That's not true, in a democracy you tend to have methods of appeal that actually work, and their threat keeps the wheels of bureaucracy greased.

This is because, in principle, everything comes down to the fundamental threat that the people can remove the current government, and the government does have full control over the unelected civil servants. If they keep ignoring appeals, they'll eventually get dethroned.

There's a nice symmetry between this and the fact that the law is ultimately guaranteed by the governments monopoly on violence. They can dethrone you too if you don't comply.

When a democracy works, there can be a very effective balance between the people's leverage towards the government and the governments leverage towards the people.

In an authoritarian regime the same forces are present but they are not balanced in the same way. The people can still rise up and dethrone the ruler through violence, but that is so much harder, and it is mostly offset by the governments greater power of violence. So they can get away with so much more.

I fundamentally disagree. While there may be outlier cases, the core of a democracy is the separation of powers: the judiciary, the executive, and the legislative branches. If an agent within one branch violates the rules, you have the legal recourse to appeal to the others. In an authoritarian state, there is only one pillar of power - meaning there is zero recourse for citizens.

Furthermore, I’m tired of the false equivalence some people in this thread draw between the level of corruption in democracies and authoritarian regimes. They are simply not on the same scale - if you ever experienced both you would know that.

My guess is there is some kind of momentum with these things. If everybody demands bribes, then by not demanding bribes yourself when you are in a position to do so, you are effectively pissing away your take but remember you still need to pay bribes to everyone else because they don't care you didn't take bribes.

On the flip side, if nobody else requires bribes but you do, you will surely stick out like a sore thumb. If I don't get paid bribes and I am an influential powerful person, why should I pay you any bribes? Especially for something that is legitimate and a part of your duties?

Democracies are different from each other. There are many ways you can build a society from the same basic principles.

One key difference is the extent the authorities have discretionary powers. Can they do whatever the consider necessary to do their jobs (until the courts tell otherwise), or do they only have the powers explicitly given by the law? Common law systems tend to favor discretionary powers, but they vary on how eager the courts are to keep the officials in check. Civil law systems can be anywhere on the spectrum, but it's usually a legislative choice made in advance rather than a judicial choice made after the fact.

I am not a historian but the difference is between a society with a "rule of law" and "law of the jungle". Probably high democracy correlates with rule of law, but they are not the same thing.

Resepect for the rule of law is whats important. In Singapore you can sue the government, same as in the U.S Try to do that in China and the only thing that's going to happen, is you being sent a a reducation camp.

Civil Servants in India (with traces to British era) are considered the invisible rulers of the country. Getting selected is like becoming a local lord.

this is the uncomfortable truth people are unwilling to accept.

can democratic societies be corrupt, can autocratic societies be not corrupt this is also true.

accept things as they're, not as they ought to be - one of the fundamental lessons one has to learn to operate in this world.

More easily because in a democratic society there is absolutely no risk of having something like that come out and the need for the autocrat to save face and jealously assert the civil servant acted outside of the will of the autocrat thus behead the arbitrary civil servant to cheering crowds according to popular demand.

At worst the person gets fired and is prohibited from public sector jobs at that tier of government afterwards for a period of time while the story is fresh in peoples minds, in the rare case the plutocratic owned media let's such a story come out of its mass media products about the not-paid-for bureaucratic elements of government in hopes of reducing polarization that comes from over-promoting one of the arbitrarily different parties as a means of providing the commoners what Orwell called "Two Minutes Hate" or a means of obtaining cathartic release from the tensions that making them believe they are somehow co-authors of the government to keep them engaged as willing participants.

This is why so much planning gets decided in judicial review.

The culture and trust of the people makes the system work or fail, not the system itself.

A planning officer, who happens to share an uncommon surname with the local MP, did just that with an application of mine recently. No site visit, no photos, no respect to the law, just NO.