Corruption Scandals and Anti-Corruption Policies in Argentina

PEREYRA, SEBASTIÁN

Journal of Politics in Latin America

SAGE

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2019 vol. 11 p. 348 - 361

1866-802X

The 1990s witnessed the spread of anti-corruption scandals in Latin American countriesas well as a decade in which international transparency standards were developed. Thesetwo processes were closely related but they followed different local and global politicaldynamics. Transparency policies were perceived everywhere as a good response to thegrowing of corruption scandals. But, at the end of the day, the effectiveness of thesepolicies was far from optimal. This article discusses the link between these two mainaspects of the corruption as a public problem in Argentina. It reconstructs the dynamicsof corruption scandals and state responses in Argentina during the 1990s, and asks howeffective and efficient those responses were given the type of accusations and corruptioncases exposed to the public through scandals. The hypothesis is that scandals, on the onehand, and public policy responses, on the other, refer to different aspects of the sameproblem and that the latter have failed to deal effectively with the demands and claimsexpressed through the scandals.