Alejandro Toledo Manrique, Education and the Future of Latin America. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2021. Figures, tables, illustrations, abbreviations, notes, bibliography, index, 246 pp.; hardcover $95, ebook $95.

Abstract

by convincing evidence: “that the eye and whip approach contributes to improved compliance with existing regulations and results in the more efficient use of public resources” (118), that the eye without “at least the implicit threat” of the whip is ineffective (12), and that the costs of conducting audits is more than offset by the efficiency and spending gains (12, 100). These criticisms are in no way intended to detract from the intrinsic contributions of this carefully designed, refreshingly concise, and meticulous book. If anything, they suggest a need to better integrate methods in the study of regional corruption dynamics. Lagunes has already shown himself also to be a skilled corruption researcher, conducting incisive interviews with key anticorruption officials and organizing a multimethod investigation of the Lava Jato probes across Latin America (Lagunes and Svejnar 2020). Further integration of these diverse research traditions, and dialogue across them, will inevitably enrich the study of corruption across the hemisphere and presumably beyond. In the meantime, The Eye and the Whip stands out as a rare three-country exploration of what works in tackling this pervasive and insidious challenge.