the use of commercial fertilizers, vast regions once considered
barren have been brought into profitable cultivation, and really
afford a more reliable and constant crop than the rich alluvial lands
of the old slave plantations. In nearly every agricultural county in the
South there is to be observed, on the one hand, this section of fertile
soils, once the heart of the old civilization, now largely abandoned
by the whites, held in tenantry by a dense negro population, full of
dilapidation and ruin; while on the other hand, there is the region of
light, thin soils, occupied by the small white freeholder, filled with
schools, churches, and good roads, and all the elements of a happy,
enlightened country life.”[2072]

The Decadence of the Black Belt

The patriarchal system failed in the Black Belt, the Bureau system of
contracts and prescribed wages failed, the planter’s own wage
system failed,[2073] and finally all settled down to the share system.
In this there was some encouragement to effort on the part of the
laborer, and in case of failure of the crop he bore a share of the loss.
After a few years’ experience, the negroes were ready to go back to
the wage system, and labor conventions were held demanding a
return to that system.[2074] But whatever system was adopted, the
work of the negro was unsatisfactory. The skilled laborer left the
plantation, and the new generation knew nothing of the arts of
industry. Labor became migratory, and the negro farmer wanted to
change his location every year.[2075] Regular work was a thing of the
past. In two or three days each week a negro could work enough to
live, and the remainder of the time he rested from his labors, often
leaving much cotton in the fields to rot.[2076] He went to the field
when it suited him to go, gazed frequently at the sun to see if it was
time to stop for meals, went often to the spring for water, and spent
much time adjusting his plough or knocking the soil and pebbles
from his shoes. The negro women refused to work in the fields, and
yet did nothing to better the home life; the style of living was “from
hand to mouth.” Extra money went for whiskey, snuff, tobacco, and
finery, while the standard of living was not raised.[2077] The laborer
would always stop to go to a circus, election, political meeting,
revival, or camp-meeting. A great desolation seemed to rest upon
the Black Belt country.[2078]
In the interior of the state, the negroes worked better during and
after Reconstruction than where they were exposed to the
ministrations of the various kinds of carpet-baggers.[2079] In the
Tennessee valley, where the negroes had taken a prominent part in
politics, and had not only seen much of the war, but many of them
had enlisted in the Federal army, cotton raising almost ceased for
several years. The only crops made were made by whites.[2080] In
Sumter County, where the black population was dense, it was, in
1870, almost impossible to secure labor; those negroes who wished
to work went to the railways.[2081] A description of a “model negro
farm” in 1874 was as follows: The farmer purchased an old mule on
credit and rented land on shares, or for so many bales of cotton; any
old tools were used; corn, bacon, and other supplies were bought on
credit, and a lien given on the crop; a month later, corn and cotton
were planted on soil not well broken up; the negro “would not pay
for no guano,” to put on other people’s land; by turns the farmer
planted and fished, ploughed and hunted, hoed and frolicked, or
went to “meeting.” At the end of the year he sold his cotton, paid
part of his rent, and some of his debt, returned the mule to its
owner, and sang:—
 “Nigger work hard all de year,
White man tote de money.”[2082]
If the negro made anything, his fellows were likely to steal it.
Somers said, “There can be no doubt that the negroes first steal one
another’s share of the crop, and next the planter’s, by way of
general redress.”[2083] Crop stealing was usually done at night.
Stolen cotton, corn, pork, etc., was carried to the doggeries kept on
the outskirts of the plantation by low white men, and there
exchanged for bad whiskey, tobacco, and cheap stuff of various
kinds. These doggeries were called “deadfalls,” and their proprietors
often became rich.[2084] So serious did the theft of crops become,
that the legislature passed a “sunset” law, making it a penal offence
to purchase farm produce after nightfall. Poultry, hogs, corn, mules,
and horses were stolen when left in the open.
Emancipation destroyed the agricultural supremacy of the Black Belt.
The uncertain returns from the plantations caused an exodus of
planters and their families to the cities, and formerly well-kept
plantations were divided into one-and two-house farms for negro
tenants, who allowed everything to go to ruin. The negro tenant
system was much more ruinous than the worst of the slavery
system, and none of the plantations ever again reached their former
state of productiveness. Ditches choked up, fences down, large
stretches of fertile fields growing up in weeds and bushes, cabins
tumbling in and negro quarters deserted, corn choked by grass and
weeds, cotton not half as good as under slavery,—these were the
reports from travellers in the Black Belt, towards the close of
Reconstruction.[2085] Other plantations were leased to managers,
who also kept plantation stores whence the negroes were furnished
with supplies. The money lenders came into possession of many
plantations. By the crop lien and blanket mortgage, the negro
became an industrial serf. The “big house” fell into decay. For these
and other reasons, the former masters, who were the most useful
friends of the negro, left the Black Belt, and the black steadily
declined.[2086] The unaided negro has steadily grown worse; but
Tuskegee, Normal, Calhoun, and similar bodies are endeavoring to
assist the negro of the black counties to become an efficient
member of society. In the success of such efforts lies the only hope
of the negro, and also of the white of the Black Belt, if the negro is
to continue to exclude white immigration.[2087]

