Countries like Denmark and Canada are famously not corrupt, whereas places like Russia and Egypt are famously corrupt. I know this is a very complex question and every country’s history and culture are different; but I do wonder how some places manage to reduce corruption and have a government that really does serve the best interests of the people, whereas others seem to be owned by a few thugs who take everything and leave scraps for the citizens.
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Excellent question! I don’t think there’s a simple or straightforward answer to your question – or rather, corruption involves a wide range of things. One big factor, IMO, is sheer willpower: a country’s citizens or people must want the corruption to be reduced or eliminated, and this isn’t easy, given the financial benefits of corruption for many people involved in it.
Another factor, more relevant now than in even the recent past, is that people have much greater and easier access to see how things are done in other, non-corrupt (or less corrupt) countries. So they might begin to question how things are done in their home countries and push for change.
There are other factors too: culture, history, probably religion too, and more besides. Someone smarter than me will, no doubt, enlighten us both here! A very interesting topic, and a very important one too, IMO.
Singapore eliminated corruption in one generation due to two reasons
From the US citizen view I think repeal the citizen united thing saying companies are basically individuals and can throw $$ at whatever political thing they want. I think term limits too I don’t mind if someone wants a 30-40 year career in govt, but I think they can’t stay in one place for more than say 10 yrs. I think if made so you could go between divisions I think this would help break up ties or outside, personal interests, etc more regularly. I think come like 70ish mandatory retirement.
there are two aspects to your question – the actual corruption & public opinion – and for the examples a lot of people would give answers you might not expect
Canada has their image game on point regardless of how much or little corruption their government currently is running
Denmark just doesn’t have much in the way of serious corruption because of the enormous amount of bureaucratic red tape and the associated costs of dealing with said red tape in a country with a limited number of opportunities – you can view that as a solid set of protections with a notable cost, or you can view it as the industry they have instead of the corruption many other countries have.
Russia and Egypt are a whole different level, for that kind of corruption you would need the basic protections like separation of duties, restrictions against having relatives in related positions, multiple, overlapping, independent police and prosecutors entities that can arrest and charge people that violate those rules. Limitations to what can be a state secret. A properly free press that doesn’t require government licensing or approval to publish a story, truly free speech, etc
If you dont have all of those things then you dont have a system that is robust enough to always have bits of it outside the sphere of influence of the government, and without that anyone with enough govt power can use the govt to just keep escalating their corruption.
The USA has done a couple things right to reduce some corruption.
We have 3 branches of government, Each one could call out a different branch and say, XXXX is corrupt and we have the evidence. This is different than most or the really corrupt governments where the president can decide, we don’t like the supreme court and so I am removing it. And that legislature you ae fired also.
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Then after FDR we realized that changing politicians every few years was a good thing. We screwed up in not requiring the same of congress, governors, mayors, state legislature…..
While at the same time keeping the judicial branch which is very limited in changing thing, allowed to be lifetime positions and not swapped out every couple years as politics change.
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While the police may not like how much they get paid, we are not like some countries where the police are paid so little if it wasn’t for some corruption, they would be below the poverty line.
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I think countries with 30-40 parties do a better job at not having corrupt governments vs. the 2 party and the 1 party.
1 party, are you going to call out a friend we you see them taking a small bribe? And if you do, will the others stand behind you?
With 2 parties, Trumps corrupt, Biden’s corrupt, Trumps corrupt, Bidens corrupt… Unless you have a lot of smoking guns, the people of the other party will ignore the corruption in their own backyard.
With 30 parties, when If you have a decent case, 15 groups call it out and then it becomes 20 and then it becomes 29 and then the 1 party looks at it’s person and goes, yep, there is a problem.
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And then we have the legal system with the laws and the auditors and … Any country which doesn’t have audit or internal affairs type people who’s normal job is to just check up… they have a problem.
Anytime there’s more than 3% of deficit compared to GDP elected officials aren’t able to be reelected.
Younger people get elected
Term limits
Government regulators
It’s cultural. Places like Russia have a long history of what we would call corruption. Under the tsars, often the only way to get anything done in any reasonable amount of time was to grease the bureaucratic wheels with some cold hard cash.
It might have to do with a strong history of autocracy. When a single person gathers essentially all the power into their hands, such that the entire machinery of government exists to serve their goals and needs, the same is going to propagate to lower levels. Whereas places like England have never been truly autocratic, except for brief periods in its history.