Tuesday, July 29, 2008
PHIL3709 Ethics & Accountability
In this essay I will construct a system of public integrity in organizational accountability that marries the two varied contemporary approaches to public integrity, which are the pro-ethics approach and the anti-corruption approach. The purpose of the system of public integrity presented herein, is to inform the construction of codes of conduct by semi-autonomous groups acting in a federation within an organization so that the system better deals with the problem of accountability in organizations than either of the current models. The system of public integrity will incorporate many ideas expressed in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s On The Social Contract, especially the notion of ‘general will’. The system of public integrity will simultaneously allow a code of conduct to be built internally, and in every level of an organization, whilst being externally visible. First of all I will compare and contrast a pro-ethics and an anti-corruption approach to accountability in order to show the benefits of each, the consequent failings, and to outline which parts of each approach I intend to incorporate into the new system of public integrity. Secondly I will explicate Rousseau’s notion of ‘general will’, and further to that how it will apply within the system of public integrity being constructed in order that the system of public integrity has a tool that can place the benefits of an anti-corruption approach within a framework that incorporates the benefits of a pro-ethics approach. Finally I will elucidate how the codes of conduct generated by the system of public integrity will encourage ethical behaviour, deter criminal misconduct and function in a self regulatory manner. This paper shall have presented an alternate model for a system of public integrity in organizational accountability that exceeds the current models.
Here I will provide an account of the pro-ethics and anti-corruption approaches to accountability and thus a background to the contemporary debate over the question of accountability that has been generally answered and applied by the two camps. This background will give a context to the system of public integrity that I propose. From this context one can see where I lean structurally upon a pro-ethics approach that values personal ethics, and balance this with a set of anti-corruption goals and codes of conduct that seek to mitigate risk. According to Uhr systems of public integrity tend to favour an approach with an emphasis on external checks or an emphasis on internal responsibility. The former Uhr labels as an anti-corruption approach, which has a firm stance on monitoring behaviour as a deterrent to unlawful personal gains. The latter he calls a pro-ethics approach, which seeks to promote individual ethics in order to ensure that behaviour is beyond the minimum requirements set by the law. The origin of the differences between the two approaches lies within varying understandings of the term ‘integrity’, and the aims that manifest from those separate understandings. The term ‘integrity’ as it is used in the area of accountability refers to the standard of ethical behaviour as conducted by an organization, which is ultimately measured in terms of the behaviour of its employees.
An anti-corruption approach understands behaving with integrity as lawful behaviour. In fact the law tends to underpin the understanding of integrity and accountability in an anti-corruption sense. It follows then that corrupt behaviour is that behaviour which is unlawful. Uhr concludes that from this sort of understanding of integrity the aim of the anti-corruption approach is to avoid criminal misconduct. Such a position is held by the theorist Pearson. Opposed to the anti-corruption approach to accountability is on the other hand a pro-ethics approach, which is derived from an understanding of ethics that has a focus on the individual behaving above and beyond the minimum legal requirements. In this case the law is well below an expected norm of individual behaviour; between the law and the expected norm is an area of low or unethical behaviour. From this understanding of integrity Uhr concludes that the aims of a pro-ethics approach is to enhance and encourage high ethical behaviour in all individuals. Now that we have a basic grasp of where the two approaches first differ in their respective understandings of integrity we can have a view of the aims of each approach. By turning to the way in which these approaches are theoretically applied it is possible to highlight the strengths and aims of each so that it can be made clear what positive aspects of these contemporary approaches is being preserved in the new system of public integrity.
Firstly, the means employed by anti-corruption approaches in order to mitigate risk are; damage control, minimisation, and protection from harm. An anti-corruption approach seeks to control the amount of damage an individual may potentially inflict upon the organization in which they are employed. Damage control is realised by, any one or combination of, the restricting, sharing, or monitoring of personal responsibility. The theory here is that the less responsibility any one person has over any part of an organization their ability to damage that organization is diminished; the overall aim is to mitigate risk. There are a variety of ways that personal responsibility is lessened, such examples are; having a position job-shared, having individual tasks monitored by a superior and co-peers, creating shortened job flow so as to separate minor individual roles with the task being completed by several people. In each implementation the individual does not ever have sole responsibility over a whole task that may be susceptible to the risk of corruption.
The means of minimisation of corruption within anti-corruption approaches can be captured by penalties for non-performance, implementation and enforcement of strategies and a coherent code of conduct. The focus here is to create deterrents for individuals by minimising the personal gains and maximising the penalties for corrupt behaviour. The anti-corruption approach sends a strong message that misconduct, corrupt behaviour, is not worthwhile pursuing, and even if one does there are structures in place to catch culprits and legitimate penalties to be incurred. In order that corruption is minimised strong disincentives are produced to counter balance the personal gains that are to be had via corrupt behaviour. The theory here is that individuals are by default driven by their personal interests and the gain in which they can accrue for themselves. Rousseau would agree that individuals are driven by the prospect by personal gain, but are essentially rational beings that can reason the greater gain to be had by furthering the public interest.
In contrast, the pro-ethics approach assumes that an opposite understanding of the nature of the individual is in place; i.e. that individuals are driven to improve the public interest but are limited by their personal ethical standards. Thus the pro-ethics approach minimises corruption through the use of incentives to increase personal integrity. The theory in this approach is to make it more worthwhile for the individual to behave more ethically than not. The law is still in place to punish criminals, however there exists an avenue in which by bringing personal interests in line with public interests the individual will gain – along with the public. Such an incentive scheme is realised by the institutionalisation of a code of ethics that is used to reinforce and inscribe positive values and principles. Structures are put in place so that when individuals exceed the minimum standards of behaviour set by a code of ethics they are rewarded. These rewards can take the form of performance bonuses, public congratulations, gifts of acknowledgement, and promotion.
The pro-ethics approach encourages the advancement of personal ethics to a higher standard by offering incentives for measurable increase in personal integrity. The initiative for the pro-ethics approach is to set conduct at a high ethical standard by publicly instituting a set of principles and values of the organization. The purpose of an organization writing and instituting a set of principles and values is to give a clear and discrete image of what the ethical expectations of the organization are, and how they may be applied to conduct within the organization. This approach not only assists in the development of current employees but also the recruitment of future employees. By already taking a public stance on ethics the organization attracts personnel that identify with such values. A written document of principles and values, a code of ethics, sets out a measurable charter to compare the ethical behaviour of employees against. When an individual is set to embody, typify, or become an exemplar, then the structured benefits, incentives and rewards are readily introduced via the organization’s policy. The result is self-fulfilling; the pro-ethics approach encourages the individual to become the exemplar that the approach requires to further communicate the real effect, embodiment, of the written code of ethics.
A pro-ethics approach will promote the public interest as it builds the integrity of the personal ethics of the employees, an anti-corruption approach mitigates risk whilst it also dissuades breaches of public interest by the employees. Both approaches recognise the importance and place of the public interest, but propose rather different uses for the public interest and different relationships between individuals and the public interest. Uhr makes great note of the “difference in emphasis” between the pro-ethics and the anti-corruption approaches, going on to claim that pro-ethics takes a positive perspective on public interest while anti-corruption takes a negative one. Uhr suggests that this is a result of two variant assertions of individuals, one that expects the best of an individual and one that assumes the worst. The aims of the pro-ethics approach are to encourage and promote the individual, their ethical structure, to the level and beyond that of the public interest. On the other hand the anti-corruption approach aims to protect the level of ethics represented by the public interest from the inherently weak state of personal ethics.
