While this TDG series not dealing directly with corruption, it's not hard to see that when politicians engage in overt or subtle corrupt activities, that takes the discussion away from good governance.

When the discussion of appropriate stumpage fees gets shut down (for fear of where this discussion could go), it puts a pall in the meeting and some fairly altruistic people get cynical of the process. They either withdraw or join in the gravy train. THE DAMAGE TO BETTER GOVERNANCE IS IMMENSE, even if the corruption is small.

You might be interested in my own personal experience in political corruption.

https://medium.com/politically-speaking/my-brush-with-political-corruption-5d8c4c255bc8

"What can be done?" you ask?

Somehow I invented another system of democratic governance back in 1992. My five books can be found here:

http://www.tiereddemocraticgovernance.org/tdg.php

BTW, four of these books are available for a free read. And most of my many Medium articles are in this Medium pub. You can read these for free.

The solution is not forcing the current system to change. Rather it is about building a new system that will eventually replace the current system. The investment from these early builders is actually quite small:

https://medium.com/tiered-democratic-governance/a-kinder-wiser-democracy-78778c87819e

But we need to get off our butts and stop wishing someone else will fix things for us.