Stop looking for honest people. Start building honest systems.

In late 2025, the European Public Prosecutor's Office raided the College of Europe in Bruges and the European Union's diplomatic service. Among the suspects: none other than Federica Mogherini, former EU foreign policy chief and now rector of that same institution. The suspicion was that someone had leaked confidential tender criteria to the party that went on to win the contract. On paper, the tender followed the rules. But if the suspicion is correct, the outcome was settled before the competition had properly begun.

If this can happen at the highest level in Europe, no government is immune. And that is no coincidence.

We designed our democracies in the nineteenth century, for an age of paper files, small networks and manageable public tasks. In the twenty-first century, those same structures govern digital networks, flows of billions and a complexity they were never built for. That is exactly the problem of modern democracy. Our governments depend on good intentions, in an age that no longer allows it.

In De Schone Staat Ulbo P. Faber breaks with the assumption that good intentions are enough. Drawing on more than thirty years of experience with over a hundred complex public projects, he shows how political funding, personnel policy, procurement, subsidies and permits can be redesigned so that integrity is no longer a matter of character, but of design.

De Schone Staat is not a plea for stricter rules. It is a blueprint for a government that has to be honest, because its construction demands it.

Five domains, redesigned

• Political funding
• Personnel policy
• Procurement
• Subsidies
• Permits