Here it is important to note, given the background of Rousseau to the system of integrity that I will construct, that Rousseau’s account of the individual is one that is closer to the pro-ethical account than the anti-corruption. Although Rousseau admits that the individual is driven by personal gain, he asserts that the individual is essentially good because of the good will that is derived from the individual’s rational capacity. Rousseau’s individual can reason the greater benefit to be had from the share one has in the public interest so long as the individual supports the public, and the individual is willing to do as such if everyone else would do the same.
The account of the competing approaches to public integrity is bringing to the foreground the aspects of each that I intend to incorporate into the new system of public integrity. It is important to note the bridge between the pro-ethics account and the new system that I will construct is the positive understanding of the nature of the individual as being essentially good and willing to promote the public interest. This understanding of the nature of the individual can be linked to Rousseau through his account of the individual present in A Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality among Man (2nd Discourse) in which Rousseau claims that the individual is essentially good. The premise of Rousseau’s account is, in short, that it is society in all its history of conventions and wrought social codes that has made the individual bad; for society has shaped the individual via pride and maintains convention in order to drive individual interest. The analysis of Uhr’s account of the pro-ethics approach shows that the positive understanding of the nature of the individual, that is at its heart a Rousseauian understanding, drives any pro-ethics system to repeal the conventions that may encourage personal interest and replace them with structures that encourage higher personal ethics that are in line with, and benefit, the public interest.
In summary, I have analysed on the one hand Uhr’s account of the pro-ethics approach to public integrity, and compared this to the other hand in which lies the anti-corruption approach to public integrity. The focus of the comparison drew out the difference in the understandings of the nature of the individual apparent in each system, and the relation that the pro-ethics approach has to the Rousseauian understanding of the nature of the individual. The system of public integrity that I propose attempts to marry the two approaches to public integrity by enveloping the strong aspects of an anti-corruption approach to mitigating risk within an pro-ethics structure, that uses Rousseau’s ‘general will’ to instil responsibility within each individual in order to value and encourage the improvement of personal ethics. As such the system of public integrity I propose will incorporate the inspirational and positive expectations of the pro-ethics approach alongside the useful prescriptive guidelines of a code of conduct and functionality of deterrents that are present in the anti-corruption approach. The use of Rousseau’s ‘general will’ allows the system of public integrity to proportion responsibility to individuals in order that individuals autonomously construct codes of conduct that apply and regulate specifically to the individuals that constructed them. An explication of Rousseau’s ‘general will’ and how it will apply within a system of public integrity is necessary prior to a complete detailing of the system. For the internal mechanism of ‘respect for the law’ that Rousseau uses in his application of the ‘general will’ in his political theory is at use in the system of public integrity that I will construct. Having provided an analysis of the existing approaches to a system of public integrity, and having highlighted the specific attributes of each, the next section of this paper will be an explication of the ‘general will’ and its place in a system of public integrity.
The ‘general will’, as developed by Rousseau, is that which every member of the group would submit themselves to on the provision that every other member of the group would also submit themselves to the same. The codes of conduct, which is the written document of the ‘general will’, is formed by the coming together of the members of the group to express their will on a particular issue. Thus the ‘general will’, as Rousseau explains in the following quote, forms itself in opposition to all private wills as a consideration of the common interest.
“There is often a great difference between the will of all and the general will. The latter considers only the common interest; the former considers private interest, and is only a sum of private wills. But take away from these same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel each other out, and the remaining sum of the differences is the general will.”
Rousseau in this quote builds upon Marqui D’Argenson’s notion that private interests form in opposition to each other. Rousseau postulates that agreement between private interests is formed in opposition to yet another position. Rousseau applies his postulate to the relation of interests to the formation of the ‘general will’, so that it is formed in opposition to all private interests. There is a relationship here between the ‘general will’ and the public interest. The distillation of the difference between all the competing private wills brings out a will that is not one person or group of persons, but a will that is owned by all the members. The respect for the ‘general will’ is the binding force of the ‘general will’. Yet the ‘general will’ does not enforce the individual to be accountable for others.
“Far from being an alliance between private interest and the general good, they are mutually exclusive in the natural order of things, and social laws are a yoke that each wants to impose on the other without having to bear himself.”
The above quote highlights Rousseau’s insistence that the ‘general will’ is not an agreement or compromise between individuals asserting their own interests and what is perceived to be the ‘general good’ . The individual is encompassed in the ‘general good’, and so the interest of the individual is encompassed by the ‘general will’. So one is accountable for oneself and accountable to all, but is not accountable for any other. For so long as the members recognise the ‘general will’ as their own and legitimate it by their voluntary submission to it, the problem of being accountable to oneself and for others is circumvented. This is a function of the process of respect for the ‘general will’ that occurs when the subject recognises that the authority of the ‘general will’ comes from within the individuals themselves, and so from oneself. In the same sense that the ‘general will’ formulates law, the ‘general will’ can be framed in order to formulate codes of conduct.
The legitimate authority and the voluntary submission to the ‘general will’ are key aspects for the formulation of codes of conduct within the new system of public integrity, because once properly incorporated they instil an internal relationship between the individual employees and the system of public integrity that governs their behaviour. The authority derived from self authorship that individuals feel toward the ‘general will’ binds the individual to the ‘general will’ in a sense of responsibility and respect to the codes of conduct. Voluntary submission to the ‘general will’ is a first step in the generation of relationships of trust between the members of the semi-autonomous groups. Both aspects of the ‘general will’ have an aim that is similar to a pro-ethics approach to integrity, this is due to the similarity in the understanding of the nature in the individual between the pro-ethics approach and Rousseau. The positive understanding of the nature of the individual is the foundation on which the pro-ethics approach seeks to endow the individual with more responsibility and encourage trust in the individual in order to inspire the individual in the very least to treat the ‘general good’ in a positive way.
To this point I have sketched the notion of ‘general will’ so that we can see how it may sit in a system of public integrity and so we can see also the inherently positive, pro-ethics like, conditions it places upon the individual. Now I wish to turn to the framing of the ‘general will’ within the specific context of formulating codes of conduct within an organization so as to illustrate how the ‘general will’ is used to internally construct codes of conduct that contain the benefits of an anti-corruption approach in regards to mitigating risk. As the ‘general will’ is codified into law or in this case codes of conduct, the independent freedom of the individual is limited by those codes of conduct into institutional freedom. When the ‘general will’ is written as law, the natural freedoms of a lawless, unsocialised individual, are limited and replaced by civil liberties which use the greater authority of the State to protect the individual. The use of the ‘general will’ in the system of public integrity likewise, on a micro level, creates codes of conduct which simultaneously limit the unbound freedom of the individual and protects the individual with the force of the institution. By way of recognising the legitimacy of the ‘general will’ it protects the freedoms of its members in the form of a formal document. By the authority of its members the ‘general will’ has authority, and so a transgression of the ‘general will’ has real punitive consequences. In this way the ‘general will’ may set a code of conduct above and beyond the law, but to transgress the ‘general will’ is to incur penalties, where all actions in accordance with the ‘general will’ and those actions that ethically exceed the requirements of the ‘general will’ are acceptable. What is at work here is an anti-corruption type model of deterrence operating within a pro-ethical framing of a code of conduct; recalling that a prescriptive and functional code of conduct is an anti-corruption approach to public integrity. Despite Rousseau’s explicit political intention for the use of the ‘general will’, as it is used in the presented system of public integrity the ‘general will’ instils respect in the individual, which is a pro-ethic like relation to the system that allows for the incorporation of mitigating risk.
