Trust in Latin American governments is very low; Corruption worsens in Peru

Only 36.3% of inhabitants in 2022 had confidence in their governments in Latin America and the Caribbean, a figure in global terms clearly lower than the OECD average, although with notable differences by country, and which has rather decreased since 2008.

Between those two years, trust in governments has decreased by 3.9 percentage points in the group of 15 countries considered in the study of governance indicators in Latin America and the Caribbean published this Wednesday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The situation in the region is clearly worse than in the OECDwhere the percentage of the population that trusts its government was 47.5% in 2022, after improving 3 percentage points since 2008.

But this situation and the evolution in reality have little to do between one Latin American country and another.

On the one hand, trust has suffered a notable drop in the years considered in the study in Colombia (34 percentage points, to 30%), Ecuador (30 points, to 21%), Chile (12 points to 39%) and Bolivia (11 points at 33%).

It has also fallen, but in a much more moderate way and to more than honorable levels in Uruguay (7 points to 52%) and in the Dominican Republic (2 points to 52%).

The evolution has been clearly positive in Costa Rica, with 24 percentage points of improvement between 2008 and 2022, when 60% of those surveyed said they trusted their Government, the highest figure of all the countries in the sample.

Next came Mexico, with 53% of people who were confident, 12 points more than 14 years ago. Corruption is widespread for 75.5%.

One of the elements that weighs on this trust is the perception that corruption is widespread in the government, an idea subscribed to by 75.5% of Latin Americans consulted in 2023, a figure that has grown slightly compared to 2013 (74.7%) and above all, it is much higher than the OECD average (53.6%).

In all countries in the region, this perception of widespread corruption is the majority, but it is particularly high in Peru (90%)Panama (86%), Ecuador (84%), Colombia (83%), Guatemala (80%), Argentina (80%) and Bolivia (80%).

Beyond the worsening of trust, the authors of the report point out several challenges that Latin American democracies face, in particular inequality, informality or “limited fiscal space” to face pressing problems such as climate change or other environmental issues.

Regarding inequality, they note that it has worsened with the inflationary spiral during the years 2022 and 2023, which has affected the groups that are at the bottom of the social scale, probably because the increase in prices affected basic elements such as food and energy, which constitute a greater part of the spending of the poorest.

Overall, poverty rates in 2022 were above pre-pandemic levels, with 32% poor in the region and 13.1% in extreme poverty.

Before the inflationary surge of the last two years, inequality measured with the Gini index on a scale from 0 to 100 had decreased in Latin America to 44.6 points, when in 2008 the indicator was at 48.1. In any case, it was much higher than the OECD average, of 33.2 points in 2021.

Those responsible for the study note that the region has made progress in several areas, for example, by establishing participatory mechanisms and public integrity standards and addressing gender gaps in public administration.