How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru
Year: 2004
Type: article
Abstract: Which of the democratic checks and balances–opposition parties, the judiciary, a free press–is the most forceful? Peru has the full set of democratic institutions. In the 1990s, the secret-police chief Montesinos systematically undermined them all with bribes. We quantify the checks using the bribe prices. Montesinos paid a television-channel owner about 100 times what he paid a judge or a politician. One single television channel's bribe was five 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.
Authors: John McMillan, Pablo Zoido
Institution: Stanford University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3121152934