CHAPTER XXIII

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS DURING

RECONSTRUCTION

Sec. 1. Politics and Political Methods

During the war the administration of the state government gradually
fell into the hands of officials elected by people more or less
disaffected toward the Confederacy. Provisional Governor Parsons,
who had been secretly disloyal to the Confederacy, retained in office
many of the old Confederate local officials, and appointed to other
offices men who had not strongly supported the Confederacy. In the
fall of 1865 and the spring of 1866 elections under the provisional
government placed in office a more energetic class of second and
third rate men who had had little experience and who were not
strong Confederates. Men who had opposed secession and who had
done little to support the war were, as a rule, sent to Congress and
placed in the higher offices of state. The ablest men were not
available, being disfranchised by the President’s plan.
In 1868, with the establishment of the reconstructed government,
an entirely new class of officials secured control. Less than 5000
white voters, of more than 100,000 of voting age, supported the
Radical programme, and, as more than 3000 officials were to be
chosen, the field for choice was limited. The elections having gone
by default, the Radicals met with no opposition, except in three
counties. In all the other counties the entire Radical ticket was
declared elected, even though in several of them no formal elections
had been held.
William H. Smith, who was made governor under the Reconstruction
Acts, was a native of Georgia, a lawyer, formerly a Douglas
Democrat, and had opposed secession, but was a candidate for the
Confederate Congress. Defeated, he consoled himself by going over
to the Federals in 1862. Smith was a man of no executive ability,
careless of the duties of his office, and in few respects a fit person to
be governor. He disliked the Confederate element and also the
carpet-baggers, but as long as the latter would not ask for high
offices, he was at peace with them. It was his plan to carry on the
state government with the 2000 or 3000 “unionists” and the United
States troops. He did not like the negroes, but could endure them as
long as they lived in a different part of the state and voted for him.
In personal and private matters he was thoroughly honest, but his
course in regard to the issue of bonds showed that in public affairs
he could be influenced to doubtful conduct. It is certain that he
never profited by any of the stealing that was carried on; he merely
made it easy for others to steal; the dishonest ones were his friends,
and his enemies paid the taxes. As governor he had the respect of
neither party. He went too far to please the Democrats, and not far
enough to please the Radicals. He exercised no sort of control over
his local officials and shut his eyes to the plundering of the Black
Belt. He was emphatically governor of his small following of whites,
not of all the people, not even of the blacks. During his
administration the whites complained that he was very active in
protecting Radicals from outrage, but paid no attention to the
troubles of his political enemies. His government did not give
adequate protection to life and property.
His lieutenant-governor, A. J. Applegate of Ohio and Wisconsin, was
an illiterate Federal soldier left stranded in Alabama by the surrender.
During the war he was taken ill in Mississippi and was cared for by
Mrs. Thompson, wife of a former Secretary of the Treasury. Upon
leaving the Thompson house he carried some valuable papers with
him, which, after the war, he tried to sell to Mrs. Thompson for
$10,000. Lowe, Walker, & Company, a firm of lawyers in Alabama,
gave Applegate $300, made him sign a statement as to how he
obtained the papers, and then published all the correspondence.
[2088] The charge of thievery did not injure his candidacy. Before
election he had been an attaché of the Freedmen’s Bureau. After the
constitution had been rejected in 1868, Applegate went North, so far
that he could not get back in time for the first session of the
legislature. A special act, however, authorized him to draw his pay as
having been present. In a letter written for the Associated Press,
which was secured by the Democrats, there were thirty-nine
mistakes in spelling. As a presiding officer over the Senate, he was
vulgar and undignified. His speeches were ludicrous. When the
conduct of the Radical senators pleased him, he made known his
pleasure by shouting, “Bully for Alabama!”
The secretary of state, Charles A. Miller, was a Bureau agent from
Maine; Bingham, the treasurer, was from New York; Reynolds, the