The foundations upon which the code of conduct is based is the ‘general will’, confined within the space of a system of public integrity, which is owned and authored by a semi-autonomous group of individuals, who are in turn employees of an organization. An argument against the construction of a system of public integrity that is influenced by a political theory such as Rousseau’s, is that organizations, especially business organizations, are owned, have specific directives and are governed (usually by a board). The reason to construct a system of public integrity around political theory is inherent in the relationship the employees would have to the system. As previously analysed, the ‘general will’ generates a relationship of respect between the subjects and the system that ensures individual conformity with the system. Which is a relationship that cannot be attained by a system of integrity that is enforced upon the employees from the highest point of governance in an organization. The self-legislating authors of the code cannot make a code that they themselves cannot adhere to, because the very concept of the ‘general will’ will not allow it by its very nature. Rousseau points out that the individual speaks only for oneself in the formulation of the ‘general will’.
“Why is the general will always right and why do all constantly want the happiness of each, if not because there is no one who does not apply this word each to himself, and does not think of himself as he votes?”
This quote also shows how Rousseau’s account of the individual continues to play an important role in the formulation of the ‘general will’, how it functions, and under what conditions it can be applied. A member of a group, thinking of their own interests, cannot agree to a proposal in which their intention is insincere nor in the knowledge that they cannot fulfil the proposal. Similarities can here be drawn between the assumptions and expectations contemporary approaches to public integrity inherently make in the means they employ. Such as instituting a set of principles on the basis of the public popularity is assuming that such a public set of principles exist and expecting the employed individuals to adhere to the set of principles because the principles are allegedly in the public domain. Expectations upon employees to embody and typify the code of ethics in an institution makes the assumption that there already exists a positive relationship between the employee, the codes and the organization in which they are both situated. Reducing the organizational responsibility upon individual employees assumes that individuals will maintain positive relations with an organization that shows little or no trust in their employees and expects the employees to trust the organization in return.
Responsibility and authority is instilled in the members by their inherent respect of the ‘general will’, and so the codes of conduct will also inherit a sense of responsibility and authority from its authors. It is clear to see that such responsibility and authority, which are obviously beneficial to the codes of conduct for their success in protecting public integrity, are non-existent in codes of conduct that are handed down to and enforced upon groups of individuals that neither have input into their authorship nor have access to direct avenues to alter the codes. In order for groups of individuals to act willingly and freely under the force of a code of conduct they must respect and recognise the legitimacy of the authority of those codes. It is not impossible to absorb a foreign authority into one’s own ethical structure, but it is easier to recognise the authority of oneself in the subscription to a code of conduct in which one already has by association authored the force of that code.
Self-legislation brings about internal subscription to a code of conduct. For the task of legitimation comes naturally from within the personal structure of authority developed by any individual. The legitimation of force, and force only, has effect only so long as that force is applied and immediately useful. This is the case when a code of conduct is drawn and enforced from a governance body within an organization; such codes of conduct only has force as long as actual force is present. Codes of conduct which have their force coming from without must be first internally acceptable to the individuals, otherwise it will only be begrudgingly tolerated at its best, which falls far short of the ambitions of a system of public integrity. The ‘general will’ as a basis for a system of public integrity offers a legitimation that comes from within the individuals that are to submit to the codes of conduct that result. This is a benefit to a system of public integrity because the force that is behind the codes of conduct are always and continually present as the force is to be found in the individual employees themselves.
I have discussed above the effect of the sense of respect in the members of the ‘general will’ in regards to instilling responsibility in individuals. Respect is derived from the association an individual has to the ‘general good’ and public interest. The association springs from a sense of belongingness to the groups that an individual identifies with. According to Cobban an individual is socialised by the terms of their employment. If their employment in effect socialises the individual to a group of people and the individual views this employment as a positive and affirming attribute of their life and person, then the association to that organization is strong. However organizations, especially the public sector, can be large, anonymous, and a job that alienates. Rousseau requires an association of individuals that form a collective body.
“This act of association produces a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as there are voices in the assembly, which receives from this same act its unity, its common self, and its will.”
Rousseau elaborates on the collectivity of the members that form a ‘general will’. Rousseau’s kind of association is needed in a system of public integrity in order that groups may be distinguished within an organization. For the ‘general will’ can be instituted for the ends of these particular groups, so long as each group has a common association that is developed around a ‘general good’ .
Having shown that the relationship the individual has to the ‘general will’ via respect for the ‘general will’ is beneficial to a system of public integrity, I now turn to how this respect is achieved in the system of public integrity. I will begin constructing the body of the understanding that I propose for a system of public integrity, and indicate how best to circumscribe groups of individuals into semi-autonomous groups that formulate their own codes of conduct by developing three general principles; an association of ‘general good’, institutionalising the ‘general will’, and instigating relationships between members.
There are two conditions that any group must satisfy in order that the force of the ‘general will’ be operative in the context of a system of public integrity. The first is that the individuals must self identify with the group and thus see themselves in some way associated to that group; while the second condition is twofold - that the population of the group must have a shared relation to the group, i.e. there must be a ‘general good’ of the group for the ‘general will’ to consider in order that it be able to function. And the population must be of a sufficiently small size that no one person lacks an attachment to the group.
“There is a maximum force in every body politic which it cannot exceed and of which it often falls short by growing larger. The more the social bond stretches, the looser it becomes, and in general a small State is proportionally stronger than a larger one.”
Rousseau clearly outlines here that there is a social attachment to any group that individuals associate with, and that this attachment is inversely related to the population of the group. There is an inverse ratio whereby, when the population of the group increases the individual attachment to the group decreases in the proportionate fraction. This can be expressed as a fraction where x represents the power of attachment and y is the population; where x over y is the power of attachment per an individual; when y increases the fraction becomes ever smaller. Thus there exists a point where the population has made the personal attachment to the group insignificant. This has been expressed in social theory as the rule of exclusivity; the more exclusive the group the greater commitment each member has to the group.
One must keep in mind that Rousseau developed the notion of the ‘general will’ as a tool for democratic sovereignty – under this understanding the land on which a society was formed is the fulfilment of the conditions in which exist the ‘general good’ and the conditions for the effective use of the ‘general will’. However an organization already has preconceived goals and initiatives, in most cases business organizations exist in order to generate wealth. These organizational goals should be considered as a starting point for the definition of the ‘general good’ in regards to the organization. From here the next step would be to identify how each group participates in the organizational goals, and how from this relation a ‘general good’ particular to each group could be defined.
As a first principle semi-autonomous groups must be defined by their ‘general good’ within an organization. These groups are semi-autonomous in the sense that they have a restricted autonomy; the governing authority of the organization defines the terms and conditions in which these groups operate autonomously in order that a ‘general will’ may function for express ends.
“The general will alone can guide the forces of the State according to the end for which it was instituted.”
Here Rousseau expresses the functionality of the ‘general will’ as it operates in the context of the State, which, according to Rousseau, always has the purpose of protecting the civil liberties and life of its members. By creating semi-autonomous groups I am attempting to make a comparative micro State within an organization that has clearly defined ends.
