[SUGGESTION] Corruption and Bureaucracy

Democracy 3 General Discussion
1

I played the game and I liked it a lot. I only found two things missing: Corruption and Bureaucracy. Both are major problems in our democracy and whether we like it or not I think they should be included in the game. Now I came up with some ways this may work:

First of all they would both affect the economy very negatively and if exceed a limit create a critical situation. More specifically: Corruption if succeeds the 7-8% of the public servants that are corrupted, it will create a critical situation named: “Corruption” having the following effects: 1)Huge public unrest to most focus groups, except maybe capitalists, state employees (not all of them the percent that is corrupted) and wealthy (because they profit from it), and especially in socialists, communes, parents, poor, retirees, patriots, religious and everyone. This may lead to protests, strikes and even terrorist attacks if it exceeds a certain percentage. 2)Huge effect will also be to the economy. Like in bureaucracy, when high in percentages, corruption will lead to inefficiency in the public sector. So if a country has the 15% of its public employees corrupted, then it will need to spend 15% more money in health, schools etc. in order to have the same results with a country with 0 corruption. 3)Finally corruption will be in a certain degree in all ministers (0 is not corrupted at all, 10 is corrupted as hell!). This will increase corruption in his sector. Eg. if the health minister is 10 corrupted and the army minister is 0 then the health policies will need 10 times more money than the defense ones, independently to the general corruption as described previously. Corrupted ministers will cause huge arrest. 4) Finally big corruption amount will lead to corruption scandals that will create great unrest if revealed.

Now let’s see bureaucracy’s effects, and finally we will talk about resolution and increasing factors. If it exceeds a percent of 10%, it will be a percentage of the bureaucratic procedures, the useless procedures in the state generally. 1) Huge effect in the economy, making the wasteful economy effect. 2) It will make companies go away, because they will need so much procedures and signatures to do a simple thing! Not a business friendly environment at all! 3)It will cause brain Drain as the intelligent people will go away to make their enterprises. 4)It will cause huge disappointment to capitalists and wealthy leading wealthy people to even leave the country.

Now how will those problems occur? Each country will have a starting point based on reality for example Greece will have a 40% corruption (I would say) and 80% bureaucracy (I am greek so please don’t say me anything I’m not racist I live this situation). On the other hand a country like the US can have a 5-6% corruption and 3% bureaucracy. Secondly the one will bring the other. If for example a country has high corruption this will lead to bureaucracy which will be created by the corrupted to “hide” the corruption (well known old tactic). If there is no bureaucracy at all then it will be more possible for corruption to exist if there is no other control policy because there will be no control.

How will those be solved? Well this is a complex issue and it hasn’t been answered even in real life (GREECE!). Bureaucracy can be solved more easily through some simplifying policies (like introducing technology in the public sector) but it will reduce state employees’ working, increase unemployment and their unrest maybe leading to protests.

Corruption can be solved by introducing more strict measures and controlling mechanisms, which will cause unrest to anyone being profited by it though no one will protest they will probably not vote you. Firing corrupted ministers may also give some relief but it will create political opponents, and other ministers distrusting you, if you overdo it then maybe kicking you out of office. Finally investing more money in controlling agencies will reduce the problem.

That’s basically all I could think about, I would like all suggestions, problems, difficulties, questions. Thank you

2

Welcome to the forum!

Please break your post with paragraphes for better reading.

3

This two are part of one process. The greater Bureaucracy the better ground for Corruption, since it allows to go cut through procedures.
This two may be very country dependand, some nations have high adinistracion culture, while others view corruption as the only way to have things done or to fight opressive rulers (post soviet countries). So it could be more of country specific factor.

It would be nice if implementacion have some research background, not just ad hoc stuff. Probably someone did research what couse corruption.

The intuicion speaks that corruption is a backfire from oversized transfers. We have a lot of goods redistribucion (state housing, or cripped pension) - but intuicion could be wrong. Very complex (and harsh) tax system also opens space for corruption.

However it would be nice if there was some softcap from founding, since sometimes the acts are just too good so we max them, it is possible to overfund project. One way to do is making acts effects no-linear, with decreasing returns for max values (or very minimal), but in addition there could be cumulative from different acts effect (probably red situacion) of wide corruption.

4

things that could cause corruption:

  1. racial/social tension
  2. poor education/low culture
  3. uncompetitive economy
  4. enfasis on materialism over humanism
  5. low wages
  6. high political power on behalf of the politicans themselves
  7. high political power on behalf of union leaders
  8. low intelligence spending
  9. organized crime inflitration on government
  10. high taxes
  11. high bureaucracy
  12. state/private monopolies
  13. low citizen involvement
  14. controlled press

I know some of these might seem far-fetched but it’s what I could come up with

PS: The thing about corruption is that as other things, it’s fine as long as we rationalize it: if we give ourselves a “rational”, causal or logical pretext to be corrupt, we distort our moral sense. Corruption should get to be a social issue, expanding to all branches of society like an epidemic, as soon as conditions that allow people to rationalice their corrupt behavior. (e.g.: taxes are too high and I can’t feed my family, so I’m excused to >insert corrupt behaivor here<. As soon as some start doing it, if not adressed properly it would become the norm in the society (maybe among just some groups/affiliations, but if everyone is interconnected, it would get pretty ugly.).

5

PS2: I would recommend using the corruption perceptions index as a reference
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption … ions_Index

6

Corruption has been included in the game now, but there is no “anti-corruption department” to fight it with. Was it intentional to leave that out?

7

In the base game? When?

8

In one of the updates at least. I got it automatically when i was online and played it.

9

I checked. There are no such statistics. So far, I’ve only seen corruption in mods.