This may come as a surprising, but the US is actually pretty far ahead in terms of the fight against corruption. For example, until just a few years ago, many

This may come as a surprising, but the US is actually pretty far ahead in terms of the fight against corruption. For example, until just a few years ago, many countries (Germany being the one I know specifically) allowed corporations to deducted bribes paid abroad from their taxes. That was changed only under pressure from the US. There's a lot to complain about regarding the willingness of US courts to assume jurisdiction, the willingness of the US government to dictate international norms etc. But it seems that in this regard, it worked out well because the US legal system was always going to be ahead of /some/ competitors, so it became advantageous for US corporations (and, by extension, the government) to root out corruption: it was the one game they had no chance of winning. One recent example is VW, and another recent development may be a strengthening of similar mechanisms in the EU, which may in due course be very helpful, even for the US. It seems that nowadays the problem in the US isn't vast conspiracies where bags of money are secretly handed to politicians. It's that there's so much activity that in any other country of similar level of development, or any other time in the US, would have been regarded as a major corruption – but is now somehow regarded as not just completely legal but also morally sound. I mean: there are (many) companies who give to both presidential candidates each election. There is simply no logical reason to do that except the expectation of getting access. (For donations to parties, I could at least imagine some argument about how donations allow them to do meaningful work on the local level etc. Can't say the same about the presidential level).