How government integrity policies affect corruption risks in political parties. Evidence for Latin America

International organizations promote the implementation of integrity policies to control political corruption. However, scholars have found that these laws have not significantly impacted the levels of corruption. Research shows that integrity policies only work under specific contexts with a high level of rule of law and high citizens’ engagement with social problems. These studies use aggregated corruption indexes to estimate the effectiveness of these integrity policies. Nevertheless, aggregated corruption indexes use experts’ views, and citizens’ perceptions do not change over time, underestimating the effect of these policies. This paper argues that integrity policies have helped reduce corruption risks, even though experts’ views and citizens’ perceptions have not changed significantly. I conduct a comparative case study analysis for four Latin American countries—Uruguay, Chile, Honduras, and Mexico—to evaluate the effect of five integrity policies—freedom of information laws, political financing restrictions, financial disclosure, conflict of interest, and lobbying regulations—on political parties’ practices and rules. Preliminary findings suggest that political parties under strong integrity regulation develop a culture of integrity that includes an anti-corruption commitment and tools for managing corruption risks. However, reporting mechanisms are only developed in countries with low corruption perceptions.