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How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru

John McMillan
Stanford Graduate School of Business; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research)

Pablo Zoido
Stanford University - Graduate School of Business

April 2004

CESifo Working Paper Series No. 1173

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 Classifications: P160, K100, L820

Working Paper Series

Date posted: March 26, 2004 ; Last revised: August 11, 2004

Suggested Citation

McMillan, John NMI1 and Zoido, Pablo, How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru (April 2004). CESifo Working Paper Series No. 1173. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=520902

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Contact Information

Pablo Zoido (Contact Author) Stanford University - Graduate School of Business ( email ) Stanford, CA 94305 United States
John NMI1 McMillan Stanford Graduate School of Business ( email ) 518 Memorial Way Stanford, CA 94305-5015 United States
CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research) Poschinger Str. 5 DE-81679 Munich Germany