News outlets everywhere are constantly concerned about the true intentions of a politician. But what is the root cause of the problem and how can we work to prevent corrupt politicians from making their way into our government?
The rise of corruption within political jobs is at a high. Many wonder whether or not to trust certain politicians. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines corruption as “dishonest or illegal behavior, especially by powerful people (such as government officials or police officers).”
In short, when a politician becomes corrupted, they seek to do malicious behavior with their power, such as bending rules and making contracts for personal gain which can hurt lower levels of power and keep the corrupt politician in power.
Many factors can explain the cause of political corruption, but the key to stopping it is a simple test. It may sound stupid but by requiring background tests, personality tests, etc. We can rule out people who are unfit for their roles. According to NCBI, “A growing body of evidence suggested that the Dark Triad of personality (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) was associated with unethical behaviors (Egan et al., 2015; Azizli et al., 2016).
Roeser et al., (2016) reckoned that “this association may extend to corrupt behaviors.” By incorporating personality tests and such, we can stop the problem at its source. Without pre-measures to ward off growing corruption, there seems to be no end in sight. By incorporating measures, we can cut out some of the corruption. Brian Klaas said in his book Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us, “Those who shouldn’t be in power are more likely to seek it. We need to design every system to try to screen out the corruptible, power-hungry candidates.”
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