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"Equilíbrense los poderes y se mantendrá la pureza de la administración" — Mariano Moreno
The latest release of Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index is out. I don't see many surprises. The sturdier the institutional checks and balances in a country, the better its position in the CPI. Seven of the top-ten countries in my Checks and Balances Index are also among the top-ten in the CPI: Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and the Netherlands. Ditto for the World Happiness Report [see]. In both indexes, Yemen and Venezuela are some of the worst offenders. As usual, Singapore ranks very well in the CPI, but not so well in terms of checks and balances, weighed down as it is by its relatively unfree press.
"Equilíbrense los poderes y se mantendrá la pureza de la administración" — Mariano Moreno
The latest release of Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index is out. I don't see many surprises. The sturdier the institutional checks and balances in a country, the better its position in the CPI. Seven of the top-ten countries in my Checks and Balances Index are also among the top-ten in the CPI: Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and the Netherlands. Ditto for the World Happiness Report [see]. In both indexes, Yemen and Venezuela are some of the worst offenders. As usual, Singapore ranks very well in the CPI, but not so well in terms of checks and balances, weighed down as it is by its relatively unfree press.
* * *
All of this provides a wonderful illustration of the famous dictum by Lord Acton: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (*). As a native Argentinean, however, mi preference goes for Mariano Moreno's formula, penned 77 years before Lord Acton's (see: "Mariano Moreno y los contrapesos", Contrapesos, 25 May 2019). It was published in November 1810 by the leader of the pro-independence government of Río de la Plata in a fantastic —but woefully neglected— article for Gazeta de Buenos-Ayres that contains a spirited defense of balanced government and the separation of powers:
Equilíbrense los poderes y se mantendrá la pureza de la administración
(*) Letter to bishop Mandell Creighton, 5 April 1887. According to Acton's biographer, the famous passage was first published in Historical Essays and Studies, although I don't see any edition of that work prior to 1907. See Roland Hill. Lord Acton (Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 300 and 478.
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