Governance of Supreme Audit Institutions in Brazil and Mexico

The scope of this paper is to analyze the external control of the Legislative Power exercised by the supreme audit institutions (SAI) in Brazil and Mexico. The democratization process and the reforms of recent decades conferred broad powers to external control institutions, strengthening an important dimension of democracy quality: the horizontal accountability. However, it is important to understand if this fact is realized strengthening the role of these institutions as well as the degree of discretion exercised by them, and then answer the following questions: what is the role played by SAI in Brazil and Mexico? The hypothesis of this study is that the capacity of the external control depends on a degree of autonomy of the SAI, in relation to Parliament. The methodological approach is qualitative, based on two research techniques. The first one selected was the comparative-qualitative analysis (QCA), and the second is document analysis. The cases were selected due to the importance of the two countries in Latin America. The comparative analysis indicated different degrees of autonomy from external control institutions of both countries. And, consequently, a different capacity between bureaucracies in the implementation of their respective mandates. While the Brazilian institution was more autonomous and more effective in performing the external control, Mexican counterpart showed less expressive results. The findings of this study suggest an important field of research about the SAI performance in Latin America.