The fight against corruption in Brazil has crossed national borders since 2014, gaining worldwide visibility with Lava Jato Operation, or Car Wash. This is due not only to the amount of money surrounding illegalities committed by political parties and representatives, elected or not, but also because large companies and businessmen were involved in a huge corruption scheme relating money and politics. The involvement of politicians and executives from several countries was also a hallmark of this corruption scandal. In addition, their confrontation involved an extensive effort by international anti-corruption agencies to track and recover the money of the Brazilian State. Like other Western democracies, Brazil was neither immune to misconduct and nor were its institutions ineffective in detecting it and pursuing legal accountability.

In a methodological and empirical effort to understand the phenomenon’s magnitude, contributors to this volume have focused on the causes and consequences of the anti-corruption fight in Brazil. The chapters range from presenting the interactional perspective, of the relationships between political, judicial, or business actors in this process, to the institutional perspective, by analyzing the institutional and legal advances associated with the proceedings of Lava Jato Operation in Brazil. We are not taking a moralist stance vis-à-vis corruption, given that anticorruption campaigns and scandals may be ambivalent as they delegitimize representative institutions and the political system. To sidestep a normative view of the object under study, scholars cover both the roots of and the reactions to wrongdoing in the political and economic systems, aiming to address the historical shift in corruption research.

This is the context in which the present work is inserted. The book explores, firstly, state actors and institutions directly involved in Car Wash, focusing on accountability mechanisms, government entities and public servants. Secondly, it investigates non-state actors that were engaging with the state apparatus and public officials in the corruption cases unveiled, with special attention to a pivotal construction company in this process: Odebrecht. While the first part casts light on the internal dynamics of the legal system and how members of legal careers think and act, the second is more concerned with the economic system and how for-profit organizations manage illegality. Boundaries between each ‘system’ are merely an epistemic heuristic, so the lines between the market and the State, public and private, legal and illegal, will be far more blurred throughout the book. We will move seamlessly back and forth in the corruption research landscape, even if the two parts in the volume should orient our readers.

The chapters that follow are the result of the binational research project “Organizational Crime and Systemic Corruption in Brazil” and of intensive debates to examine and explain the interplay between public and private sectors. Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP), the research project began in 2018 and ended in 2023, carried out in cooperation between the University of Heidelberg, University of Sao Paulo (USP), Federal University of ABC (UFABC) and Federal University of Paraná (UFPR). Briefly, the specific contributions from each chapter are discussed in this introductory session.

Following the introduction, the book starts with a methodological discussion on how to study patterns of systemic corruption, which are widespread around the world and difficult to prevent. Contrary to the ritual of simply condemning systemic corruption and insisting on its negative consequences, the article shows what makes systemic corruption so endurable and why societies rely on systemic corruption when formal institutions fail. But it also introduces the theoretical tools to conceptualize systemic corruption, and the indicators and analytical tools to measure the degree of systemic corruption in a given society. Instead of complaining about it, the article by Markus Pohlmann “Systemic Corruption—How to analyze and measure it” suggests to move one step forward and analyze the phenomenon in a sound empirical way. In view of the low level of research interest in systemic corruption beyond the usual corruption expert ratings, on the one hand, and the importance of the topic for the development of suitable anticorruption measures in democracies, on the other, Pohlmann emphasizes the significance of improving the methodological tools for dealing with this subject.

The first aspect that has to be clarified is the conceptualization of systemic corruption and the bystanding behavior of many. Systemic corruption is related to legal organizations with legal objectives, providing services or selling goods within the framework of legally recognized organizations, but from time to time using illegal means to achieve legal objectives, and illegal personal gain. Petty corruption, in this sense, is carried out partly for the benefit of and based on the informal rules of a community, an organization or a society. As a hidden social order, it emerges when formal institutions fail or are not trusted. This definition is the basis for further analysis on systemic corruption. Some central methodological steps frame and understand the institutional order involved, analyze the collective action problems, and the costs and benefits involved for becoming part of it. Considering the complexity of this phenomenon, and the array of institutions and actors implicated on it, research on systemic corruption should follow a multi-method strategy that combines quantitative and qualitative techniques. This is the rationale behind the different chapters that constitute parts 1 and 2 of this book.

