DPC is sharing threads posted on Twitter/X for readers not on that platform.
1/ DPC’s Valery Perry was a guest on the @WXXINews radio show/podcast Connections with Evan Dawson to talk about the threat that corruption presents to democracy in the US, but also around the world.
2/ The DPC @Eurothink collaboration on the study, Sell Out, Tune Out, Get Out or Freak Out served as a peg in the discussion, as did work by @Sarah Chayes.
3/ The notion that the system is rigged, or that “all politicians are corrupt,” makes it easy for citizens to throw up their hands in any country, paving the way for opportunistic illiberal autocrats to manipulate them and often consolidate power.
4/ The democratic world has failed to come to terms with the divergent paths of political and economic liberalism following the end of the Cold War….
5/ …or of the role institutions in the West play in enabling and facilitating corruption and kleptocracy. A committed global movement is needed to fight this threat:
6/ It’s clear that the US is in dire need of the same democracy programming and support that @USAID and others have done abroad for three decades; a weakened or illiberal US would be a bellwether for a more illiberal, transactional, values-free world order.
7/ People committed to accountable democracy need to work as strategically as those who have set to undermine it. This process needs to be a two-way street; those of us in democracies have much to learn from those governed by – and struggling against – unaccountable power.