God created the institution of government for a specific purpose, therefore the institution in and of itself cannot be corrupt. An immoral nation (a corrupt people) are responsible for the corruption in government by the people they choose. If people who look to the Bible for answers simply just followed the commands of God and "select out of all the people able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain" (Exodus 18:21) and held those elected officials to those standards, the corruption would disappear. Regarding the size of government: a moral nation only needs a "limited government", it's when they step away from biblical directives that it becomes huge and out of control.
While God did create a theocracy in ancient Israel, that doesn't mean that His institution of civil government wasn't used throughout the rest of the world. Whether or not those governments chose to do good or evil, was dependent upon the people who they chose as their rulers.
That's the key to a nation that will be prosperous, healthy and happy: Whether or not God is put at the center of their lives within the 3 institutions that God created for the governance of man: the family, the Church and civil government.
Hence the reason Libertarianism has never worked and never will work: God is left out.
The very word civil eliminates God. So does the related word civic. And God never designed Israel to be separate from Himself.
Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) (bouvier)
CIVIL. This word has various significations. 1. It is used in
contradistinction to barbarous or savage, to indicate a state of society
reduced to order and regular government; thus we speak of civil life, civil
society, civil government, and civil liberty
2. It is sometimes used in contradistinction to criminal, to indicate
the private rights and remedies of men, as members of the community, in
contrast to those which are public and relate to the government; thus we
speak of civil process and criminal process, civil jurisdiction and criminal
jurisdiction.
3. It is also used in contradistinction to military or ecclesiastical,
to natural or foreign; thus we speak of a civil station, as opposed to a
military or ecclesiastical station, a civil death as opposed to a natural
death; a civil war as opposed to a foreign war. Story on the Const. Sec. 789;
In the nation of Israel, until they chose to reject God as the head of their government, the priests settled all disputes and executed judgement between individuals. In other words, the power of government was vested in ecclesiastical authority with that authority delegated to the priests by God. This is why high priests like Eli and Samuel were the leaders of Israel. Civil authority was unknown in Israel until the Israelites chose to reject God as the leader of their nation and chose to imitate the nations around them.