ABSTRACT
Since the 1999–2000 fieldwork and data collection for this study, the early 2000s saw only minor advances in arresting the Caribbean Basin's political corruption problems. Almost all Organization of American States members ratified the 1996 Inter-American Convention Against Corruption by mid-2004. Many of the region's states also signed the 2003 United Nations Convention Against Corruption. Throughout the early 2000s, the international financial institutes (IFI) (World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Inter-American Development Bank) kept anti-corruption programs in the forefront of their regional financial assistance programs. Despite these continuing efforts of regional and international institutions, corruption levels in the Caribbean Basin changed little, and even increased in some states as measured by the Transparency International annual corruption ratings.
