Conclusion

The chapter summarizes the three main innovations presented in this book. First, contrary to institutionalist theories, this book shows how to understand the main threats political corruption poses to the well-functioning of public institutions, one must look inside of those institutions, at the officeholders’ interrelated conduct. Second, contrary to consequentialist theories, by making political corruption itself—not just its consequences—an object of public ethics, the book brings out the constitutive dimension of the wrongness of political corruption as a kind of interactive injustice for which all officeholders are responsible in their interrelatedness. Third, contrary to legalistic and regulatory approaches to anticorruption, this book argues for the importance of internalizing answerability institutional practices as the components of a public ethics of office accountability capable of giving officeholders practical guidance for their institutional action.

Responsibility for political corruption

This chapter addresses the question of the attribution of responsibility for political corruption to officeholders. Whenever a deficit of office accountability is suspected, officeholders should engage in good faith in answerability practices. This kind of practice is aimed at establishing and assigning retrospective and prospective responsibilities for political corruption to officeholders, both severally and as interrelated agents. In these communicative justificatory practices, officeholders engage in identifying a possible deficit of office accountability in their conduct as interrelated agents and can assume responsibility for the wrongness of an institution’s failure to remain faithful to its raison d’être. In this way, taking responsibility enables the practical changes required to overcome political corruption and possibly to prevent it from occurring anew.

Political corruption: individual or institutional?

Contrary to current institutionalist theories of corruption, this chapter maintains that the quality of institutional practices can always be traced back to the officeholders’ conduct as both individual and interrelated role occupants via their institutional roles. This is the “continuity approach” to political corruption in public institutions. Because institutional roles are structurally interrelated, political corruption can be attributed to an institution in virtue of a variety of patterns (summative, morphological, and systemic), describing the shape of the interrelatedness of the officeholders’ conduct. Political corruption thus has its source in the action of officeholders within an institution, no matter how well designed that institution may be. This internal enemy is a serious one because the officeholders’ interrelated corrupt conduct may fail an institution’s raison d’être (the normative ideals that motivate an institution’s establishment and functioning).

What political corruption is

This chapter describes political corruption as a deficit of office accountability in the institutional conduct of officeholders. Office accountability is the basic component of a public ethics of office. It is realized when officeholders act in their institutional capacity on an agenda whose rationale may be vindicated as coherent with the terms of their power mandate. Office accountability differs from the idea that officeholders must respond ex post for their conduct. The idea of office accountability has an action-guiding and regulative function for officeholders as they conduct their institutional duties. This idea points to the interrelatedness between the occupants of institutional roles and their mutual duties. Political corruption is a deficit of office accountability that concerns officeholders’ interrelated actions; in this sense, it is a matter of a public ethics of office.

Opposing political corruption

The principal resources for opposing political corruption should be internal to a public institution. When, upon scrutinizing a possible deficit of office accountability, political corruption becomes manifest, new anticorruption obligations ensue for officeholders. Anticorruption is the response officeholders should give to political corruption as an interrelated group. Anticorruption thus understood designates the practices of self-correction officeholders should follow to restore the normative order of just interactions constitutive of their institution. The chapter discusses, from this point of view on anticorruption, various practices of answerability such as codes of conduct, transparency provisions, mutual supervision, and whistleblowing.

How is political corruption wrong?

This chapter offers a normative account of the threat political corruption poses to institutional well-functioning. When political corruption occurs against the background of legitimate or nearly just institutions, it is inherently wrong because it constitutes a wrongful form of interaction between officeholders. The idea of interactive injustice is used to qualify this kind of relational wrong. The way officeholders treat each other in their institutional interactions should be governed by a regulative principle of office accountability. When officeholders fail office accountability by acting in a corrupt way or by participating in corrupt institutional practices, they alter ipso facto the normative order of just interactions constitutive of their institution. This alteration indicates how political corruption is inherently unjust as a violation of the duty of office accountability, even in the absence of identifiable consequences. This normative view of political corruption is distinguished from other views based on impartiality or political equality.

Introduction

This chapter introduces an analysis of political corruption and anticorruption within the framework of 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. Little scholarly attention has been devoted to discussing the relation between these two dimensions. This book fills this gap by showing the importance of understanding that political corruption is a failure of the role-based interactions between officeholders. Political corruption is thus a matter of public ethics because it is a problem inherent to the functioning of public institutions, understood as a system of interrelated embodied roles, and the conduct of the officeholders occupying those roles.