The setting of reasonable ends by the organization allows members of the semi-autonomous groups to set about formulating a code of conduct using the ‘general will’. Thus the second principle is institutionalising the ‘general will’. To institutionalise the ‘general will’ is to extend the sense of respect into the realm of individual responsibility for ethical behaviour. Once the members have the ‘general will’ in the form of a code of conduct, that they themselves have formally instituted, they have an ethical standard and a guideline of behaviour and decision making that is specific to the role of the semi-autonomous group within the organization to which they themselves apply.
The implementation of the ‘general will’ forces all actions and decisions to be justified by a member’s submission to it; one cannot disregard their responsibility to the ‘general will’ because the ‘general will’ encompasses the wills of all members.
“The constant will of all the members of the State is the general will, which makes them citizens and free. When a law is proposed in the assembly of the people, what they are being asked is not precisely whether they approve or reject the proposal, but whether it does or does not conform to the general will that is theirs.”
Rousseau makes clear in this passage that everyone must make justification, in their own way, as to why the codes of conduct they construct do indeed conform to the ‘general will’. There is nothing stronger than personal conviction in the behaviour and deeds of the individual.
The third principle is to use the means of internal justification to build relationships between members. The ability of the semi-autonomous groups to justify the means by which they conduct themselves allows trust to build between the members of each semi-autonomous group and between the semi-autonomous groups. This is due to the transparency of the codes of conduct. Each member, each group, can see for themselves what the code of conduct is and can witness for themselves individuals acting from duty. Honest and predictable conduct in conformity with the codes creates trust, and a greater difference from conformity, given the specificity of the codes and the exclusivity of the groups.
Weaknesses in conduct within an organization are identifiable by comparing semi-autonomous groups against each other. The codes of conduct are internally formulated, so they are constructed in consideration of the specific ‘general good’ and ends of each semi-autonomous group. The success of the codes of conduct can be measured in contrast to the instituted ends of the semi-autonomous group as set by the organization’s governance. For example a group with fiscal responsibilities will have different needs from codes of conduct than a group that deals with providing defence intelligence. Such internal micro-development of codes of conduct improves upon handed-me-down codes, such as those of traditional ethics – because such codes lack in force or specific directional emphasis for specific individuals in their specific cultures and social roles. In the case of hand-me-down codes of conduct they can tend to be too forceful and/or irrelevant to specific roles, which result in individuals not identifying with them, acting on them out of duty, or ignoring them in order to fulfil key performance indicators.
The construction of internal specific codes of conduct minimises external policing of corruption by encouraging self-policing. The strength that is generated by the small size of the groups involved encourages internal relationships of trust. Such relationships of trust increase the ability of individuals to consult and resolve ethical issues internal to the semi-autonomous group. This in turn increases expediency whilst minimising personal risk in hard ethical decisions encountered in the workplace. The codes of conduct can be altered by an assembly within a given semi-autonomous group by consideration of a hard ethical decision that has been actually encountered by an individual. This encourages open discussion and interrogation of ethics in the workplace, which leads to a shared understanding of expected and acceptable standards of ethical behaviour in the workplace. In this way individuals can see their input into the organizational whole, thereby increasing ownership of the codes and the aforementioned flow on effects of such ownership. The individual also builds a kind of institutional faith, or belief in the system, as visible results give an indication of a system that is both self-reflexive, responsive and responsible to its members. The result of building relations of trust in this way is to increase acts from duty rather than out of duty.
Having shown the functions of the semi-autonomous groups I now turn to how the relations these groups have in an organization. Rousseau’s system of small city states consisted of an unfinished federation in which the city states participated in a broader political society. I wish to build upon Rousseau’s sketches of a federation of city states in order that the semi-autonomous bodies have a mode of communication between themselves that is also based on the ‘general will’. A federation of semi-autonomous groups would reduce the need for anti-corruption structures as measures of how well the groups behave and communicate between themselves would be developed by a ‘general will’ of the federation. It would also serve to counter the argument made against Rousseau in regards to the impracticality of assembling the population for every law, as the federation would streamline the small sized semi-autonomous groups.
A group consisting of members from each of the semi-autonomous groups would have to be formed in order to create the federation. The ‘general good’ of the federation is the building of relations of trust between the semi-autonomous groups. This encompasses the conduct of the semi-autonomous groups toward each other, toward the organization, and toward the public. The limits of the federal group would have to be narrow and specific to the task in which they are instituted, otherwise any codes of conduct that come from the federation is at risk of conflicting with those from the semi-autonomous groups. At no point should this happen, because the ‘general good’ for each group is distinct and particular. If there is a conflict then it is clear that the ‘general will’ of a group is not functioning, because the ‘general will’ only considers the ‘general good’. The federation has a ‘general will’ of its own, because it has a ‘general good’ of its own and its own members.
A federation that struggles to conceive of a strong ‘general will’ will have varied semi-autonomous groups that draw different codes of conduct. When the federation’s ‘general will’ is strong but a small number of delegates strongly dissent this highlights their respective semi-autonomous groups’ ethical variance. Neither of these outcomes are inherently good or bad, but provide a structure of interrogation in which varying roles can be compared and contrasted to varying codes of conduct. This is particularly helpful to the employment of new staff, staff training, and the formulation of job positions. It is clear that different job positions require different people, and different tasks require different conduct. The formulation of the ‘general will’ from the semi-autonomous groups help identify the specifics of each job position within a federation. Such identification increases the likelihood of training an ethically strong and unified federation; a federation that is accountable, builds ethical behaviour, and internally well structured to deal with corruption.
In this paper I have constructed a system of public integrity that incorporates Rousseau’s notion of ‘general will’ in an attempt to institutionalise individual legitimation and participation. The result of incorporating individual legitimation and participation into a system of public integrity is a marriage of particular attributes and structures that are present in contemporary pro-ethical and anti-corruption approaches to public integrity. The structure of the system of public integrity thus presented is a federation of semi-autonomous groups that independently construct via the ‘general will’ a code of conduct that specifically works to achieve ethical behaviour in the common organizational area of each semi-autonomous group. I have shown how a self regulatory system of public integrity, based on Rousseau’s political philosophy of the ‘general will’, can encourage ethical behaviour and deter criminal misconduct by implementing the benefits of self-legislation in a code of conduct.
