It's not necessary (or even wise) to decentralize government in order to remove the influence of money on politics.
One relatively easy change that would almost completely remove the quid pro quo bribery effect of campaign contributions is to anonymize contributions so that candidates never know who their contributions are coming from. That way there would be no payback possible, and influence peddling through campaign contributions would become a thing of the past.
Candidates expresses their opinion on X; those with a vested interest in X pour tons of money into his campaign so that the candidate that they agree with is selected. And since that candidate already shares the position with them, when he needs backing from industry that's who he'll meet with.
If you really believe that campaign contributions are constitutionally-protected speech, then outright political bribery should be legalized.
Anonymizing campaign contributions wouldn't have an effect on political speech and it wouldn't have an effect on who you gave money to. (You'd still be free to say who you contributed to. You'd also be free to lie about who you donated to.) It would only change the way the money was handled, with the ultimate effect of removing the quid pro quo from donations.
Do you think you should limit how much time someone can volunteer on a campaign? What about famous people expressing their opinion? These have the same effect as someone donating money. They just favor different groups of people.
It's not bribery to try and support someone whose views you agree with, or to have experts available to answer questions on complicated issues. Remember, campaign contributions don't give them a house, or boats, or planes, etc.
You're missing the point. Limiting campaign contributions is not a part of this. The point is to anonymize donations so that there can be no way for the candidate to correlate a contribution to a donor. That way the quid pro quo that is implicit in campaign contributions would go away. Politicians would have to go back to representing voters again.
I'm saying it's not the quid pro quo. I'm saying that generally are multiple sides to an issue, and people want to represent their side. A corporation would just fund the person who represents the views that are most inline with theirs. Corporations would tell the candidate what they feel is important, and then when he espouses the views the candidate receives anonymous donations.
And by corporation I don't just mean GE etc, I'm thinking of any group of people who have a shared ideology and are working to influence policy.
One relatively easy change that would almost completely remove the quid pro quo bribery effect of campaign contributions is to anonymize contributions so that candidates never know who their contributions are coming from. That way there would be no payback possible, and influence peddling through campaign contributions would become a thing of the past.