auditor, from Wisconsin; Keffer, the superintendent of industrial
resources, from Pennsylvania. Two natives of indifferent reputation—
Morse and Cloud—were, respectively, attorney-general and
superintendent of public instruction. Morse was under indictment for
murder and had to be relieved by special act of the legislature. The
chief justice, Peck, was from New York; Saffold and Peters were
southern men; the senators and all of the representatives in
Congress were carpet-baggers. There were six candidates for the
short-term senatorship—all of them carpet-baggers. Willard Warner
of Ohio, who was elected, was probably the most respectable of all
the carpet-baggers, and was soon discarded by the party. He had
served in the Federal army and after the war was elected to the Ohio
Senate. His term expired in January, 1868; in July, 1868, he was
elected to the United States Senate from Alabama. George E.
Spencer was elected to the United States Senate for the long term.
He was from Massachusetts, Ohio, Iowa, and Nebraska. In Iowa he
had been clerk of the Senate, and in Nebraska, secretary to the
governor. He entered the army as sutler of the First Nebraska
Infantry. Later he assisted in raising the First Union Alabama Cavalry
and was made its colonel. Spencer was shrewd, coarse, and
unscrupulous, and soon secured control of Federal patronage for
Alabama. He attacked his colleague, Warner, as being lukewarm.
The representatives and their records were as follows: F. W. Kellogg
of Massachusetts and Michigan represented the latter state in
Congress from 1859 to 1865, when he was appointed collector of
internal revenue at Mobile. C. W. Buckley of New York and Illinois
was a Presbyterian preacher who had come to Alabama as chaplain
of a negro regiment. For two years he was a Bureau official and an
active agitator. He was a leading member in the convention of 1867.
B. W. Norris of Skowhegan, Maine, was an oil-cloth maker and a land
agent for Maine, a commissary, contractor, cemetery commissioner,
and paymaster during the war. After the war he came South with C.
A. Miller, his brother-in-law, and both became Bureau agents. C. W.
Pierce of Massachusetts and Illinois was a Bureau official. Nothing
more is known of him. John B. Callis of Wisconsin had served in the
Federal army and later in the Veteran Reserve Corps. After the war
he became a Bureau agent in Alabama, and when elected he was
not a citizen of the state, but was an army officer stationed in
Mississippi. Thomas Haughey of Scotland was a Confederate
recruiting officer in 1861-1862 and later a surgeon in the Union
army. He was killed in 1869 by Collins, a member of the Radical
Board of Education. It was said that he was without race prejudice
and consorted with negroes, but he was the only one of the
Alabama delegation whom Governor Smith liked. The latter wrote
that “our whole set of representatives in Congress, with the
exception of Haughey, are ... unprincipled scoundrels having no
regard for the state of the people.”[2089]
In the first Reconstruction legislature, which lasted for three years,
there were in the Senate 32 Radicals and 1 Democrat. In the House
there were 97 Radicals (only 94 served) and 3 Democrats. The lone
Democrat in the Senate was Worthy of Pike, and to prevent him
from engaging in debate, Applegate often retired from his seat and
called upon him to preside; the Democrats in the House were
Hubbard of Pike, Howard of Crenshaw, and Reeves of Cherokee.
[2090] In the Senate there was only 1 negro; in the House there were
26, several of whom could not sign their names. In the
apportionment of representatives there was a difference of 40 per
cent in favor of the black counties. Hundreds of negroes swarmed in
to see the legislature begin, filling the galleries, the windows, and
the vacant seats, and crowding the aisles. They were invited by
resolution to fill the galleries and from that place they took part in
the affairs of the House, voting on every measure with loud shouts.
A scalawag from north Alabama wanted the negroes to sit on one
side of the House and the whites on the other, but he was not
listened to. The doorkeepers, sergeant-at-arms, and other
employees were usually negroes. The negro members watched their
white leaders and voted aye or no as they voted. When tired they
went to sleep and often had to be wakened to vote. Both houses
were usually opened with prayer by northern Methodist ministers or
by negro ministers. None but “loyal” ministers were asked to
officiate. Strobach, the Austrian member, wearied of much political
prayer, moved that the chaplain cut short his devotions.
 SCENES IN THE FIRST RECONSTRUCTED LEGISLATURE.
(Cartoons from “The Loil Legislature,” by Captain B. H. Screws.)

