A police officer in rural Colombia can be negotiated with to obtain an outcome that is satisfactory to all parties. Try that at the San Fransisco DMV, even if they want to help you they can't because the process is the process.

There are pros and cons to both systems. The low bribery systems tend to curb the worst behavior (no amount of donating to the right causes will help you put a toxic waste processing plant in Manhatten) at the expense of really screwing the people who are edge cases.

The equatorial developing nations tend to have a lot of class divide and racism problems that get nastier in a regulatory environment where everything is fuzzy. If you want to see a bribery based regulatory environment done right look at eastern Europe from 1980-2000ish (years vary depending on where you look).

HN loves the "hurr durr stupid poor countries and their bribery" trope but for those countries routine bribery is mostly just a cultural workaround for the fact that they can't afford a massive administrative state to grant you a stupid variance from their stupid zoning rules on your stupid garden shed (or whatever). They're effectively pushing decision making onto the leaves of the organizational tree and cutting the organizational tree out of the payment loop somewhat. Yes, it goes awry sometimes but it's not like western bureaucracies have any lack of similarly bad outcomes.