Trust in governments is currently an Achilles heel for democratic governance across the world. In an age where the art of governing has become more complex and citizens have higher expectations of their elected officials and government, trust is the most important currency to sustain democratic governance. Unlike in authoritarian regimes, in democratic regimes trust matters because public information and citizen exchanges and discussions are sine qua non for democratic governance. Trust helps govern, design, and implement policies in key areas related to health, education, and the economy, all affecting citizens’ well-being and their households. Trust reduces transaction costs and helps obtain the necessary policy support from citizens. Two ingredients that strengthen trust in government, but are not necessarily seen by the citizens, are public integrity and ethics. Trust is so fragile that any event or action that is perceived to be detrimental by citizens can put a crack on trust and/or break it. So, any perceptions of abuse of power in the public sector, corruption, or opaque and unaccountable governance will reduce trust. So, how can integrity and ethics strengthen democratic governance?
Unpacking Public Integrity and Ethics
As argued in another publication, elections are an important component of democratic governance but are no longer sufficient to sustain trust and legitimacy. Democratic governance can be considered a dynamic public sphere where government and citizens engage, exchange information, prioritize policies, and where services are received and provided. Citizens have expectations and they demand that they are met by the government they elected, and if satisfied citizens can reward the government in the form of legitimacy, trust, and satisfaction. In this context, integrity and ethics in the public sector are key pillars for building and strengthening strong institutions to assure citizens that the government is working in their interest. Public integrity and ethics are essential for advancing the public good, ensuring the legitimacy and trust of public organizations, and promoting transparency and accountability. Where there are systems of public integrity and ethics, they can help to promote the effective, honest, and accountable use of powers and resources entrusted to the public sector.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) refers to public integrity as “the consistent alignment of, and adherence to, shared ethical values, principles, and norms for upholding and prioritizing the public interest over private interests in the public sector.” On the other hand, public ethics can refer to and apply to the processes, behavior, and policy of governments and the public officials who serve in elected or appointed positions. The role of government and its officials is to serve the public interest and the common good with ethical awareness and actions. In practice public integrity and ethics matter because they can help: 1) to embody the rules and behavior that define the conduct of public officials in order to ensure that the public is treated fairly and equitably; 2) officials make better decisions in the public interest and citizens evaluate the decisions taken on their behalf by the government; and 3) promote public accountability and ensures that officials are openly answerable for the decisions they are taking on behalf of the public.
Beyond Accountability, Legitimacy and Trust
Democratic governance requires participation and accountability, which in turn produce trust and legitimacy. Engaging citizens in dialogue, and deliberation on the allocation of public resources and the use and accountability of state authority, can greatly improve their understanding of public policy and its impact, as well as enhance the influence of citizens in public policies. While government institutions and the State can be seen as the central means of making political decisions, from a broader democratic governance perspective, participation becomes essential in the decision-making process. Democratically elected governments can be held accountable by systematically and continuously monitoring their policy, as well as their integrity and ethical performance. Citizens can complement internal controls and other institutional mechanisms, also known as horizontal accountability, that are established to promote oversight of public and elected officials, and through their demand and oversight, also known as vertical accountability, promote and demand accountability of actions, decisions, and policies. Ensuring and promoting effective citizen participation becomes even more relevant in societies with critical social and economic challenges such as poverty, inequality, exclusion, poor provision of basic services, low accountability, and high levels of corruption.
As Habermas would argue, election results are only the license to assume governmental power, and as such create a partial legitimacy. Today a key metric of citizens’ perceptions about the current state of democratic governance is legitimacy, linked to government performance. Legitimate political systems are those that can sustain compliance from citizens, businesses, and civil society. Just as one can speak of “democratic legitimacy,” as a solid block that makes democracy “the only game in town,” state legitimacy can also be important, since citizens have to perceive that there is no alternative set of structures or institutions able to make authoritative and binding societal decisions, as well as about the institutional responsibility to be accountable and to set an example for accountability. David Beetham would argue that legitimacy “endows governmental decisions with moral authority.” It is the sense that rule-makers have the right to make laws and that those laws ought to be obeyed. More specifically, this sense comprises the belief that those in power have a right to make binding decisions because (1) they are duly elected to that office by widely accepted procedures; (2) they exercise power in a widely accepted way; and (3) that the rules that govern the state reflect widely accepted values and norms, including accountability.
Legitimacy is what enables a state to obtain compliance for those decisions without having to resort to force. As Easton argued, legitimacy constitutes a form of “diffuse” support for a political system, a form of support that does not have to be earned but rather inheres in the institutions of the political system, rather than the person occupying those institutions. Legitimacy acts as a buffer to cushion the system against shocks from short-term dissatisfaction with policy and performance. Ideally, legitimacy should bring about more cooperative behavior on the part of its citizens, and they are more likely to obey the law and refrain from anti-system behavior if they view the sources of those laws as legitimate, enforceable, and with consequences if they are not complied with.
