Corruption subverts any political regime, autocracies as well as democracies, so it should not be seen as a prime factor for democracy backsliding, but rather as a vulnerability, jointly with concentrated rents such as mineral resources or drugs. Democracies that manage to solve the problem of corruption are the most resilient regimes in the world, but both the achievement and the sustainability of solutions to corruption do not come easily and presume a high degree of cooperation to solve collective action problems and serve the general interest versus narrow ones. The repressive anticorruption approach - top-level prosecutions, special power investigators and special courts - has proved more of a danger for opposition politicians (as they offer authoritarian incentives for those who control them) than a tool to help democracies advance. Few countries have sufficient rule of law, like Botswana does, to clear individuals wrongfully accused of corruption and ask for the officials who fabricated evidence to be prosecuted instead.
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