The corruption doesn't go THAT deep. The problem is that the incompetence and petty corruption goes to the very bottom. These folks have spent decades hollowing out the civil service, stacking up trivial position after trivial position while filling the whole town with incompetents. And that is the real danger is that the bureaucracy is overloaded with people who cannot do anything at all, and are way way way overpaid for what they do. Meanwhile this all prevents those few competent professionals who are left from doing much of anything.
At the lower levels there isn't active subversion, so much as they all owe loyalty to the democratic party and are certainly ept at foot-dragging.