Bibliography
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997
Cobban, A. Rousseau and the Modern State, George Allen & Unwin. 1964
Grace, Damien. O’Neill on Trust, 2008
Kelly, C. Rousseau’s Exemplary Life; The Confessions as Political Philosophy, Cornell University Press. 1987
Miller, J. Rousseau; Dreamer of Democracy, Yale University Press. 1984
Noble, R. Language, Subjectivity, and Freedom in Rousseau’s Moral Philosophy, Garland Publishing. 1991
O’Neill, Onora, A Question of Trust: the BBC Reith Lectures 2002, Cambridge, CUP, 2002
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Rousseau Judge of Jean Jacques: Dialogues, ed. Masters, R.D. & Kelly, C. trans. Bush, J. & Kelly, C. & Masters, R.D. University Press of New England. 1990
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Geneva Manuscript, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, A Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality among Man, Burt Franklin NY. 1971
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Confessions, trans. J.M. Cohen. Penguin Books. 1953
Wright, E.H. The Meaning Of Rousseau, Russel & Russel. 1963
Uhr, J. Terms of Trust, University of NSW Press. 2005
Footnotes
Uhr, J. Terms of Trust, University of NSW Press. 2005. Pg 197
Ibid. Pg 199
Ibid. Pg 199
Ibid. Pg 199
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 17
Uhr, J. Terms of Trust, University of NSW Press. 2005. Pg 199
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 137
Uhr, J. Terms of Trust, University of NSW Press. 2005. Pg 199
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 137
Uhr, J. Terms of Trust, University of NSW Press. 2005. Pg 199
Ibid. Pg 199-205
Ibid. Pg 200
Ibid. Pg 199
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 57
Uhr, J. Terms of Trust, University of NSW Press. 2005. Pg 202
Ibid. Pg 205
Ibid. Pg 201
Ibid. Pg 200
Ibid. Pg 200
Ibid. Pg 200
Ibid. Pg 200
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 53
Ibid. pg 63
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, A Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality among Man, Burt Franklin NY. 1971. Pg 37
Ibid. Pg 14
Rousseau uses ‘respect for the law’ to describe the internal nature of the relationship between the subject and the law. Rousseau’s association of respect is best illustrated by the relationship the subjects of the state have with the general will when it is documented as law. When a subject submits oneself to the law the individual recognises their own will encapsulated in the expression of the general will, that has become the law. The law, as an expression of the general will, is nothing that the individual would not already submit to so long as every other individual would likewise submit to it also.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 53
Ibid. Pg 61
Ibid. Pg 61. See the first footnote at the bottom of this page, and follow also the trans. Footnote #44 on d’Argenson.
It would be of interest to examine whether the public interest is formulated in a similar fashion as an opposing position to all private interest.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 61
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Geneva Manuscript, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 160
The ‘general good’ as Rousseau uses the term is in reference to the physical and abstract goods, and actions, that are associated and belong to all the members of a group and by advantaging the ‘common good’ thus advantage all the members.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 63
Read this paragraph in conjunction with the earlier point made on the respect for the law on page 8 and the accompanying footnote 24.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 63. Pg 63
I will explain and elaborate on the use of “semi-autonomous” groups in the section of the essay in which I detail the principles of structure of the present system of public integrity. Essentially they are defined groups that are given a frame of reference in which the group has the ability to formulate codes of conduct.
In essence this transformation is capturing on a macro level Rousseau’s idea of the social compact as limiting natural freedom by instituting civil liberties.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 63
Ibid. Pg 70
I will explain and elaborate on the use of “semi-autonomous” groups in the section of the essay in which I detail the principles of structure of the present system of public integrity.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 62
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 157
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 158
Uhr, J. Terms of Trust, University of NSW Press. 2005. Pg 197
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 62
Ibid. Pg 62
Immediately arguments against the practicalities of the system spring up here, especially those which question the assemblage of the people to consult on every law. This paper will not address these arguments directly, for the purpose of this paper, and for size of the task at hand, the project is limited to the philosophical scope of the system. i.e. generalising from the particular. The arguments that spring from the preceding paragraph will rely largely on hypothetical failures of implementation of the system. To these ends I insist on the generality of the system, to such strength that I have not placed this system within a real or functioning organization, but have sketched the system to the notion of an organization to which will apply. Nor have I discussed the details of implementation but merely outlined principles of implementation. Neither have I analysed the contemporary debate in such a way, so that I have not come to rely on the failures of particularities of the contemporary solutions to public integrity to embolden my argument.
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 199
Cobban, A. Rousseau and the Modern State, George Allen & Unwin. 1964. Pg 48
see footnote 48
Ibid. Pg 70
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 55
Cobban, A. Rousseau and the Modern State, George Allen & Unwin. 1964. Pg 87
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 54
The ‘general good’ as Rousseau uses the term is in reference to the physical and abstract goods, and actions, that are associated and belong to all the members of a group and by advantaging the ‘common good’ thus advantage all the members.
Ibid. Pg 71
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 71
Cobban, A. Rousseau and the Modern State, George Allen & Unwin. 1964. Pg 74.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 59
Ibid. Pg 59
Ibid. Pg 110-1
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997
Ibid. Pg 74
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 132
Take notice as to how this would apply to the arguments discussed in footnote 48. ¶ 4:49 pm
Here I will provide an account of the pro-ethics and anti-corruption approaches to accountability and thus a background to the contemporary debate over the question of accountability that has been generally answered and applied by the two camps. This background will give a context to the system of public integrity that I propose. From this context one can see where I lean structurally upon a pro-ethics approach that values personal ethics, and balance this with a set of anti-corruption goals and codes of conduct that seek to mitigate risk. According to Uhr systems of public integrity tend to favour an approach with an emphasis on external checks or an emphasis on internal responsibility. The former Uhr labels as an anti-corruption approach, which has a firm stance on monitoring behaviour as a deterrent to unlawful personal gains. The latter he calls a pro-ethics approach, which seeks to promote individual ethics in order to ensure that behaviour is beyond the minimum requirements set by the law. The origin of the differences between the two approaches lies within varying understandings of the term ‘integrity’, and the aims that manifest from those separate understandings. The term ‘integrity’ as it is used in the area of accountability refers to the standard of ethical behaviour as conducted by an organization, which is ultimately measured in terms of the behaviour of its employees.
An anti-corruption approach understands behaving with integrity as lawful behaviour. In fact the law tends to underpin the understanding of integrity and accountability in an anti-corruption sense. It follows then that corrupt behaviour is that behaviour which is unlawful. Uhr concludes that from this sort of understanding of integrity the aim of the anti-corruption approach is to avoid criminal misconduct. Such a position is held by the theorist Pearson. Opposed to the anti-corruption approach to accountability is on the other hand a pro-ethics approach, which is derived from an understanding of ethics that has a focus on the individual behaving above and beyond the minimum legal requirements. In this case the law is well below an expected norm of individual behaviour; between the law and the expected norm is an area of low or unethical behaviour. From this understanding of integrity Uhr concludes that the aims of a pro-ethics approach is to enhance and encourage high ethical behaviour in all individuals. Now that we have a basic grasp of where the two approaches first differ in their respective understandings of integrity we can have a view of the aims of each approach. By turning to the way in which these approaches are theoretically applied it is possible to highlight the strengths and aims of each so that it can be made clear what positive aspects of these contemporary approaches is being preserved in the new system of public integrity.
Firstly, the means employed by anti-corruption approaches in order to mitigate risk are; damage control, minimisation, and protection from harm. An anti-corruption approach seeks to control the amount of damage an individual may potentially inflict upon the organization in which they are employed. Damage control is realised by, any one or combination of, the restricting, sharing, or monitoring of personal responsibility. The theory here is that the less responsibility any one person has over any part of an organization their ability to damage that organization is diminished; the overall aim is to mitigate risk. There are a variety of ways that personal responsibility is lessened, such examples are; having a position job-shared, having individual tasks monitored by a superior and co-peers, creating shortened job flow so as to separate minor individual roles with the task being completed by several people. In each implementation the individual does not ever have sole responsibility over a whole task that may be susceptible to the risk of corruption.
The means of minimisation of corruption within anti-corruption approaches can be captured by penalties for non-performance, implementation and enforcement of strategies and a coherent code of conduct. The focus here is to create deterrents for individuals by minimising the personal gains and maximising the penalties for corrupt behaviour. The anti-corruption approach sends a strong message that misconduct, corrupt behaviour, is not worthwhile pursuing, and even if one does there are structures in place to catch culprits and legitimate penalties to be incurred. In order that corruption is minimised strong disincentives are produced to counter balance the personal gains that are to be had via corrupt behaviour. The theory here is that individuals are by default driven by their personal interests and the gain in which they can accrue for themselves. Rousseau would agree that individuals are driven by the prospect by personal gain, but are essentially rational beings that can reason the greater gain to be had by furthering the public interest.