Part 1 is dedicated to the understanding of institutions and actors involved in the detection, investigation and sanctioning of wrongdoings. Each chapter tackles either accountability mechanisms, government entities or public servants, addressing how are they organized, what do they think and how do they behave.

Institutional reforms can deter or create disincentives to corrupt behaviors. According to different Brazilian scholars, the fight against corruption has been driven by incremental institutional changes that bolstered domestic accountability institutions. Providing a general map of the institutional improvement process that occurred in the country before Car Wash, Fabiana Rodrigues demonstrates in her chapter “Anticorruption institutional improvements and the Operation Lava Jato” how the country has become more efficient in identifying and punishing corruption. This process was highly influenced by international anti-corruption and money laundering reforms, as a result of international commitments undertaken by Brazil. A series of institutional changes over the years were essential to enable an investigation of the size and scale of Car Wash to take place and be successful in terms of legal outcome. Therefore, Rodrigues tracks where the investigation emerged from and presents it as the outcome of a long path of institutional incrementalism.

Maria Eugenia Trombini and Elizangela Valarini ask what guides the action orientation of people working in the anti-corruption complex when working with the people labeled white-collar criminals. The objective of their chapter entitled “Rational Executives and Selfish Politicians: the Cultural Repertoires of Legal Experts” is to advance the research agenda on Law and Politics by shedding light on the views held by members of the justice system. Their qualitative findings show the group locates the problem of corruption among politicians. The collective mindsets of legal experts reconstructed at the chapter criticize patrimonialism and a lack of separation between the public and private domains in the Brazilian context. The expert group with previous experience prosecuting, sentencing and defending people targeted for white-collar crime recommend ethical guidelines and knowledge-based management to remedy widespread corruption.

Powerful actors play a special role in any political process. That is not different for actors in the judicial system, although they insist on affirming that they are technical and not political actors. When former public officials in legal careers decide to follow a political career, like lawyers who worked in corruption scandals did, studying their preferences becomes an interesting endeavor. Noting the scarce literature on judicial decision-making in corruption cases, Luciano Da Ros, Luísa Zanini da Fontoura, Sérgio Simoni Junior and Matthew M. Taylor have attempted to bridge this gap by focusing on an important player from Car Wash: judge Sérgio Moro. In “Moro’s opinions: a quantitative analysis of sentencing in Operation Car Wash”, the authors analyze Moro’s decisions in criminal cases as an exercise to understand the drivers of judicial decision-making in corruption trials. By quantitatively analyzing an extensive dataset of cases compiled from official sources, they demonstrate that politicians have higher chances of conviction and are awarded longer sentences when compared to all other types of defendants. This is an important finding for studies on corruption and the money-and-politics relations, not only for Brazil but for all democratic countries. Furthermore, the study emphasizes that decisions in cases of corruption can be analyzed considering both the decision to either convict or not convict the accused, and the decision on the length of the sentence imposed on convicted defendants.

Part Two, “Companies and the interplay with key sectors”, is devoted to understanding the private actors and State institutions they interact with in corruption cases. These interactions are especially important in Car Wash Operation, considering the central role played by companies and their executives. Together with political actors, business elites challenged the country’s accountability system, acting to promote individual and organizational gains for both the companies and the political parties engaged in illegal activities. The framework in which decision-making by top executives from a construction company takes place distinguishes itself from the framework regulating how judges sentence criminal cases about bribery. Also the worldviews about the State held by public officials working in the web of accountability stand in contrast to those held by businesspeople.

Corruption is often modeled in association with development, as Jonathan Mendilow stated in the Prologue. As such, to gain a revised understanding of the phenomenon using data from a site located in the Global South, factors pertaining to the market order need to be accounted for. Brazil is considered a developmental state, where the bureaucracy has leeway to “guide” business using its discretion. The contributions from Part Two refer to bargaining processes between state and non-state actors that may or may not be labeled illegal. Again, instead of deeming a country more corrupt because of the size and power of the public sector, we follow a non-normative approach in this collected volume.

