Identifying, regulating and managing potential conflicts of interest among policy makers, as well as potential undue influence from interest groups, are key elements to strengthen and enhance transparency and accountability. Failure to identify and manage conflicts of interests correctly can undermine the impartiality of policy making and service delivery. If not appropriately regulated, conflicts of interest can also open the door for potential policy capture by private interest groups. Likewise, while interest groups provide valuable insights on public policies, the misuse of lobbying practices can result in them exerting undue influence through the use of covert information or manipulation of public opinion, prioritising their interests over public ones.
Governments can establish frameworks with clear definitions of circumstances and relationships that may lead to conflict of interest situations to prevent the potential conflict of interests of public officials. Four out of six Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries with available data have regulations with such definitions. To ensure the identification and management of potential conflict of interest situations, public officials should also be transparent about any affiliations or special interest they may have. All six LAC countries have regulations which require members of government to submit interest declarations, at the very least upon entry, renewal or change in public office. However, there are issues with compliance, since Chile is the only LAC country where all government members have submitted all interest declarations during the last six years (Figure 3.16).
To improve compliance with conflict-of-interest regulations, it is important to monitoring potential breaches and impose necessary sanctions. In five of the surveyed LAC countries, sanctions for breaches of conflict-of-interest provisions are defined and proportional to the severity of the offence (compared to 78% of OECD countries). However, out of the six LAC countries, only in Argentina the authority responsible for monitoring has issued recommendations for resolution within 12 months for all cases of conflict of interest detected for the past three years (35% of OECD countries). Also only Argentina has issued sanctions in cases of non-compliance with disclosure obligations, non-management or non-resolution of a conflict-of-interest situation in the past three years. Among OECD member countries, 55% have issued such sanctions during the same period (Figure 3.17). These data highlight a gap between regulations and their effective implementation in LAC countries.
Undue influence through unregulated lobbying activities also presents a risk for policy makers and the public interest. Lobbying should be regulated to ensure transparency about the participation of private interest groups and prevent undue influence. However, only three out of six LAC countries (Chile, Mexico and Peru) have a definition of lobbying activities in their legal frameworks, and only Chile and Mexico have made their lobbying registers publicly accessible online (Figure 3.18). Moreover, Chile is the only LAC country with available data that has a supervisory function in its central government to oversee issues with the transparency of lobbying activities. This further underscores the region’s limited capabilities to monitor and sanction breaches in lobbying practices. Chile is also the only LAC country that has carried out any investigations into non-compliance with lobbying activity regulations over the past year (Online Figure F.1.2).
