Research

Brazil’s judiciary played a pivotal role in containing Jair Bolsonaro’s authoritarian drive, culminating in his September 2025 conviction for attempting a coup. Unlike in most countries—and in Brazil’s own history—where leaders who undermine democracy typically evade post-tenure punishment, high courts constrained Bolsonaro both during and after his presidency through strategic choices. Equally important, their rulings enabled rivals to weaken Bolsonaro’s grip on power while avoiding open confrontation with powerful congressional forces. This experience offers concrete lessons for democracies confronting similar threats, including those now investigating former presidents who sought to subvert democratic rule.

This article examines how an anti-corruption surge contributed to El Salvador’s democratic decline. While it was not the sole driver of that process, we argue that a wave of high-profile prosecutions in the 2010s played a critical role in delegitimizing established political elites, creating the conditions for Bukele’s rise to power and his subsequent assault on democratic institutions. Once in office, and especially after securing sweeping electoral victories, Bukele and his allies dismantled core institutional checks, including the judiciary and public prosecution, and suspended civil liberties under a prolonged state of emergency. Anti-corruption mechanisms were not only neutralized, but also repurposed to target political opponents. By tracing political dynamics and institutional transformations over the past decade, we demonstrate that El Salvador’s anti-corruption surge served as a catalyst for political change and unleashed forces that eroded democratic institutions and oversight autonomy. These findings speak to ongoing debates on the consequences of anti-corruption surges and the vulnerability of democratic institutions to political capture.

This article investigates how Brazil’s massive anti-corruption surge, epitomized by the criminal investigation known as Operation Car Wash, contributed to rising illiberalism. Drawing on an analysis of the political dynamics of anti-corruption in the last decades, we explore two interrelated mechanisms. The first is the delegitimization of political elites: by imposing severe costs on once-powerful political actors, the investigation opened space for new forces to arise, culminating in the election of Jair Bolsonaro, whose presidency tested the resilience of the country’s liberal institutions. The second is political backlash: both emerging and established actors cooperated to curb the independence and powers of oversight institutions, including those that had spearheaded the anti-corruption surge. While recognizing that other factors also shaped this outcome, we argue that illiberalism was, to an important extent, an unanticipated consequence of the anti-corruption drive—yet, the drive’s illiberal potential ultimately could not be fully weaponized due to political and institutional constraints. Our findings contribute to debates on the consequences of anti-corruption, providing nuance on the conditions under which it may help unleash illiberal forces.

This study investigates the political effects of corruption convictions involving former heads of government. Drawing on an original dataset of convictions and annual, nationally representative surveys covering over 130 countries from 2006 to 2019, we employ a difference-in-differences approach to analyze how these events shape government approval. Our findings indicate a notable contrast: in less democratic countries, convictions boost support for the government, whereas their effect is negligible in more democratic contexts. We reveal a key mechanism behind this divergence by showing how incumbent governments respond differently to the convictions. In less democratic settings, governments exploit corruption convictions by emphasizing the personal virtues of their leaders. Beyond identifying this critical condition that prompts political elites to adopt personalistic appeals, we also demonstrate how these appeals resonate with the public. These findings have implications for debates on the consequences of anti-corruption efforts and their relationship with populism.

When former heads of government are criminally convicted for corruption by the judiciary of the countries they once ruled, are these decisions definitive, or are they later reversed? This article examines the role of courts in overturning such convictions and theorizes that reversals are more likely when high courts are less independent than low courts, making them more prone to facilitating political accommodation. The study tests this institutional fail-safe hypothesis using a global dataset of all convictions of former heads of government between 1946 and 2022 and their potential reversals. The findings indicate that corruption convictions of former leaders are more vulnerable to overturns when the gap in judicial independence is greater, helping to protect political elites against the enforcement of anticorruption laws. This pattern is most pronounced in democracies, in proportional representation systems and after electoral turnovers—contexts that heighten incentives for elite accommodation. By identifying the institutional and political conditions under which conviction overturns are most likely, the article contributes to broader debates on the limits of criminal accountability and the mechanisms through which anticorruption efforts from within the legal system may be neutralized.

Why are politicians more likely to be prosecuted and convicted for corruption in some contexts rather than in others? Pulling together disparate threads of the literature on what we call the politics of criminal accountability, this review organizes current explanations along three levels of inquiry: (1) micro, encompassing characteristics of individual criminal-accountability agents and defendants, such as their partisanship and ideology, professional ethos, enforcement costs and judicial corruption; (2) meso, emphasizing the independence, capacities and coordination degrees of criminal-accountability institutions; and (3) macro, including the impact of political regimes, political competition, support from civil society, corruption levels and international norms. In doing so, we draw attention to methodological shortcomings and opportunities for research on the topic, providing a roadmap for this field of inquiry that also includes unexplored questions and tentative answers. Furthermore, we present new systematic data set that reveals a substantial increase in the conviction of former heads of government for corruption since 2000, underscoring the importance of the phenomenon and highlighting the need for further research into the politics of criminal accountability.