At the business level, consolidated but informal relationships constitute a form of “durable capital” that rather than eroding, as with most tangible forms of productive capital, becomes more entrenched through repeated use. The first chapter of this part is “The public and the private in Odebrecht’s vocabulary”, where Trombini and Bischof dos Santos discuss the boundaries between the two by using narratives from executives of the company. In addition to historical and bibliographic sources, the authors collected evidence from a database consisting of 8 criminal cases sentenced in Car Wash, with testimonies from 48 Odebrecht members. Contrary to traditional approaches to the intertwining of businessmen and politicians, the chapter argues that corruption, understood as the interference of private interests in the public sphere, is not a maladaptive reaction to regulation, but an adaptive reaction due to the competitive advantages it provides to its agents, businessmen or rulers.

“A pragmatic giant: the logic behind Odebrecht’s campaign donations in the 2014 elections”, analyzes the enormous campaign contributions from the Odebrecht group (approximately 88.9 million reais, circa 37.8 million US$) to 2014 election campaigns in Brazil. In order to understand the company’s decision to donate or not and, when doing so, deciding on how much to contribute and how to distribute it among candidates and parties, Mancuso, Horochovski and Speck focused on candidate’s political capital and region, and political party’s ideology, its belonging to the government’s ruling coalition in Congress, and its size. The quantitative analysis and its results demonstrated that Odebrecht concentrated its donations on the three largest parties and most important political parties in Brazil at that time (PT, PSDB and PMDB). It means that the company ignored the status of being a ruling or opposition party, as well as the ideological position of the party, concentrating its political investments based on the size (and chances of winning) of the Brazilian parties during the 2014 elections. These findings, therefore, demonstrate the company’s extremely pragmatic approach, seeking to expand the company’s political leverage in the upcoming political scenario.

Another chapter focused on corporate behavior is that of Costa, Ferreira and Campos “Businessmen, political financing, and corruption: Odebrecht in Operation Car Wash”. The authors analyzed the managerial culture at Odebrecht concerning legal and illegal political financing aiming to grasp the “insider perspective”. Their empirical material were testimonies of people in close proximity to the chairman of the holding company and descendent of the founders, Marcelo Odebrecht. Results illustrate how an important group of Brazilian economic elites dealt with the real working of Brazilian democracy through illegal methods. Using the category of “representation” the chapter studies a specific and under-explored dimension of the political culture and political action of entrepreneurs: the practice of corruption.

The chapter “Compliance Implementation Challenges in the Shadow of Corporate Crime: A Case Study of Odebrecht S.A.”, by Mario H. Jorge Jr., presents a case study of Odebrecht in order to understand the features and implementation challenges of compliance systems. The study provides insights into how anticorruption practices are integrated into processes and structures, how they are handled and perceived by management, and highlights important factors for a successful system implementation. The study also examines the measures taken by Odebrecht, such as the termination of employment of individuals involved in misconduct, the development of its accountability system, and the increase in the Compliance departments’ budget and resources. The paper suggests that compliance implementation could be further developed by considering elements such as the most vulnerable job positions, internal communication, power dynamics and culture among leadership, structural incentives (especially financial), sustainability and using technology to create an ongoing monitoring system.

The closing chapter by Vanessa Elias de Oliveira and Conrado Hübner Mendes delves deeper into the kind of corruption practiced within the public administration by centering on the organs of the justice system. Introducing a new research agenda, the authors present a typology of judicial corruption derived from Brazil and outline the importance of understanding how the office-holders who sought to combat political and corporate corruption instrumentalized their position to pursue their own personal interests or institional ends. The fact that anti-corruption efforts championed by the justice system coexist with a usage of office for non-republican purposes is a subject that is worthy of attention and further research by comparative politics.

Acknowledging that corruption is a complex and multicausal phenomenon, the contributions in this book are complementary inasmuch as they analyze the practices and institutions by using different types of data, methods and considering different analytical layers.