Departing from a revision of a wide range of empirical literature on corruption, this work contends that a crucial dimension for understanding the contexts where corruption practices occur is to focus on how the institutional and legal frameworks are regarded in a given society. The article proposes the existence of a trade-off between how people perceive the “honesty of institutions and their civil servants” and their own willingness in entering into corruption practices. Beneath such practices there is a worrisome finding that has recurrently appeared in the author’s field research: the institutional-legal framework in Mexico seems to be perceived as illegitimate, optional and inefficient. While this perception might imply bad news for consolidating the rule of law, and consequently democracy in Mexico, the author of this study ends up offering some positive findings: in the first decade of the transparency law, individuals seem to acknowledge some incipient optimistic changes.