ABSTRACT
The chapter explores the recent transparency politics in Chile and Peru as processes that led to institutional change in the context of the potentially adverse conditions of resource economies and asks for the factors that made these reforms happen. In both countries, the revelation of massive scandals of political corruption elicited enormous social disapproval and drove presidents to promote comprehensive reform agendas. Against substantive resistance in Congress and by other politicians, the majority of reforms were ultimately enacted. The chapter argues that in both countries the same mechanism of change was at play involving a combination of pressure from the inside of governmental institutions as well as from the outside: a strategic coalition among presidents and civil society actors was able to build circumstances in which delegates could not afford to vote against the reform proposals. The comparison between the political processes in Chile and Peru also allows to qualify the institutions matter argument of the resource curse literature. The analysis points out to the importance of the quality of the institutional fundament in place. In other words, resource economies can only be governed in a good way, when the very political fundament of the polity in question—the grounds on which those institutions that matter have to be negotiated—is of a good quality.
