Abstract
In the last years, I have researched how anti-corruption and judicial institutions perform in the fight against corruption, as well as their impact on the political system. During my Ph.D., I have found evidence that independent anti-corruption institutions, even when protected by large independent guarantees, have incentives to behave with political bias and to provide a competitive advantage to specific parties. On the other hand, independent courts may have fewer incentives to control corruption with political bias if higher court judges are granted the task to review decisions taken by the lower courts. In addition to preventing the political bias of anti-corruption agents from being inserted into final decisions, independent courts may punish corrupt public agents and so improve the quality of public policies. Therefore, the Anxieties of Democracy scholarship will be a great opportunity to continue to develop this research agenda, which may afford relevant analyses for the public and academic debates about the quality of democracy.
Principal Investigator
Thiago do Fonseca
PhD Candidate, University of São Paulo