When Impunity Fights Back: Anti-Corruption and Democratic Erosion in Central America

Political corruption is a leading global policy issue. Domestic governments, however, often lack the will to tackle it and may even wield anti-corruption tools to undermine democracy. International policymakers and civil society have thus urged the adoption of international anti-corruption commissions (IACCs), which rely on partnerships between international experts and domestic personnel. Three northern Central American countries—Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras—became testing grounds for IACCs starting in the late 2000s. But the resulting anti-corruption bodies assumed different structures and trajectories with divergent effects. In the aftermath of these unprecedented rule of law innovations, this project poses three questions: (1) What explains variation in the autonomy granted to Central America’s IACCs? (2) What factors enabled political and economic elites to neutralize anti-corruption enforcement promoted by IACCs? (3) Why did these landmark anti-corruption initiatives, in some cases, give way to greater democratic backsliding?