In contrast, the pro-ethics approach assumes that an opposite understanding of the nature of the individual is in place; i.e. that individuals are driven to improve the public interest but are limited by their personal ethical standards. Thus the pro-ethics approach minimises corruption through the use of incentives to increase personal integrity. The theory in this approach is to make it more worthwhile for the individual to behave more ethically than not. The law is still in place to punish criminals, however there exists an avenue in which by bringing personal interests in line with public interests the individual will gain – along with the public. Such an incentive scheme is realised by the institutionalisation of a code of ethics that is used to reinforce and inscribe positive values and principles. Structures are put in place so that when individuals exceed the minimum standards of behaviour set by a code of ethics they are rewarded. These rewards can take the form of performance bonuses, public congratulations, gifts of acknowledgement, and promotion.
The pro-ethics approach encourages the advancement of personal ethics to a higher standard by offering incentives for measurable increase in personal integrity. The initiative for the pro-ethics approach is to set conduct at a high ethical standard by publicly instituting a set of principles and values of the organization. The purpose of an organization writing and instituting a set of principles and values is to give a clear and discrete image of what the ethical expectations of the organization are, and how they may be applied to conduct within the organization. This approach not only assists in the development of current employees but also the recruitment of future employees. By already taking a public stance on ethics the organization attracts personnel that identify with such values. A written document of principles and values, a code of ethics, sets out a measurable charter to compare the ethical behaviour of employees against. When an individual is set to embody, typify, or become an exemplar, then the structured benefits, incentives and rewards are readily introduced via the organization’s policy. The result is self-fulfilling; the pro-ethics approach encourages the individual to become the exemplar that the approach requires to further communicate the real effect, embodiment, of the written code of ethics.
A pro-ethics approach will promote the public interest as it builds the integrity of the personal ethics of the employees, an anti-corruption approach mitigates risk whilst it also dissuades breaches of public interest by the employees. Both approaches recognise the importance and place of the public interest, but propose rather different uses for the public interest and different relationships between individuals and the public interest. Uhr makes great note of the “difference in emphasis” between the pro-ethics and the anti-corruption approaches, going on to claim that pro-ethics takes a positive perspective on public interest while anti-corruption takes a negative one. Uhr suggests that this is a result of two variant assertions of individuals, one that expects the best of an individual and one that assumes the worst. The aims of the pro-ethics approach are to encourage and promote the individual, their ethical structure, to the level and beyond that of the public interest. On the other hand the anti-corruption approach aims to protect the level of ethics represented by the public interest from the inherently weak state of personal ethics.
Here it is important to note, given the background of Rousseau to the system of integrity that I will construct, that Rousseau’s account of the individual is one that is closer to the pro-ethical account than the anti-corruption. Although Rousseau admits that the individual is driven by personal gain, he asserts that the individual is essentially good because of the good will that is derived from the individual’s rational capacity. Rousseau’s individual can reason the greater benefit to be had from the share one has in the public interest so long as the individual supports the public, and the individual is willing to do as such if everyone else would do the same.
The account of the competing approaches to public integrity is bringing to the foreground the aspects of each that I intend to incorporate into the new system of public integrity. It is important to note the bridge between the pro-ethics account and the new system that I will construct is the positive understanding of the nature of the individual as being essentially good and willing to promote the public interest. This understanding of the nature of the individual can be linked to Rousseau through his account of the individual present in A Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality among Man (2nd Discourse) in which Rousseau claims that the individual is essentially good. The premise of Rousseau’s account is, in short, that it is society in all its history of conventions and wrought social codes that has made the individual bad; for society has shaped the individual via pride and maintains convention in order to drive individual interest. The analysis of Uhr’s account of the pro-ethics approach shows that the positive understanding of the nature of the individual, that is at its heart a Rousseauian understanding, drives any pro-ethics system to repeal the conventions that may encourage personal interest and replace them with structures that encourage higher personal ethics that are in line with, and benefit, the public interest.
In summary, I have analysed on the one hand Uhr’s account of the pro-ethics approach to public integrity, and compared this to the other hand in which lies the anti-corruption approach to public integrity. The focus of the comparison drew out the difference in the understandings of the nature of the individual apparent in each system, and the relation that the pro-ethics approach has to the Rousseauian understanding of the nature of the individual. The system of public integrity that I propose attempts to marry the two approaches to public integrity by enveloping the strong aspects of an anti-corruption approach to mitigating risk within an pro-ethics structure, that uses Rousseau’s ‘general will’ to instil responsibility within each individual in order to value and encourage the improvement of personal ethics. As such the system of public integrity I propose will incorporate the inspirational and positive expectations of the pro-ethics approach alongside the useful prescriptive guidelines of a code of conduct and functionality of deterrents that are present in the anti-corruption approach. The use of Rousseau’s ‘general will’ allows the system of public integrity to proportion responsibility to individuals in order that individuals autonomously construct codes of conduct that apply and regulate specifically to the individuals that constructed them. An explication of Rousseau’s ‘general will’ and how it will apply within a system of public integrity is necessary prior to a complete detailing of the system. For the internal mechanism of ‘respect for the law’ that Rousseau uses in his application of the ‘general will’ in his political theory is at use in the system of public integrity that I will construct. Having provided an analysis of the existing approaches to a system of public integrity, and having highlighted the specific attributes of each, the next section of this paper will be an explication of the ‘general will’ and its place in a system of public integrity.
The ‘general will’, as developed by Rousseau, is that which every member of the group would submit themselves to on the provision that every other member of the group would also submit themselves to the same. The codes of conduct, which is the written document of the ‘general will’, is formed by the coming together of the members of the group to express their will on a particular issue. Thus the ‘general will’, as Rousseau explains in the following quote, forms itself in opposition to all private wills as a consideration of the common interest.
“There is often a great difference between the will of all and the general will. The latter considers only the common interest; the former considers private interest, and is only a sum of private wills. But take away from these same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel each other out, and the remaining sum of the differences is the general will.”
Rousseau in this quote builds upon Marqui D’Argenson’s notion that private interests form in opposition to each other. Rousseau postulates that agreement between private interests is formed in opposition to yet another position. Rousseau applies his postulate to the relation of interests to the formation of the ‘general will’, so that it is formed in opposition to all private interests. There is a relationship here between the ‘general will’ and the public interest. The distillation of the difference between all the competing private wills brings out a will that is not one person or group of persons, but a will that is owned by all the members. The respect for the ‘general will’ is the binding force of the ‘general will’. Yet the ‘general will’ does not enforce the individual to be accountable for others.
“Far from being an alliance between private interest and the general good, they are mutually exclusive in the natural order of things, and social laws are a yoke that each wants to impose on the other without having to bear himself.”
