Political Corruption

Political Corruption

Political corruption was evident during the 1930s; a perfect example is Tammany Hall’s corruption. Government officials abuse public power for personal gains and do more than acquire unlawful wealth and corruption. Therefore, corruption robs citizens of equal access to essential services, public safety, education, and quality healthcare. It damages the business environment, impairs inequality, and destabilizes economic chances, frequently contributing to human rights abuses and violations. Most importantly, corruption threatens the rule of law, destroys public trust, hollows out institutions, and speeds widespread cynicism toward practical, accountable governance (Wang, 2022). Due to the threats and setbacks that corruption causes, the United States government has implemented policies and safeguards to reduce political corruption. Our assignment writing help is at affordable prices to students of all academic levels and academic disciplines.

First, the United States has put in place or enacted different policies, such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, prohibiting the corruption of foreign public officials (Wang, 2022). The act has been amended severally. It is currently termed FCPA, which comprises accounting provisions and anti-bribery on government officials. Secondly, the country has put in place investigative bodies such as the FBI that investigate and probe corruption and bribery issues. As a body, the FBI uses relevant federal laws, consisting of the Hobbs Act, to scrutinize violations by public officials in the local, state, and federal governments (Heywood, 2018). The other strategy in place is enhanced governance that ensures the courts or the judicial systems are not corrupt to help prosecute those found guilty of corruption charges. Finally, the governmental powers and seats have been decentralized and balanced, reducing monopoly; thus, parties cannot have full decision-making control over the other. The three arms of government, the legislature, executive, and judiciary, also have oversight against each other, reducing monopolistic decision-making (Heywood, 2018). Even with these policies and safeguards in place, there are still concerns about accountability and corrupt judicial, which fail to apprehend those guilty of corruption.

References

Wang, P. (2022). Political Associations. In Principle of Interest Politics (pp. 317–335). Springer, Singapore.

Heywood, P. M. (2018). Combating corruption in the twenty-first century: New approaches. Daedalus, 147(3), 83-97.

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Political Corruption

The history of our country exposes a great deal of corruption and unethical behavior from our government and its public officials and administrators. One of the most widely used examples of political corruption is that of Tammany Hall. This was a ‘political machine’ of the Democratic Party, which controlled politics (and, by default, policies) in New York City from 1789 until 1967.
Cetin et al. (2019) discuss the phenomenon of corruption, stating, “Corruption happens when people having a monopoly over resources decide to misuse their power for their own interests in a system, especially if the system that do not have accountability”.
What policies or safeguards have we put in place to prevent these monopolies and the ability of one party to take full decision-making control over another? Where are we still seeing concerns today?