| Chapter 1: | Democracy without Politics? Hidden Costs of Corruption and Reform in America |
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corrupted one.) While we have had our share of scandals, we have not seen anything like the state capture, or wholesale theft, of public assets that has plagued some other countries, nor have we found ourselves in the downward spiral of corruption, poverty, and misrule that traps some societies in seemingly permanent states of underdevelopment. Our press is free to investigate most official conduct—and occasionally, even does so—and we can vote the scoundrels out when we stir ourselves to get to the polls.
But in other respects the picture is not so bright. CPI scores cannot be used to track countries' trends in corruption, but it is still worth noting that our score places us in a tie with Japan and Belgium—two societies that for years scored significantly worse than the United States. The current economic crisis has both been fed by, and has led to further revelations of, weak and compromised regulatory processes, extensive corporate influence over policies and agencies, immense compensation packages unrelated to overall performance, and outright malfeasance by figures in both the public and private sectors. Not all of those issues fit the notion of public sector corruption, to be sure, but all have contributed to a widespread credibility problem for leaders and institutions both public and private. A pervasive culture of elite entitlement in both political parties—goodbye, Halliburton and Dick Cheney; hello, Tom Daschle—and political finance activities that break no laws but reinforce popular perceptions of rising tides of private money make matters worse. Polls consistently find that over seven in ten people agree with statements such as “Nowadays politicians don't care very much about people like me,” and with the notion that lobbyists and contributors hold far too much influence in Washington and state capitals.5 That the public generally misunderstands political finance processes and the relationships on which they rest does not change the fact that large majorities believe something is fundamentally out of joint.
Political contributions, expenditures, and lobbying rightly enjoy First Amendment protection, and policymaking has not yet been turned into an auction. Still, a democracy in which majorities feel excluded from access to leaders and basic political processes and believe their