CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

202 Syndromes of Corruption
by public opinion, ends up doing neither. Further, it does relatively little
to curb the risk of extortion by secure multiterm incumbents. Refocusing
political finance laws toward encouraging competition among distinct
and separate parties – creating more single-member parliamentary constituencies
to reduce party collusion, or encouraging varieties of proportional
representation that avoid the Japanese pattern of competition
within a dominant party – and creating ways and incentives to finance
their activities in broad-based ways, would be positive changes. Making
individual races more competitive, perhaps through subsidies to new
parties and making it easier to challenge incumbents, could help check
corruption indirectly through increased competition and mass participation.
That there would be substantial resistance among the incumbents
themselves who, after all, write the laws, is precisely the sort of issue that
encourages public cynicism, and is a reflection of the competitive malaise
found in the United States and other Influence Market systems.
No single set of measures guarantees revived political competition and
renewed public credibility, but fresh thinking is in order, and a number of
possibilities are available for experimentation. In two quite different
American states – Maine and Arizona – ‘‘Clean Politics’’ initiatives providing
the option of full public funding to candidates who first demonstrate
reasonable levels of voter support have proven popular in their first
few election cycles. Candidates wishing to run under the old rules of
private donations and disclosure are free to do so, but indications are
that ‘‘Clean Politics’’ candidates enjoy some advantages in terms of public
opinion (Common Cause, 1999). A different approach is a ‘‘blind trust’’
system under which private contributions are made through a central
clearinghouse and forwarded on to candidates and parties without indications
of their sources. Records of contributions would be retained by
that agency for legal purposes but not be made public; all contributors
would have a cooling-off period during which they could retract a contribution.
The key idea of blind trusts – implemented in limited ways in
South Korea and the United Kingdom, and receiving close examination
in Chile – is not that the sources of funds are kept secret, but rather that
they be unverifiable, thus weakening the leverage of contributors and
unscrupulous candidates alike.
Alternatively, matching-funds formulae could reward parties for registering
voters and for increases in turnouts, or might generously augment
small contributions while not matching larger ones. Setting incumbent
opposition aside for one moment, we could even imagine a ‘‘tax’’ on very
large contributions that would divert a percentage into a public-financing
fund. The point is that there are many conceivable approaches to
enhancing the public credibility of electoral politics, and even now-secure