Fighting financial corruption with Civil democracy

Financial corruption in politics is a significant challenge today. Historically, intertwining money and power has often led to ethical breaches and undermined democratic principles and public trust. Today, financial corruption persists in various forms, from campaign finance loopholes over revolving doors between government and industry to offshore tax havens that obscure beneficiaries of political transactions. Financial corruption erodes the foundations of democracy. Power of money equals powerlessness of citizens. Trust in democratic institutions diminishes as citizens perceive their representatives as beholden to special interests rather than the common good. Moreover, corruption fosters a culture of impunity, undermining the rule of law and breeding cynicism among the populace.

Current financial corruption signals that the old democratic system of partitioning representation is no longer working. However, is not a cause but an effect.

As long as people stood united in groups behind parties and politicians, they gave them very clear mandates. As this is no longer the case, parties and politicians have less information about what their voters want and more discretionary freedom, and that opens a much greater door for lobbyists.

Using Civil democracy gives responsibility to citizens and civil society organizations. As we know, people can be corrupted, too. But in giving ongoing responsibility to them, Civil democracy incentivizes to train their future orientation, and that decreases their corruptability. And as for the new representative actors, civil society organizations and individual open actors, three things can be said. First, that are fallible humans, as well, so misconduct cannot be excluded. But second, to bribe them will be not that efficient as bribing politicians today because none of them will have the discretionary power that parties and politicians currently hold. And third, as Civil democracy unfolds, we will have codes of conduct with regards to accepting financial support and ways to easily inform voters which open actors agreed to these codes of conduct, and sanctions if they are violated. Criminal behavior from time to time is a perennial phenomenon, but these institutional precautions shall mostly diminish the current incidence of financial corruption.