The chapter shows that Brazilians’ attitudes towards Lava Jato became increasingly divided and more negative over time. Attitudes towards the crusade are sensitive to partisan preferences, especially affect for the Workers’ Party. Results thus point to the precarity of optimism and the importance of voters’ priors in assessing prosecutorial zeal. The chapter also relies on an experiment to investigate whether putting crusades at the forefront of narratives of Brazilian corruption elicits optimism, compared to narratives that focus exclusively on corruption. The results show that when voters fixate on the crimes they are more likely to experience negative emotions and more likely to be dissatisfied with democracy. However,the crime-oriented narrative also increases respondents’ external efficacy, whereas the investigation-oriented one has the opposite effect. This suggests that the attitudinal impact of Lava Jato is far from being uniformly in line with the optimistic story. Under certain conditions, pessimists might be right in warning that crusaders’ anti-political message does more harm than good to the view that politics is redeemable.

What leads prosecutors to become crusaders in contexts where there are few precedents of Hollywood-style “prosecutor-heroes,” evidence is thin and risks high? Combining theories of the drivers of bureaucratic autonomy with analyses of crusades in Brazil and Italy, the chapter locates the origins of zealous prosecutorial role-conceptions in processes of institutional change and three “moments” (serendipity, agency, and backlash), blending structural and agentic factors. That prosecutors challenge the establishment, triggering a cascade of evidence with unorthodox tactics, is a function of institutional autonomy, criminal law reforms, and bureaucratic differentiation. Inquiries are also shaped by tactical choices, in particular, whether prosecutors form taskforces. Based on research in economics and psychology, the chapter shows that small groups are conducive to evidentiary economies of scale, legal innovation, and defensive strategies. The argument thus specifies the incentives guiding prosecutors, with attention to the organisations within which they operate. It also shows why zeal is both the engine of crusades but also the likely source of their undoing.

Crusades spur debates about what the boundaries of legal possibility ought to be when it comes to attacking corruption. They also pose the question of how much corruption we should tolerate in the name of the rule of law. While a zealous prosecutorial modus operandi is essential to dismantle criminal networks backed by state power, it can also stand in tension with due process. With this in mind, the chapter begins with a discussion of how the book’s account of the drivers of crusades contributes to debates about institution building, noting the perils of unchecked institutional (prosecutorial) strength. It also discusses the book’s contributions to the political behaviour literature, especially how attention to emotions and political cynicism offers new perspectives on the puzzle of limited electoral accountability for corruption. The chapter then explores the (de)merits of criminalisation, pointing to the importance of “norming” prosecutorial zeal in order to render prosecutions less controversial and their outcomes less precarious. It concludes with a discussion of what this “norming” exercise could look like.

This chapter theorises the impact of crusades on voters’ attitudes and emotions towards politics. Optimists expect a message of regeneration that instils hope. Pessimists think crusades tell an all too familiar story of decay, triggering anxiety, fear, anger, and disaffection. The actual outcome, however, is likely more conditional and variable as the crusade progresses. No one likes corruption, so citizens should in principle welcome crusades, but not everyone sees these efforts with the same eyes or draws the same conclusions. First, it matters whether citizens fixate on the crimes revealed during the process, and therefore experience a negative information shock, or also pay attention to the proposed judicial solution to corruption. Second, when voters pay attention to the investigative effort, how do they evaluate it? Fairness and effectiveness evaluations are shaped by voters’ partisan attachments to defendants. Unorthodox investigative tactics can also trigger fairness concerns among partisans and neutral observers. Hope can therefore quickly fade as the inquiry progresses and the consensus around the merits of anti-corruption suffers.

The chapter argues that anti-corruption crusades are characterised by extraordinary levels of prosecutorial zeal and reliance on aggressive tactics; high degrees of coordination between law enforcement agencies; evidentiary snowball effects leading to protracted and uncertain inquiries; and disruptive consequences beyond the courtroom. With this in mind, the chapter introduces two research questions. First, under what conditions are corruption probes more likely to evolve into crusades? Second, the stated objective of crusades is relatively uncontroversial, but their aggressive methods, choice of targets, and the intricacies of the legal process are not. Moreover, results often stand on precarious grounds. Given their provocative, disruptive, and uncertain nature, how do crusades impact attitudes and emotions towards politics and corruption? Do voters become more cynical or hopeful about the future of politics? After summarising our argument about the causes and consequences of crusades, and describing the books’ empirical strategy, the chapter discusses the main contributions to the study of anti-corruption, judicial politics, and political behaviour.

The chapter maps conversations around Lava Jato in Brazil and Peru using focus groups, especially whether voters associate Lava Jato with the problem of corruption or its solution. Peruvians focus mainly on the crimes, the “cockroaches.” Brazilians are divided, with some seeing “superheroes.” This leads Peruvians to voice negative emotions and cynicism. Attitudes in Brazil are more mixed. Analysis of newspapers as well as survey data suggest these differences could be due to contrasting media environments and baseline attitudes towards judicial institutions. The chapter then explores fairness and effectiveness evaluations. The debate is more intense in Brazil due to partisan polarisation. Supporters of the Workers’ Party feel victimised; their rivals passionately defend Lava Jato. This separates those who find reasons for hope from those who derive no satisfaction from the crusade. By contrast, in Peru participants do not see prosecutorial efforts through partisan lenses. They cannot, however, get past their cynicism, and remain deeply sceptical. A citizenry that is hopelessly cynical is prone to stick to its priors about the irredeemably crass nature of politics.

Using official documents, institutional analysis, and interviews, the chapter traces Peru’s Lava Jato, the most ambitious branch of the inquiry outside Brazil. A sequence of organisational changes within the prosecution services created a more hospitable environment for proficient and innovative anti-corruption efforts. A process of bureaucratic differentiation nurtured interstices of investigative capacity, despite enduring corruption at the top of the institution. However, Lava Jato struggled to take off until all lines of inquiry were placed under the purview of a taskforce. Within case variation in this aspect of the investigative strategy shows the benefits of teamwork , as well as the role of individual personalities and professional role conceptions in determining the outcome of corruption probes. One consequence of the decision to pool investigative resources was a more aggressive and coordinated fact-finding approach. Finally, the case study shows that while prosecutorial zeal was critical for the progress of the case, it also invited backlash and risked jeopardising the legitimacy and effectiveness of the inquiry at various stages.