Corruption governance and its dynamic stability based on a three-party evolutionary game with the government, the public, and public officials

The current state of corruption in China is still worrisome. Corruption among public officials depends not only on their subjective will, but also on the success rate of government investigations and public whistleblowing. Based on the evolutionary game theory, this study constructs an evolutionary game model with the government, the people, and public officials and solves the dynamic model. The authors also provide a numerical simulation of the proposed model to confirm theoretical predictions. The results reveal that when the government's success rate reaches a certain threshold, public officials will trend to a strategy of no bribery, and at this threshold, raising the cost of bribing public officials can quickly prevent them from corruption. At the equilibrium, the public will trend toward a strategy of no whistleblowing. The findings of this study are of great significance to the current anti-corruption debate in China.