Public Integrity and Ethics and Democratic Governance
Current evidence suggests that the low level of legitimacy and trust in most democratic governance systems is not necessarily the disease per se but a symptom of a much larger complex problem that involves other governance elements, including public integrity and ethics. As can be seen in Graph 1, a recent study by the OECD showed that on average just four in ten people trust their national government in the OECD countries. But there are differences among countries. While trust in Finland, Luxembourg, and Norway is relatively high, in Austria, Colombia, and France trust is relatively low. Economic performance alone does not explain the level of trust in government. The quality of governance, the failure of current policies to address challenges, and the lack of public integrity and ethics of politicians and public servants are also key factors that contribute to the lack of trust. Moreover, ineffective government efforts in tackling corruption and increasing lack of consequences for corrupt practices, also affect levels of trust. There is a correlation between citizens perceiving higher integrity and better governance, and high trust in government.
The OECD study findings highlight a critical challenge: a growing perception that democratic governance systems are not working for everyone, and often work better for the few and privileged. When only 40% of citizens feel confident that a public employee would treat rich and poor people equally, there is a problem. This figure drops to 30% among economically vulnerable respondents. Poor public perception of the independence of the judiciary from political influence is strongly correlated with low trust in the national government. In contrast, citizens generally trust their civil service and local government more than their national governments, and perception of fairness is strongly associated with trust in both civil service and local government, as are efforts to fight corruption, ensure integrity, and promote equal treatment by civil servants.
Openness and integrity matter for trust in government. One can make the argument that a lack of trust in the governance system is nourished by high perceptions of privilege, corruption, and impunity. And, vice versa, perceptions of privilege, corruption, and impunity nourish a lack of trust. In turn, this weakens legitimacy and a sense that government is for the many. The belief that government is benefiting the few is nourished by low levels of trust in government, in the justice system, in the legislature/congress, and in interpersonal trust, as well as low satisfaction with how democratic governance is performing. Similarly, one can make the argument that the low levels of institutional and personal trust and the low satisfaction with democratic governance feed the belief that the government is for the few and not the many.
Investing in Public Integrity and Ethics
No doubt democratic governance is at a crossroads. It needs to be strengthened, made relevant to all citizens, and innovated. Many of these efforts would require political will and deep reforms that could take a long time to realize. Meanwhile, the risks to democratic governance remain alive and constant. Would-be authoritarians thrive on a lack of trust and legitimacy, and while campaigning as outsiders to gain power, they bash the already weakened democratic governance system and propose quick and unrealistic fixes to match their rhetoric. Public integrity and ethics stand in the way of their individual and selfish project, thus integrity and ethics are not a priority.
Democratic governance systems may not be working effectively today, but parts of the system are, and that should be the basis to start re-building, strengthening, and making democratic governance more resilient. A re-focus on public service and public servants seems one accessible and feasible path towards strengthening democratic governance. Risk factors in the public sector need to be handled systematically, and comprehensively, including public servants adhering to relevant rules and regulations, but also to basic public service values. These are all to safeguard integrity, and public servants at all levels. The quality of public service goes through providing better and clearer guidance on integrity and ethical issues, like how to avoid conflicts of interest, and how to act and behave in order to live up to high public service standards.
Carol Lewis and Stuart Gilman’s, now classic guide on ethical challenges in public service, offers some advice to strengthen the values and responsibilities of public servants. As can be seen in Table 1, key values need to be reinforced constantly to adapt to an ever-changing environment, with increasing levels of complexity and speed of change. The public sector for the new democratic governance needs to have the ability and tools to respond to more decentralized and delegated decision-making powers and potentially new entry points for corruption and unethical behavior. Recently, with the help of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in consultation with the Public Service Fale under the United Nations Pacific Regional Anti-Corruption Project (UN-PRAC) funded by the Government of New Zealand, we developed a practical Framework for the Pacific Island countries to support public service agencies, departments, units or other public entities to diagnose, plan, manage, and measure their integrity and ethics initiatives to build an organizational or system-wide culture of integrity and ethics and enhance public trust and confidence in the integrity of public services.
Ethics and integrity are not values that can simply be acquired. They are something that must grow inside each of us. Integrity institutions and inputs do not exist as silos but have overlapping roles and jurisdictions, and constant interactions at a policy level, operationally and most importantly, in the ways they impact culture, behavior, and performance across the public sector and the community. Hence the need for a holistic approach. Integrity and Ethics programs need to be rolled out and a process and methodology to measure and identify areas of improvement could help monitor and measure progress, as well as respond to institutional needs. Ethical and public integrity management systems are dynamic processes that seek to guide the public entity’s actions, complement its strategic processes, and support mission and vision consolidation. Its implementation is constant, flexible, and effective, allowing the building of organizations with integrity systems that consolidate a coherence between the values they preach as public institutions and their practices. For this reason, ethics and integrity systems have to be built in a consensual and participatory process and convert those agreements and commitments into practices and habits of behavior, enabling the assumption of collective behaviors that forge a culture of probity and integrity.
*Source of the photo: Pexels, 2023
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