Conference Paper by Bettina Schorr: “Due to high social inequalities and weak public institutions, political corruption and the influence of business elites on policy-makers are widespread in the Andean region. The consequences for the opportunities of sustainable development are serious: regulation limiting harmful business activities or (re-)distributive reforms are difficult to achieve and public resources often end up as private gains instead of serving development purposes.
Given international and domestic pressures, political corruption has reached the top of the political agendas in many countries. However, frequently transparency goals do not materialize into new binding policies or, when reforms are enacted, they suffer from severe implementation gaps.
The paper analyses transparency politics in Chile where a series of reforms regarding political transparency were implemented since 2014. Hence, Chile counts among the few successful cases in the region. By tracing the process that led to the emergence of new transparency policies in Chile, the paper elaborates an analytical framework for the explanation of institutional innovation in the case of political transparency. In particular, the study emphasizes the importance of civil society actors´ involvement in the whole policy cycle, particularly in the stages of formulation, implementation and evaluation….(More)”.