Explaining judical corruption at intermediate and lower courts of Chile, Peru and Ecuador

This article identifies the main variables that explain judicial corruption in Chile, Peru, and Ecuador. Improving the current methodological strategies used to measure judicial corruption and incorporating endogenous and exogenous variables in the model, this article argues that legal training of the judges, respect for the judicial career, and the fragmentation of political power explain different degrees of judicial corruption. Through a comparative diachronic and synchronic research design of Chile, Peru and Ecuador, the article shows institutional designs with more legal steps will be more inclined to illegal payments or other types of judicial corruption.