Old regime habits die hard: clientelism, patronage and the challenges to overcoming corruption in post-authoritarian Mexico

Chapter 7 in Corruption in Public Administration: An Ethnographic Approach, edited by Davide Torsello.

Despite the growth in literature on political corruption, contributions from field research are still exiguous. This book, edited by Davide Torsello, provides a timely and much needed addition to current research, bridging the gap between macro level quantitative indicators of corruption and micro level qualitative evidence through an innovative ethnographic approach to the study of corruption and integrity in public administration.

Claudia Baez Camargo’s two contributory articles highlight the key findings of field research conducted in Mexico and Tanzania as part of the Basel Institute’s contribution to ANTICORRP.

For the Mexican study, Baez Camargo and her co-author Rodrigo Megchún Rivera focus on local understandings of corrupt practices among indigenous groups in rural areas of Mexico. The findings link the exercise of particular communitarian practices and prevailing social norms among those groups to the lack of effectiveness of social accountability mechanisms in the Mexican health sector.

Read the original ANTICORRP Mexican study here.