2009 Assessment

This peer-reviewed country report includes:

Integrity Indicators Scorecard: Scores, scoring criteria, commentary, references, and peer review perspectives for more than 300 Integrity Indicators.

Reporter's Notebook: An on-the-ground look at corruption and integrity from a leading local journalist.

Corruption Timeline: Ten years of political context to today's corruption and integrity issues.

Mexico continues to wrestle with a number of significant weaknesses in its public integrity system. For instance, the public has no access to the asset disclosure records of executive, legislative, or judicial branch officials. In addition, the media climate is among the most challenging in the world. Citizens face significant barriers when attempting to establish broadcast media entities, including arbitrary and opaque decision-making procedures on the part of the government agency charged with granting broadcast licenses. Investigative journalists continue to face a dangerous environment, with several cases of reporters being killed by drug cartels in just the past year. Nevertheless, there have been some incremental improvements. Civil society organizations continue to play an active role as public watchdogs, with some positively influencing public opinion and, to a lesser extent, actual policymaking. Furthermore, the country's now-famous public access to government information mechanism remains effective. An amendment to the access to information law in 2007 required "all levels of government to standardize their regulations and computer systems to allow public access to government records from anywhere in the country."