How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru
37 Pages Posted: 26 Mar 2004
There are 2 versions of this paper
How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru
Date Written: April 2004
Abstract
Which of the democratic checks and balances - opposition parties, the judiciary, a free press - is the most critical? Peru has the full set of democratic institutions. In the 1990s, the secret-police chief Vladimiro Montesinos systematically undermined them all with bribes. We quantify the checks using the bribe prices. Montesinos paid television-channel owners about 100 times what he paid judges and politicians. One single television channel's bribe was four times larger than the total of the opposition politicians' bribes. By revealed preference, the strongest check on the government's power was the news media.
Keywords: Democracy, institutions, corruption, bribery, checks and balances, media, Peru
JEL Classification: P160, K100, L820
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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