The above quote highlights Rousseau’s insistence that the ‘general will’ is not an agreement or compromise between individuals asserting their own interests and what is perceived to be the ‘general good’ . The individual is encompassed in the ‘general good’, and so the interest of the individual is encompassed by the ‘general will’. So one is accountable for oneself and accountable to all, but is not accountable for any other. For so long as the members recognise the ‘general will’ as their own and legitimate it by their voluntary submission to it, the problem of being accountable to oneself and for others is circumvented. This is a function of the process of respect for the ‘general will’ that occurs when the subject recognises that the authority of the ‘general will’ comes from within the individuals themselves, and so from oneself. In the same sense that the ‘general will’ formulates law, the ‘general will’ can be framed in order to formulate codes of conduct.
The legitimate authority and the voluntary submission to the ‘general will’ are key aspects for the formulation of codes of conduct within the new system of public integrity, because once properly incorporated they instil an internal relationship between the individual employees and the system of public integrity that governs their behaviour. The authority derived from self authorship that individuals feel toward the ‘general will’ binds the individual to the ‘general will’ in a sense of responsibility and respect to the codes of conduct. Voluntary submission to the ‘general will’ is a first step in the generation of relationships of trust between the members of the semi-autonomous groups. Both aspects of the ‘general will’ have an aim that is similar to a pro-ethics approach to integrity, this is due to the similarity in the understanding of the nature in the individual between the pro-ethics approach and Rousseau. The positive understanding of the nature of the individual is the foundation on which the pro-ethics approach seeks to endow the individual with more responsibility and encourage trust in the individual in order to inspire the individual in the very least to treat the ‘general good’ in a positive way.
To this point I have sketched the notion of ‘general will’ so that we can see how it may sit in a system of public integrity and so we can see also the inherently positive, pro-ethics like, conditions it places upon the individual. Now I wish to turn to the framing of the ‘general will’ within the specific context of formulating codes of conduct within an organization so as to illustrate how the ‘general will’ is used to internally construct codes of conduct that contain the benefits of an anti-corruption approach in regards to mitigating risk. As the ‘general will’ is codified into law or in this case codes of conduct, the independent freedom of the individual is limited by those codes of conduct into institutional freedom. When the ‘general will’ is written as law, the natural freedoms of a lawless, unsocialised individual, are limited and replaced by civil liberties which use the greater authority of the State to protect the individual. The use of the ‘general will’ in the system of public integrity likewise, on a micro level, creates codes of conduct which simultaneously limit the unbound freedom of the individual and protects the individual with the force of the institution. By way of recognising the legitimacy of the ‘general will’ it protects the freedoms of its members in the form of a formal document. By the authority of its members the ‘general will’ has authority, and so a transgression of the ‘general will’ has real punitive consequences. In this way the ‘general will’ may set a code of conduct above and beyond the law, but to transgress the ‘general will’ is to incur penalties, where all actions in accordance with the ‘general will’ and those actions that ethically exceed the requirements of the ‘general will’ are acceptable. What is at work here is an anti-corruption type model of deterrence operating within a pro-ethical framing of a code of conduct; recalling that a prescriptive and functional code of conduct is an anti-corruption approach to public integrity. Despite Rousseau’s explicit political intention for the use of the ‘general will’, as it is used in the presented system of public integrity the ‘general will’ instils respect in the individual, which is a pro-ethic like relation to the system that allows for the incorporation of mitigating risk.
The foundations upon which the code of conduct is based is the ‘general will’, confined within the space of a system of public integrity, which is owned and authored by a semi-autonomous group of individuals, who are in turn employees of an organization. An argument against the construction of a system of public integrity that is influenced by a political theory such as Rousseau’s, is that organizations, especially business organizations, are owned, have specific directives and are governed (usually by a board). The reason to construct a system of public integrity around political theory is inherent in the relationship the employees would have to the system. As previously analysed, the ‘general will’ generates a relationship of respect between the subjects and the system that ensures individual conformity with the system. Which is a relationship that cannot be attained by a system of integrity that is enforced upon the employees from the highest point of governance in an organization. The self-legislating authors of the code cannot make a code that they themselves cannot adhere to, because the very concept of the ‘general will’ will not allow it by its very nature. Rousseau points out that the individual speaks only for oneself in the formulation of the ‘general will’.
“Why is the general will always right and why do all constantly want the happiness of each, if not because there is no one who does not apply this word each to himself, and does not think of himself as he votes?”
This quote also shows how Rousseau’s account of the individual continues to play an important role in the formulation of the ‘general will’, how it functions, and under what conditions it can be applied. A member of a group, thinking of their own interests, cannot agree to a proposal in which their intention is insincere nor in the knowledge that they cannot fulfil the proposal. Similarities can here be drawn between the assumptions and expectations contemporary approaches to public integrity inherently make in the means they employ. Such as instituting a set of principles on the basis of the public popularity is assuming that such a public set of principles exist and expecting the employed individuals to adhere to the set of principles because the principles are allegedly in the public domain. Expectations upon employees to embody and typify the code of ethics in an institution makes the assumption that there already exists a positive relationship between the employee, the codes and the organization in which they are both situated. Reducing the organizational responsibility upon individual employees assumes that individuals will maintain positive relations with an organization that shows little or no trust in their employees and expects the employees to trust the organization in return.
Responsibility and authority is instilled in the members by their inherent respect of the ‘general will’, and so the codes of conduct will also inherit a sense of responsibility and authority from its authors. It is clear to see that such responsibility and authority, which are obviously beneficial to the codes of conduct for their success in protecting public integrity, are non-existent in codes of conduct that are handed down to and enforced upon groups of individuals that neither have input into their authorship nor have access to direct avenues to alter the codes. In order for groups of individuals to act willingly and freely under the force of a code of conduct they must respect and recognise the legitimacy of the authority of those codes. It is not impossible to absorb a foreign authority into one’s own ethical structure, but it is easier to recognise the authority of oneself in the subscription to a code of conduct in which one already has by association authored the force of that code.
Self-legislation brings about internal subscription to a code of conduct. For the task of legitimation comes naturally from within the personal structure of authority developed by any individual. The legitimation of force, and force only, has effect only so long as that force is applied and immediately useful. This is the case when a code of conduct is drawn and enforced from a governance body within an organization; such codes of conduct only has force as long as actual force is present. Codes of conduct which have their force coming from without must be first internally acceptable to the individuals, otherwise it will only be begrudgingly tolerated at its best, which falls far short of the ambitions of a system of public integrity. The ‘general will’ as a basis for a system of public integrity offers a legitimation that comes from within the individuals that are to submit to the codes of conduct that result. This is a benefit to a system of public integrity because the force that is behind the codes of conduct are always and continually present as the force is to be found in the individual employees themselves.
I have discussed above the effect of the sense of respect in the members of the ‘general will’ in regards to instilling responsibility in individuals. Respect is derived from the association an individual has to the ‘general good’ and public interest. The association springs from a sense of belongingness to the groups that an individual identifies with. According to Cobban an individual is socialised by the terms of their employment. If their employment in effect socialises the individual to a group of people and the individual views this employment as a positive and affirming attribute of their life and person, then the association to that organization is strong. However organizations, especially the public sector, can be large, anonymous, and a job that alienates. Rousseau requires an association of individuals that form a collective body.
“This act of association produces a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as there are voices in the assembly, which receives from this same act its unity, its common self, and its will.”
Rousseau elaborates on the collectivity of the members that form a ‘general will’. Rousseau’s kind of association is needed in a system of public integrity in order that groups may be distinguished within an organization. For the ‘general will’ can be instituted for the ends of these particular groups, so long as each group has a common association that is developed around a ‘general good’ .