The whites in the legislature were for the most part carpet-baggers
or unknown native whites. The entire taxes paid by the members of
the legislature were, it is said, less than $100. Applegate, the
lieutenant-governor, did not own a dollar’s worth of property in the
state. Most of the carpet-bag members lived in Montgomery; the
rest of them lived in Mobile, Selma, and Huntsville. Few of them saw
the districts they represented after election; some did not see them
before or after the election. The representative from Jackson County
lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The state constitution prohibited
United States officials from holding state offices, but nearly all
Federal officers in the state also held state offices. This was
particularly the case in the southwestern counties, which were
represented by revenue and custom-house officials from Mobile.
Some of them were absent most of the time, but all drew pay; one
of the negro members, instead of attending, went regularly to school
after the roll was called. No less than twenty members had been
indicted or convicted, or were indicted during the session, of various
crimes, from adultery and stealing to murder. The legislature passed
special acts to relieve members from the penalties for stealing,
adultery, bigamy, arson, riot, illegal voting, assault, bribery, and
murder.[2091]
Bribery was common in the legislature. By custom a room in the
capitol was set apart for the accommodation of those who wished to
“interview” negro members.[2092] There the agents of railroad
companies distributed conscience money in the form of loans which
were never to be paid back. Harrington, the speaker, boasted that he
received $1700 for engineering a bill through the House. A lottery
promoter said that it cost him only $600 to get his charter through
the legislature, and that no Radical, except one negro, refused the
small bribe he offered. Senator Sibley held his vote on railroad
measures at $500; Pennington, at $1000; W. B. Jones, at $500.
Hardy of Dallas received $35,000 to ease the passage of a railroad
bond issue, and kept most of it for himself; another received enough
to start a bank; still another was given 640 acres of land, a steam
mill, and a side track on a railroad near his mill. Negro members, as
a rule, sold out very cheaply, and probably most often to Democrats
who wanted some minor measures passed to which the Radical
leaders would pay no attention. It was found best not to pay the
larger sums until the governor had signed the bill. A member
accepted a gift as a matter of course, and no attention was paid to
charges of bribery.[2093]
The election of February 4 and 5, 1868, at which the constitution
was rejected on account of the whites’ refraining from voting, was in
many counties a farce. The legislature, in order to remedy any
defects in the credentials of the Radical candidates, passed a
number of general and special acts legalizing the “informal” elections
of February 4 and 5, and declaring the Radical candidates elected. In
seven counties no votes had been counted, but this made no
difference.[2094]
The presiding officers addressed the members as “Captain, John, Mr.
Jones,” etc. Quarrels and fights were frequent. One member chased
another to the secretary’s desk, trying to kill him, but was prevented
by the secretary. In the cloak-rooms and halls were fruit and peanut
stands, whiskey shops, and lunch counters. Legislative action did not
avail to clear out the sovereign negroes and keep the halls clean.
Political meetings were held in the capitol, much to the damage of
the furniture.[2095]
The only measures that excited general interest among the members
were the bond-issue bills. Other legislation was generally purely
perfunctory, except in case an election law or a Ku Klux law was to
be passed. There was much special legislation on account of
individual members, such as granting divorces, ordering release from
jail, relieving from the “pains” of marriage with more than one
woman, trick legislation, vacating offices, etc. When, as in Mobile,
the Democrats controlled too many minor offices, the legislature
remedied the wrong by declaring the offices vacant and giving the
governor authority to make appointments to the vacancies. The
Mobile offices were vacated three times in this way. In connection
with the Mobile bill it was found that fraudulent interpolations were
sometimes made in a bill after its passage. It would be taken from
the clerk’s desk, changed, and then returned for printing.[2096]
Some of the laws passed failed of their object because of mistakes in
spelling. A committee was finally appointed to correct mistakes in
orthography. The House and Senate constantly returned engrossed
bills to one another for correction. A joint committee to investigate
the education of the clerks reported that they were unable to
ascertain which of the clerks was illiterate, though they discharged
one of them. The minority report declared that the fault was not
with the clerks, but with the members, many of whom could not
write. Finally a spelling clerk was employed to rewrite the bills
submitted by the members.[2097] For making fun of the ignorance of
the Radical members, Ryland Randolph, a Democratic member,
elected in a by-election, was expelled from the House.
In 1868 the Radicals, fearing the result of the presidential election
and afraid of the Ku Klux movement which was beginning to be felt,
passed a bill giving to itself the power to choose presidential
electors. The negroes were aroused by the Radical leaders who were
not in the legislature, and sufficient pressure was brought to bear on
the governor to induce him to veto the measure.[2098]
According to the constitution, the Senate was to classify at once
after organization, so that half should serve two years and half four
years. No one was willing to take the short term and lose the $8 per
diem and other privileges. So in 1868 the Senate refused to classify.
Again in 1870 it refused to classify. The Radicals permitted the
usurpation because it was known that the Democrats would carry
the white counties in case the classification were made and elections
held. Then, too, it was feared that in 1870 the Democrats would
have a majority in the lower house; hence a Radical Senate would
be necessary to prevent the repudiation of the railroad indorsation.
So all senators held over until 1872, and by shrewd manipulation
and the use of Federal troops the Senate kept a Radical majority
until 1874.[2099]
County and other local officials were incompetent and corrupt. The
policy of the whites in abstaining from voting on the constitution
(1868) gave nearly every office in the state to incompetent men. In
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