In the United States, systems of federal accountability and control are being steadily dismantled, including the loss of civil service protections and of long-held notions of government professionalism and checks on executive action. The extensive use of the pardon power, the gutting and politicization of parts of the Department of Justice and other enforcement agencies, along with the Supreme Court’s grant of broad immunity to the president, all provide impunity for powerful actors. At the same time, the president, his family, and close friends appear to be benefiting financially during his time in office, raising serious conflict of interest or undue influence concerns.

Many of these events seem to fall into a definition of state capture: large-scale corruption that distorts both the formulation and implementation of laws, norms, decrees, rules and regulations; provides impunity for powerful actors; and leads eventually to a reconfiguration of the state to serve certain powerful interests.

Much has been written on the United States’ democratic backsliding, illiberal regimes, and competitive authoritarianism, including comparisons with other countries. Yet far less attention has been paid to the related phenomenon of state capture: how leaders weaponize bureaucratic, law enforcement, and regulatory institutions to disable guardrails, evade accountability, enrich themselves and their allies, and reconfigure state institutions to perpetuate themselves in power and use the state for private gain.

This analysis examines the experiences of South Africa, El Salvador, Sri Lanka and Guatemala to illustrate how state capture took root in those countries and the lasting damage that unchecked corruption and self-dealing have inflicted on their institutions. Specifically, it looks to three aspects of state capture in those countries: the weakening of accountability and oversight mechanisms, the entrenching of impunity for the powerful, and the instrumentalizing of political power for personal and party gain.

https://www.justsecurity.org/124560/us-captured-state-comparative/