Yes, there will always be power mongers and corrupt individuals. So why have a system of rules & regulation?
Why have a democracy, a constitution, laws?
Because separation of powers, regular mandated elections, and other rules that make power harder to centralize, reduce the chance of autocracy from nearly 100% to something much lower.
And debugging that system when obvious in-the-open systematic corruption occurs also has great impact.
I.e. the bill of rights, equal rights amendments, etc
Rules & regulations are a program running on squishy human “hardware”, of course, but fixing clear bugs makes a difference.
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Which is why my question isn’t whether fixing government system flaws is worth doing, but whether there is a way to make that activity more regular, more incentivized, more likely.
For instance, the simple rule of requiring elections on a calendar makes elections much much likely.
Maybe some rules that ensured party dominance resulted in an extended period of party handicap would do it? Less incentives and outright necessity for corruption when it isn’t going to extend your hold on power anyway.
I am sure that if a country was writing a new constitution, they could learn something from all the different corrupt vs. less corrupt behaviors of existing democracies.
Surely the best constitution isn’t a solved problem, and constitution innovation hasn’t run into some final optimization limit.
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Stockholm syndrome might reduce our awareness of these opportunities, but they exist, despite the difficulty implementing even simple reforms today.
That makes asking how reforms that reduce corruption, and power consolidation, could be made more likely even more important.
Why have a democracy, a constitution, laws?
Because separation of powers, regular mandated elections, and other rules that make power harder to centralize, reduce the chance of autocracy from nearly 100% to something much lower.
And debugging that system when obvious in-the-open systematic corruption occurs also has great impact.
I.e. the bill of rights, equal rights amendments, etc
Rules & regulations are a program running on squishy human “hardware”, of course, but fixing clear bugs makes a difference.
—
Which is why my question isn’t whether fixing government system flaws is worth doing, but whether there is a way to make that activity more regular, more incentivized, more likely.
For instance, the simple rule of requiring elections on a calendar makes elections much much likely.
Maybe some rules that ensured party dominance resulted in an extended period of party handicap would do it? Less incentives and outright necessity for corruption when it isn’t going to extend your hold on power anyway.
I am sure that if a country was writing a new constitution, they could learn something from all the different corrupt vs. less corrupt behaviors of existing democracies.
Surely the best constitution isn’t a solved problem, and constitution innovation hasn’t run into some final optimization limit.
—
Stockholm syndrome might reduce our awareness of these opportunities, but they exist, despite the difficulty implementing even simple reforms today.
That makes asking how reforms that reduce corruption, and power consolidation, could be made more likely even more important.