What causes the US to be (or at the very least, be considered) so corrupt? My main theory is lack of political parties. Just like how companies take advantage of the consumer the most when they're a monopoly, the government can take advantage of its people when the party's worst chance of getting elected is close to 48%. However, I'm sure there are many other factors that play into governmental corruption.
Since this is a perception index, I think isolation has a lot to do with it. Americans don't travel much, our news generally ignores countries we're not bombing, etc, and so Americans have very little frame of reference for this sort of judgment.
I personally marvel at what an upstanding and civil government we have, but then again my family is from Bangladesh and we left because my dad was sick of having to do things like pay a bribe to get a phone line installed (we went months without phone service in our house because of his intransigence).
I think you're exactly right. We have a strong, visceral reaction to corruption, and we detect it in everything.
Living in New Mexico can be a bit of an absurd illustration that this isn't a universal view because we tend to have scandals involving these ancient political family dynasties. Whenever one of them is caught handing over a bunch of state contracts to their nephew (nepotism in its truest sense) we get a few great sound bites like "What's the big deal? He's just my nephew!"
In other countries this kind of corruption is seen as simply taking care of one's own or the cost of doing business. I'm glad we overreact to it.
I think it's a good thing too. One of the things I love about Americans is that we're culturally very intolerant of corruption and scandel. I just find it amusing sometimes how people don't know how good they have it.
US politicians at all levels spend an amazing amount of money on pet projects that are ultimately little more than kickbacks to the donors who helped them get elected. These projects are commonly called "Pork Barrel" projects and widely known about by US citizens and the media. In the meantime the US government runs huge deficits to fund such projects, and the end result is that we now have entire states looking for ways to avoid bankruptcy. Incidentally, several large cities in California have already filed for bankruptcy protection including Stockton and San Bernardino. The hall of government waste, fraud and abuse in the US goes on and on; I was surprised it didn't tend further toward the corrupt side of the map.
In some cases we might wonder if we are viewing sheer incompetence or wanton political corruption, but just as the end results are the same in either case, so are the perceptions.
I suspect that when people encounter government corruption in the US, it’s usually at the city or state level, in jurisdictions where a political machine controls important purchasing decisions and opponents of that machine face odds much lower than 48%.
Given that this is perceived corruption, it would be everything people think they see from top to bottom.
So instances like you suggest or; local businessman gets caught 15 times for DUI and never charged because he funded the mayors election campaign. (this happened in my area, he finally got charged after the federal government here in Canada blocked the Carter defence) Whether or not the mayor played any role its the whole guilt by association.
I personally wonder why Canada ranks so low in comparison to the US and UK when we have moronic "canada first" laws in industry that protects monopolies, but then again this is "perceived" corruption and the layperson won't be as likely to perceive vastly overpaying for a service as corruption.
