Legislative Oversight: Interests and Institutions in the United States and Argentina

This chapter examines how similar institutions in 19th century Latin America and the United States took different paths in terms of their fight against corruption and development of oversight institutions by the end of the 20th century. The divergent paths taken by these two countries resulted from differences in their legislatures’ motives and the courts’ willingness to check and counter executive action. A long continuous period of democratic rule is also essential to developing institutions and attacking corruption. While this occurred in the US, Argentina’s turbulent democratic experience stunted the development of a professional legislature capable of restraining executive abuses and corruption.