The supreme audit at subnational level in Mexico: A performance's evaluation of the local Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs)

Nowadays, the local Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) in Mexico have significant differences not only in their institutional design and their structural evolution, but also in the performance of their capacities, coverage and effectiveness. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to explain the factors that determine the differences in the performance of sub-national SAIs. The paper starts from the hypothesis that those differences are explained for external and internal factors. The external factor refers to a political phenomenon: the distribution of political power in state legislatures. On the other hand, internal factors involve formal rules reflected in the legal framework's quality of the audit institutions and the sufficiency of their annual budget. To contrast the hypothesis, was conducted a study of three indicators regarding the capacity of SAIs in developing audits, the coverage of the audit they perform and the effectiveness of the audit process in 17 Mexican audit institutions during 2013. Finally, a general evaluation allows the construction of a performance index. This essay includes a theoretical framework's reflection of the supreme audit as one of the main instruments of political control in democratic regimes and ends with a contribution to the theoretical discussion about the implications of an effective control and supreme audit in the states to the democratic quality in Mexico.