That there is optimal corruption, in a static system, makes sense to me.

Changing the system for the better (I.e. start requiring US Supreme Court justices to actually avoid conflicts of interest, or forbid coordinated out of state money for state’s senate races) could incrementally reduce the corruption stable point.

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What strikes me as a missed opportunity, is that democracies haven’t institutionalized a response to the inevitability of corruption. Despite most sources of corruption being out in the open.

Scientists don’t reinvent all the math for thermodynamics every time they stumble on some new context with disorder.

But currently, eliminating corruption is systemically difficult to change because of the corruption! There is no Constitutional responsibility to respond to it.

“Eliminating corruption”, including power centralization (which both requires, incentivizes and enables more corruption) should be right up there with “passing laws”, “implementing laws”, and “interpreting laws”, as an ongoing Constitutionally organized effort.

So many things, including the effectively two-party system that drives so much partisanship, are a result of corruption and the door left open for power centralizations like single party rule. (Seat limits on parties would completely upend that dynamic.)

Corruption is a pretty fuzzy concept, and most people aren't very good to handle gray areas. I think it's an issue of there not being incentives for any successful group to keep corruption as primary topic in the Overton window, since it's equivalent to marking yourself as an outsider to the political class.

From time to time you'd have waves of populism that can be ridden, and outsiders can get in power, but those never really last.

In my Eastern-European backwards nation that's affected by endemic corruption I was actually thinking of founding at one point a suicide-party, that is basically unelectable but who's main purpose would be to bring the necessary ideas in the Overton window, so that the successful parties at least have to address them.

It's definitely not an easy problem, as most of those that actually understand social processes and can do something have mostly become wealthy and indifferent to the greater good.

Suicide party sounds like a great idea. However, there is a danger. If population is polarized (like US-style) and this new party will seem to be taking a side, party's image would be ruined for people who take the other side. That creates a risk that ideas you bring will immediately look bad for people on the other side because these ideas come from your party i.e. their opponent. But maybe it's not important, as long as ideas are now being discussed.

I was born in a country so corrupt and backwards that such a party would not make a difference.

I think most of the response needed to suppress bad behaviour is cultural and peer pressure. Rules and regulations just externalise that problem into an administrative function. People can demonstrate compliance without having to worry about the actual purpose of the rule. And that technical compliance can be used to protect them from any consequences.

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.

What would that look like?

Citizen assemblies (juries)? Sortition? Modest, obvious reforms like passing For The People Act (HB1)?

(I'm very interested in the idea that there might be an optimum level of corruption. Counter intuitive and makes me uncomfortable; so it's probably meritorious.)