The big problem comes when participation in the union goes down. The lower the number of active members, the lower the quality of candidates in important positions. There’s an issue with that going around which pretty much all of society is working on. Corruption is of course a thing in places of society to some extent but with high trust in the system comes a self-correctiveness that helps stave it off some. What also helps is building robust processes for voting and handling issues, which Sweden has done in most if not all of our democratic institutions.