Suchergebnisse

Abstract:In this essay I take issue with the problem of institutional corruption. A number of scholars have recently established a discontinuity thesis, according to which an institution may be corrupt even if its members are not. Against this view, I defend a continuity thesis and argue that institutional corruption can always be traced back to the blameworthy corrupt behavior of individual agents. Certain instances of corrupt behavior spread their effects and tip in a way that subvert (and not simply violate) the public rules that govern an institution. This occurs, I argue, following either summative, morphological, or systemic modalities. I show that such a taxonomy of institutional corruption is useful for the purpose of disentangling and understanding the variety of mechanisms that generate the phenomenon. Most importantly, the taxonomy allows for a more nuanced way of attributing responsibility for political corruption, including collective responsibility. I conclude that a continuity approach offers the tools for diagnosing institutional corruption, but also facilitates the task of formulating answers to political corruption, both from a backward-looking and from a forward-looking perspective.

"This book discusses political corruption and anticorruption as a matter of a public ethics of office. It shows how political corruption is the Trojan horse that undermines public institutions from within via the interrelated action of the officeholders. Even well-designed and legitimate institutions may go off track if the officeholders fail to uphold by their conduct a public ethics of office accountability. Most current discussions of what political corruption is and why it is wrong have concentrated either on explaining and assessing it as a matter of an individual's corrupt character and motives or as a dysfunction of institutional procedures. The book investigates the common normative root of these two manifestations of political corruption as a relationally wrongful practice that consists in an unaccountable use of the power of office by the officeholders in public institutions. From this perspective, political corruption is an internal enemy of public institutions that can only be opposed by mobilizing the officeholders to engage in answerability practices. In this way, officeholders are responsible for working together to maintain an interactively just institutional system"--

This text discusses political corruption & anticorruption as a matter of a public ethics of office. It shows how political corruption is the Trojan horse that undermines public institutions from within via the interrelated action of the officeholders. Even well-designed institutions may go off track if the officeholders fail to uphold by their conduct a public ethics of office accountability. Most current discussions of political corruption & of why it is wrong have concentrated either on explaining & assessing it in terms of an individual's corrupt character & motives or a dysfunction of institutional procedures. This book brings out the common normative root of these two manifestations of political corruption. It discusses them as instances of the same relationally wrongful practice that consists in an unaccountable use of the power of office by officeholders in public institutions.

In this response essay, Ceva and Ferretti reply to their critics and clarify some key aspects of their book. Specifically, the discussion starts by elaborating on the notion of an ethics of office accountability, explaining that the specification of institutional norms of officeholders behaviour is the result of practices of officeholders' interaction (including democratic practices) and reflection. The second theme is the responsibility for political corruption. The authors emphasise the importance of focussing not only on retrospective responsibility, for the sake of punishing corrupt behaviour, but especially on accountability as a form of self-reflection by the officeholders on the weaknesses of their institutional work together. This exercise is preliminary to their assuming forward-looking responsibilities for anti-corruption. The third and final part discusses political corruption as a specifically interactive wrong. For the authors, the magnitude and moral salience of the wrong of corruption, as well as the different wrongs implicated both from an interactive perspective and in consideration of the harm caused to third parties, must be assessed in light of the context and the moral standing of the public institution in question. In this sense, political corruption is a pro tanto wrong.

Scholars and international organizations engaged in institutional reconstruction converge in recognizing political corruption as a cause or a consequence of conflicts. Anticorruption is thus generally considered a centerpiece of institutional reconstruction programs. A common approach to anticorruption within this context aims primarily to counter the negative political, social, and economic effects of political corruption, or implement legal anticorruption standards and punitive measures. We offer a normative critical discussion of this approach particularly when it is initiated and sustained by external entities. We recast the focus from an outward to an inward perspective on institutional action and failure centered on the institutional interactions between officeholders. In so doing, we offer the normative tools to reconceptualize anticorruption in terms of an institutional ethics of "office accountability" that draws on an institution's internal resources of self-correction as per the officeholders' interrelated work

Scholars and international organizations engaged in institutional reconstruction converge in recognizing political corruption as a cause or a consequence of conflicts. Anticorruption is thus generally considered a centrepiece of institutional reconstruction programmes. A common approach to anticorruption within this context aims primarily to counter the negative political, social, and economic effects of political corruption, or implement legal anticorruption standards and punitive measures. We offer a normative critical discussion of this approach, particularly when it is initiated and sustained by external entities. We recast the focus from an outward to an inward perspective on institutional action and failure centred on the institutional interactions between officeholders. In so doing, we offer the normative tools to reconceptualize anticorruption in terms of an institutional ethics of 'office accountability' that draws on an institution's internal resources of self-correction as per the officeholders' interrelated work.

Is the corrupt behaviour of public officials a politically relevant kind of wrong only when it causes the malfunctioning of institutions? We challenge recent institutionalist approaches to political corruption by showing a sense in which the individual corrupt behaviour of certain public officials is wrong not only as a breach of personal morality but in inherently politically salient terms. To show this sense, we focus on a specific instance of individual corrupt behaviour on the part of public officials entrusted with the power to implement public rules in a liberal democracy. Although not necessarily unlawful, their behaviour is politically wrong qua corrupt when it contradicts surreptitiously the requirement of public justification that undergirds the public order. Then, we distinguish this form of corruption as surreptitious action from such unlawful but publicly justifiable kinds of political misbehaviour as civil disobedience.