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...

Latin America suffers from low fiscal legitimacy. In many Latin American countries, fiscal performance and democratic governance are damaged by citizens' lack of trust and confidence in democratic fiscal institutions. One explanation for this distrust of the government's fiscal responsibility is...