Party System Change and Transparency in Uruguay

Daniel Buquet ； Rafael Piñeiro Rodríguez

《Taiwan Journal of Democracy》 15卷1期 (2019/07) Pp. 113-129

摘要

Uruguay is a ＂contemporary achiever＂ in terms of transparency, a country that only recently has come to be considered an open access regime and has registered modest economic achievements over the last thirty-five years. Using the case of Uruguay, this essay shows how a change in party system competitive equilibrium-from a system based on clientelistic competition to one grounded in programmatic competition-is the driver that transformed Uruguay into an open access regime, under which politicians' corrupt behavior is penalized by citizens. Anticorruption legislation in Uruguay did not bring about this change; rather, it was a product of this change. This explains the means and the reach of the new system of norms, which is not substantially stricter, but is more effective in its implementation than in other countries in the region. These reforms were not instituted in response to a crisis of legitimacy like those that motivated other countries to approve such norms, but rather in response to the need to regulate political practices and the bureaucracy in the new context of programmatic competition.

關鍵字

Clientelism ； open access regimes ； programmatic electoral competition ； transparency ； Uruguay

參考文獻

Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Contextual Choices in Fighting Corruption: Lessons Learned, report commissioned by Norad, c/o ANKOR (the Anti-corruption Project) in cooperation with the Evaluation Department (“Contextual Choices for Results in Fighting Corruption,” Reference number: 1001232) (2012), 11.

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John D. Powell, “Peasant Society and Clientelist Politics,” American Political Science Review 64, no. 2 (1970): 411-425.

Herbert Kitschelt, “Linkages between Citizens and Politicians in Democratic Politics,”Comparative Political Studies 33, nos. 6-7 (2000): 845-879.