Democracy leads to corruption.
How?
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Answer:
My mind says that countries can get stuck in a “corruption trap” despite the presence of elections. In a corrupt society, a corrupt politician may actually be more beneficial to voters’ welfare than a clean one. For example, in the chaos ensuing after the fall of the Soviet Union, getting a business started in Russia often required bribing an entire chain of administrators and authorities, from the local legislature, to the local executive branch, the central ministry, the fire authorities, the water authorities, and so on. It is easy to imagine that a corrupt politician could be better able to navigate such an environment than an honest one. Voters may then condone corruption, in turn only further incentivizing those in power to be corrupt and encouraging those wishing to enrich themselves through politics to enter the fray.
Even when voters do not benefit from corrupt politicians, in poorer democracies corruption may take a back seat to issues more immediate to voters’ concerns – such as economic growth. So long as the government is addressing basic developmental needs – building a water well, road or a school – voters may be willing to look the other way about a prime minister’s newest villa. But when the economic growth is absent and the citizens’ well-being is impacted, corruption can be a particularly bitter pill to swallow. Indeed, we presented citizens in Sweden and Moldova with a same scenario: a corrupt mayor in an average town in the country, presiding over either strong local growth or a struggling economy. In Sweden, corruption was damaging for our respondents’ support for the mayor irrespective of the state of the economy; in Moldova, however, corruption was only important when coupled with a bad economic situation.