Corruption is often understood as a matter of individual misconduct – a bribe, a kickback, or a secret financial stake in a government decision. These acts, particularly when taken together, can have devastating consequences, from slowing economic growth and widening inequality to eroding public trust and fomenting instability in U.S. national security and democracy itself.
But a more enduring threat lies not only in specific instances of wrongdoing but also in the dismantling of the very systems built to catch them.
The structural safeguards designed to police and prevent corruption are rooted in the belief, held since our nation’s founding, that public office is a public trust. From internal watchdogs and whistleblower protections, to transparency requirements and conflict-of-interest rules, to anti-corruption laws and criminal enforcement mechanisms, these and other anti-corruption systems are embedded across the U.S. government.
Tensions between executive power and oversight have always existed, but the scale and precision of efforts to hollow out and dismantle these safeguards in the current moment are unprecedented. Ironically, the loudest calls to “root out corruption” are now coming from those simultaneously dismantling the systems designed to detect it. This systemic targeting threatens to make corruption easier to commit and harder to detect.
To understand what is happening, this new series, accompanied by an interactive and regularly updated Anti-Corruption Tracker, will catalog and analyze: (1) how these systems are currently being weakened, (2) what the consequences are when that happens, and (3) what tools might remain to restore (and improve) the ability to guard against the human instinct – as the founders explicitly acknowledged – to misuse public power for private ends.
What U.S. History Teaches
Corruption as a threat to democratic governance is not new in the American story. The framers of the Constitution considered the risk of public officials using government power for personal gain to be one of the gravest dangers to a republican form of government. Their debates in Philadelphia were shaped by this fear: as George Mason warned during the Constitutional Convention, “if we do not provide against corruption, our government will soon be at an end.”
This concern was not abstract. Many founders had studied the collapse of republics like Rome, which they believed had fallen in part due to elite self-dealing and the erosion of civic virtue. James Madison, George Mason, Alexander Hamilton, and others sought to build structural defenses—through separation of powers, checks and balances, and explicit mechanisms for removal from office—to prevent corruption from taking root in the new nation’s political institutions.
Yet the safeguards the founders envisioned were not enough to prevent a wave of corruption in the decades that followed. As scholars have noted, in one low point – the decades before and after the Civil War – the U.S. political system was saturated with patronage and clientelism to the point that one observer in 1858 likened the sale of public office to the sale of goods in a public market. This period was defined less by rule of law than by political favoritism and party machinery.
But between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, the United States underwent a profound transformation, from a system where forms of corruption were routine and embedded to one in which they became controlled and legally prosecutable. This transition was neither automatic nor inevitable (nor perfect). It required cultural and institutional shifts, such as the rise of civil service reform, the establishment of independent regulatory bodies, federal prosecution of bribery, and the emergence of political leaders for whom public integrity was central to governing.
The Nixon-era Watergate scandal reinforced and accelerated this shift, spearheading a new wave of structural safeguards, including the creation of inspectors general, new rules regulating the civil service, and additional ethics laws.
This legacy is a reminder that enduring progress against corruption – though imperfect – often comes not only from separation of powers but also sustained investment in institutional design, such as competitive civil service rules, robust campaign finance restrictions, independent inspectors general, empowered criminal prosecutors, and good governance norms that insulate key decisions from illicit interference.
U.S Leadership in Global Anti-Corruption
This expectation and commitment to counteract corruption is not only internal, guiding how the United States structures government, trains public servants, and holds them accountable. At its best, it is also external, shaping how the United States engages with the world. It is the reason the United States pioneered anti-corruption laws along with a system of checks and balances that governs how individuals and companies with a nexus to the United States act around the world.
It underpins what has historically been U.S. leadership in global anti-corruption efforts, including enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (a byproduct of post-Watergate-era reforms) and participation in several multilateral governance agreements, such as the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention and the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). It’s part of the United States’ evolving recognition of its role as a safe haven for illicit finance and its actions taken to increase transparency and curb money laundering. And it’s core to the leadership of U.S. diplomats in pressing for a level playing field and defending anti-corruption champions overseas.
In this way, the U.S. anti-corruption framework operates on two levels: it aims to model integrity in governance at home, and it expects—and in many cases demands—integrity of U.S. citizens, companies, and foreign partners when operating in the U.S. and abroad.
How Systems of Accountability Erode
One important lesson–as both the past and present show–is how vulnerable these structures are. Legal authorities can be reinterpreted or even intentionally misinterpreted. Transparency rules or practices can be narrowed. Oversight offices can be dismantled or repurposed. Civil servants tasked with enforcing ethics and conflicts of interest can be reassigned or fired. With each change, the system loses its ability to respond to misconduct, and its ability to find it. And the more these systems are gutted, the more desensitized the public can become to these shifts.
Consider, for instance, when inspectors general are removed on a political or personal whim. Such actions erode the independence of the office, easily tainting future investigations into reports of fraud, waste, and abuse. Or when Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) offices and other transparency mechanisms are restructured, removed, or constrained, the public loses visibility into what government officials have done, let alone how decisions are made and what interests shape them.
The same is true when criminal prosecutions are dismissed for reasons that do not appear to be based on the merits and the integrity of federal prosecutions—particularly in the public integrity sphere—are called into question. And when career civil servants—particularly those tasked with upholding legal, ethical, and scientific standards—are fired, reassigned or encouraged to take buyout offers, then the system is no longer staffed with the knowledge or expertise required to identify irregularities, enforce standards, or raise concerns through protected channels.
The result is that public funds can be misused or reallocated—toward favored contractors, political allies, or self-enriching deals—without anyone detecting it. Ultimately, the result is undermining essential services and reinforcing the perception that government only works for the well-connected.
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In short, the weakening of the anti-corruption architecture is a defining threat to democratic governance. This series aims to better understand and confront it.
Alongside this opening essay, we are also launching a living Anti-Corruption Tracker to catalog and document examples of structural degradation—such as watchdog removals or replacements, blocked enforcement mandates, and crippled transparency mechanisms—that cumulatively erode institutional integrity. In the weeks and months ahead, additional articles from experts across disciplines will analyze different dimensions of the problem and the tools that remain for enforcement or reform.
These analyses will engage seriously with cross-cutting public concerns—from bipartisan critiques of regulatory capture, to progressive demands for equity, to populist calls for rooting out “waste, fraud, and abuse.” And while spotlighting institutional erosion, we also recognize the tradeoffs involved in reform efforts that may inadvertently strain the anti-corruption system.
Just as the post-Watergate era gave rise to a wave of structural reforms, periods of institutional failure have historically spurred new architectures of accountability. These moments of deep erosion have, at times, seeded creative and effective reinvention.
But this renewal is never guaranteed. Together, this series and the mapping project aim to document how erosion is happening, what it reveals, and what it demands from those committed to rebuilding and rethinking our systems of accountability.
