These systems served as the foundations for the mafia states of Hungary and Russia, where the party was replaced with a political clan centered on a patron who distributes money and power. Western analysts use the word corruption to describe these systems, but this can be misleading: here corruption does not describe bureaucrats soliciting bribes for small acts of civil service (though this happens too); it describes the people in charge using the instruments of government in order to amass wealth, but also using their wealth to perpetuate power. This corruption is integral to the system. The
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