This book explores a recent phenomenon, the anticorruption “crusade” lava jato––which started in Brazil but expanded to several other countries––using a new approach and a sophisticated set of methodological tools. The approach is comparative, looking primarily at Brazil and Peru but also including stories from Ecuador, Argentina, and Mexico. The methodological toolbox includes interviews, document analyses, focus groups, and even experiments. The research team is deeply invested in local contexts; hence, they have a much more nuanced and holistic understanding of this operation than do scholars relying on English-speaking elite sources and reports from the Anglo-American media.

The authors are interested in the causes and consequences of what they call prosecutorial zeal through those crusades. The choice seems well-founded. Attention has been devoted to legal professionals in Latin America, with hopes that a new, modern bar could emerge in the region and rescue it from its state of un-rule of law. But no previous lawyer-led campaign produced the same the impact in the region as lava jato did.

The authors attribute this to two interrelated factors. First, institutional or organizational reforms promoted the independence of prosecutors and led to specialized task forces; second, unorthodox methods adopted from exte