Mexican Administrative Law Against Corruption: Scope and Future

This work gives a synopsis of the evolution of public administration control mechanisms in Mexico. It highlights the instrumental nature of oversight, as well as regulatory and assessment aspects, and discusses issues like the historical design of the control instruments used in Mexican public administration. Certain social and political aspects from a legal perspective of administrative anti-corruption regulations are then underscored. The article concludes by drawing attention to the fact that neither the newly designed political-administrative anti-corruption structure in Mexico (the National AntiCorruption Commission) nor the new mechanism to emerge from draft legislation (the National Anti-Corruption and Oversight Institute) will not eliminate corruption in the country because they replicate the same model established for reforming legal institutions. This article aims to show how the Mexican model has repeatedly designed administrative rules and structures that are unable to rise above the political and social spheres in which the complex phenomenon of corruption is deeply entrenched and creates a schism between legislative development and Mexico’s social-political experiences in its fight against corruption. These observations can serve to help other countries design anti-corruption instruments. China is cited in this article because this article was presented as a speech regarding the Mexican experience in that country. It should be noted that the intention of this study was not to make a comparison of corruption or of the legal structures in these countries, but to analyze the case of Mexico.