Country Performance in the South American Region: A Multivariate Analysis del Campo, Cristina Hermosa Del Vasto, Paola Marcela Urquía-Grande, Elena Jorge, Susana Governance Corruption Social-economic This work was partially supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [grant number UID/CPO/0758/2019] South American countries have historically been characterized by weak democratic regimes, high levels of corruption and abuse of power, and generally low social and economic development. Nevertheless, citizens’ increasing demand for better public services have impelled governments to improve countries’ performance. The literature highlights a framework of interrelationships between governance, corruption and social-economic development indicators. Using these indicators, this paper analyses how South American countries have evolved and how they compare to each other, regarding their performance in the past two decades. Applying multivariate statistical techniques, the research revealed important differences between countries, clustering together those with similar behavior trends and evidencing the best performers. This research contributes in applying a methodology to identify the best performers according to nine worldwide indicators. This identification is important because top performers may serve as benchmarks for neighboring countries, pushing towards overall performance improvements, hence strengthening citizens’ confidence in their countries’ governments. 2026-01-23T12:46:00Z 2026-01-23T12:46:00Z 2021 journal article Publisher Version: del Campo, C., Hermosa del Vasto, P., Urquía-Grande, E., & Jorge, S. (2021). Country Performance in the South American Region: A Multivariate Analysis. International Journal of Public Administration, 44(5), 390–408. https://doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2020.1728314 0190-0692 1532-4265 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/110172 10.1080/01900692.2020.1728314 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ embargoed access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Routledge