Corruption Without Guilt: An Extended Phenotype Model of Systemic Conflict-of-Interest Failure

This paper argues that the absence of guilt and shame in political actors who engage in conflict-of-interest behavior is not a pathology but a predictable equilibrium generated by three mutually reinforcing mechanisms: Parasitic Spontaneous Order (PSO), Heteronomous Bayesian Updating (HBU), and the Dennett-Nash Gap. The model situates systemic conflict-of-interest failure within the Extended Phenotype Theory of law and connects it to Henrich's WEIRD/non-WEIRD framework, explaining why conflict-of-interest norms achieve genuine internalization in a narrow set of cultural environments and produce compliance theater in many others. The analysis generates falsifiable hypotheses linked to existing empirical instruments including the Constitutional Lock-in Index (CLI) and the Transmission Capacity Index (TCI).