Corruption as a self-sustained collective state in political systems

2026-07-22

AI Summary

This study explains how systemic political corruption can persist over extended periods without centralized coordination. By constructing a parsimonious compartmental dynamical model and integrating mean-field approximation, phase transition analysis, and stability theory, the work conceptualizes corruption as a macro-level emergent phenomenon arising from the co-evolution of political power concentration and supportive relational structures. The model demonstrates that corruption stabilizes through self-reinforcing mechanisms into a collective state and identifies a critical threshold of interaction strength: beyond this point, the system enters a “corruption-captured” regime capable of autonomously recovering from perturbations, thereby sustaining corruption across electoral cycles. This framework transcends conventional explanatory paradigms centered on individual misconduct or institutional failure, offering a novel perspective on the systemic nature and resilience of corruption.

Abstract

Political corruption is often interpreted as the result of individual misconduct or isolated institutional failures. However, persistent corruption patterns observed in real-world political systems suggest that systemic corruption may instead emerge as a self-sustaining governance arrangement supported by reinforcing interaction structures. In this work, we introduce a minimal compartmental model for the dynamics of systemic political corruption and the formation of corruption-supporting relational structures. The concentration of political power is treated as an emergent macroscopic observable arising from these coupled dynamics. Despite its simplicity and mean-field character, the model exhibits a nontrivial phase transition separating regimes of low corruption from structurally captured states sustained by self-reinforcing interaction mechanisms. The model predicts that, above a critical interaction strength, the captured state becomes dynamically stable, with small perturbations of the macroscopic variables naturally relaxing back to the stationary state. We argue that this mechanism provides a possible explanation for the persistence of corruption across successive electoral cycles and institutional crises. In particular, the political dynamics observed in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, provide a qualitative illustrative example of several mechanisms discussed by the proposed framework rather than a quantitative application of the model. More broadly, the results suggest that long-term political capture may emerge spontaneously from reinforcing interactions between systemic corruption and the relational structures that sustain it, without requiring centralized coordination or complex strategic behavior.

Problem

• political corruption
• systemic corruption
• self-sustaining state
• political capture
• phase transition

Innovation

• systemic corruption
• self-sustaining state
• phase transition
• political capture
• compartmental model