The two candidates facing off in Peru’s upcoming presidential run-off election, Keiko Fujimori and Pedro Castillo, couldn’t be further apart ideologically. Castillo, who belongs to a party that describes itself as Marxist, is calling for a radical overhaul of Peru’s economic and constitutional systems. Fujimori, on the other hand, wants to deepen the free-market model installed under the authoritarian presidency of her father, Alberto Fujimori, in the 1990s. But beyond the obvious differences, the candidates share one overlooked similarity: Both owe big debts to political mentors currently in jail for corruption, whom they are eager to shield from justice. Whoever [...]
The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic has generated an unprecedented level of spending, with more than $21 trillion committed to fighting the coronavirus so far, much of it falling under emergency measures that bypass bureaucratic hurdles and expedite the flow of funds. The speed and scale of this spending has created new opportunities for state-level corruption—ranging from fairly mundane examples, like demanding bribes for medical services, to more systemic forms of financial malfeasance, shady procurement practices and opaque spending. The pandemic has also drawn attention to the ways in which pervasive graft exacerbates inequality in development outcomes, within and [...]
Corruption and criminality have long bedeviled both conflict and post-conflict settings. As illicit economies that predated or emerged from the years of conflict persist and grow, they often undermine apparent battlefield victories and aspirational regime transitions to the point of eviscerating stability and liberalization. From Somalia to Afghanistan to Myanmar to South Sudan to Haiti, the stabilization efforts of international and local actors have often been held hostage to the unsavory behavior of elites, both old and new. One reason why anti-corruption and anti-crime efforts have struggled is that they have been understood as technical, institution-building efforts rather than as [...]
