Sorry, but democracy is not automaticcally a guarantee that there is no corruption. I can tell, because I am living in a supposedly democratic country which has gained quite a number of points in the corruption-index recently...
> You need a rule of law, to tame corruption and no non-democracy has that.
As far as I can tell, that implies the only combination that's impossible is non-democracy and non-corruption. Ie all non-democracies are corrupt, but some democracies might also be corrupt.
Btw, I don't think that's even true: British ruled Hong Kong had rule of law, but no democracy.
However statistically, there seems to be at least a weak correlation (negative) between corruption and democracy.
As long as contracts are being upheld, and court decisions are speedy and predictable, and public officials don't enrich themselves, that counts as low / no corruption, doesn't it?
Democracy might help with that ideal, but it's by no means strictly necessary.
As far as I can tell, an absolute monarchy that is run for the benefit of the ruler can still have rule of law and low corruption.
As an alternate history example, take Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore, but make him king and increase his salary to 1 billion SGD per year (instead of 1 million SGD per year). Change nothing else.
They would still be one of the least corrupt countries on earth, and have a judiciary that enforces the rule of law.
> Rule of law in a non-democratic polity inherently benefits its rulers more than other citizens.
That can and does happen in democracies, too.
Corruption, and even corrupt laws, exist in democracies too, but in a non-democracy all laws are inherently corrupt. Non-democracies have no legitimate basis for even having laws.
"Pareto believed that societies are ruled by an elite class, which he called the "circulation of elites." In his view, these elites are able to gain and maintain power by using their wealth, intelligence, and social connections to influence political and economic institutions. Pareto saw democracy as a way to redistribute power and wealth from the elite to the masses, but he was skeptical that this could ever be achieved in practice. He argued that even in democracies, power tends to be concentrated in the hands of a small group of people who are able to control the political process and manipulate public opinion."
I am not sure what the argument really is against that. That sounds like the reality we live in.
Even in old and established democracies, there's usually a large gap between what is said of the democracy, and what the democracy actually is and does.