Having shown that the relationship the individual has to the ‘general will’ via respect for the ‘general will’ is beneficial to a system of public integrity, I now turn to how this respect is achieved in the system of public integrity. I will begin constructing the body of the understanding that I propose for a system of public integrity, and indicate how best to circumscribe groups of individuals into semi-autonomous groups that formulate their own codes of conduct by developing three general principles; an association of ‘general good’, institutionalising the ‘general will’, and instigating relationships between members.
There are two conditions that any group must satisfy in order that the force of the ‘general will’ be operative in the context of a system of public integrity. The first is that the individuals must self identify with the group and thus see themselves in some way associated to that group; while the second condition is twofold - that the population of the group must have a shared relation to the group, i.e. there must be a ‘general good’ of the group for the ‘general will’ to consider in order that it be able to function. And the population must be of a sufficiently small size that no one person lacks an attachment to the group.
“There is a maximum force in every body politic which it cannot exceed and of which it often falls short by growing larger. The more the social bond stretches, the looser it becomes, and in general a small State is proportionally stronger than a larger one.”
Rousseau clearly outlines here that there is a social attachment to any group that individuals associate with, and that this attachment is inversely related to the population of the group. There is an inverse ratio whereby, when the population of the group increases the individual attachment to the group decreases in the proportionate fraction. This can be expressed as a fraction where x represents the power of attachment and y is the population; where x over y is the power of attachment per an individual; when y increases the fraction becomes ever smaller. Thus there exists a point where the population has made the personal attachment to the group insignificant. This has been expressed in social theory as the rule of exclusivity; the more exclusive the group the greater commitment each member has to the group.
One must keep in mind that Rousseau developed the notion of the ‘general will’ as a tool for democratic sovereignty – under this understanding the land on which a society was formed is the fulfilment of the conditions in which exist the ‘general good’ and the conditions for the effective use of the ‘general will’. However an organization already has preconceived goals and initiatives, in most cases business organizations exist in order to generate wealth. These organizational goals should be considered as a starting point for the definition of the ‘general good’ in regards to the organization. From here the next step would be to identify how each group participates in the organizational goals, and how from this relation a ‘general good’ particular to each group could be defined.
As a first principle semi-autonomous groups must be defined by their ‘general good’ within an organization. These groups are semi-autonomous in the sense that they have a restricted autonomy; the governing authority of the organization defines the terms and conditions in which these groups operate autonomously in order that a ‘general will’ may function for express ends.
“The general will alone can guide the forces of the State according to the end for which it was instituted.”
Here Rousseau expresses the functionality of the ‘general will’ as it operates in the context of the State, which, according to Rousseau, always has the purpose of protecting the civil liberties and life of its members. By creating semi-autonomous groups I am attempting to make a comparative micro State within an organization that has clearly defined ends.
The setting of reasonable ends by the organization allows members of the semi-autonomous groups to set about formulating a code of conduct using the ‘general will’. Thus the second principle is institutionalising the ‘general will’. To institutionalise the ‘general will’ is to extend the sense of respect into the realm of individual responsibility for ethical behaviour. Once the members have the ‘general will’ in the form of a code of conduct, that they themselves have formally instituted, they have an ethical standard and a guideline of behaviour and decision making that is specific to the role of the semi-autonomous group within the organization to which they themselves apply.
The implementation of the ‘general will’ forces all actions and decisions to be justified by a member’s submission to it; one cannot disregard their responsibility to the ‘general will’ because the ‘general will’ encompasses the wills of all members.
“The constant will of all the members of the State is the general will, which makes them citizens and free. When a law is proposed in the assembly of the people, what they are being asked is not precisely whether they approve or reject the proposal, but whether it does or does not conform to the general will that is theirs.”
Rousseau makes clear in this passage that everyone must make justification, in their own way, as to why the codes of conduct they construct do indeed conform to the ‘general will’. There is nothing stronger than personal conviction in the behaviour and deeds of the individual.
The third principle is to use the means of internal justification to build relationships between members. The ability of the semi-autonomous groups to justify the means by which they conduct themselves allows trust to build between the members of each semi-autonomous group and between the semi-autonomous groups. This is due to the transparency of the codes of conduct. Each member, each group, can see for themselves what the code of conduct is and can witness for themselves individuals acting from duty. Honest and predictable conduct in conformity with the codes creates trust, and a greater difference from conformity, given the specificity of the codes and the exclusivity of the groups.
Weaknesses in conduct within an organization are identifiable by comparing semi-autonomous groups against each other. The codes of conduct are internally formulated, so they are constructed in consideration of the specific ‘general good’ and ends of each semi-autonomous group. The success of the codes of conduct can be measured in contrast to the instituted ends of the semi-autonomous group as set by the organization’s governance. For example a group with fiscal responsibilities will have different needs from codes of conduct than a group that deals with providing defence intelligence. Such internal micro-development of codes of conduct improves upon handed-me-down codes, such as those of traditional ethics – because such codes lack in force or specific directional emphasis for specific individuals in their specific cultures and social roles. In the case of hand-me-down codes of conduct they can tend to be too forceful and/or irrelevant to specific roles, which result in individuals not identifying with them, acting on them out of duty, or ignoring them in order to fulfil key performance indicators.
The construction of internal specific codes of conduct minimises external policing of corruption by encouraging self-policing. The strength that is generated by the small size of the groups involved encourages internal relationships of trust. Such relationships of trust increase the ability of individuals to consult and resolve ethical issues internal to the semi-autonomous group. This in turn increases expediency whilst minimising personal risk in hard ethical decisions encountered in the workplace. The codes of conduct can be altered by an assembly within a given semi-autonomous group by consideration of a hard ethical decision that has been actually encountered by an individual. This encourages open discussion and interrogation of ethics in the workplace, which leads to a shared understanding of expected and acceptable standards of ethical behaviour in the workplace. In this way individuals can see their input into the organizational whole, thereby increasing ownership of the codes and the aforementioned flow on effects of such ownership. The individual also builds a kind of institutional faith, or belief in the system, as visible results give an indication of a system that is both self-reflexive, responsive and responsible to its members. The result of building relations of trust in this way is to increase acts from duty rather than out of duty.
Having shown the functions of the semi-autonomous groups I now turn to how the relations these groups have in an organization. Rousseau’s system of small city states consisted of an unfinished federation in which the city states participated in a broader political society. I wish to build upon Rousseau’s sketches of a federation of city states in order that the semi-autonomous bodies have a mode of communication between themselves that is also based on the ‘general will’. A federation of semi-autonomous groups would reduce the need for anti-corruption structures as measures of how well the groups behave and communicate between themselves would be developed by a ‘general will’ of the federation. It would also serve to counter the argument made against Rousseau in regards to the impracticality of assembling the population for every law, as the federation would streamline the small sized semi-autonomous groups.
A group consisting of members from each of the semi-autonomous groups would have to be formed in order to create the federation. The ‘general good’ of the federation is the building of relations of trust between the semi-autonomous groups. This encompasses the conduct of the semi-autonomous groups toward each other, toward the organization, and toward the public. The limits of the federal group would have to be narrow and specific to the task in which they are instituted, otherwise any codes of conduct that come from the federation is at risk of conflicting with those from the semi-autonomous groups. At no point should this happen, because the ‘general good’ for each group is distinct and particular. If there is a conflict then it is clear that the ‘general will’ of a group is not functioning, because the ‘general will’ only considers the ‘general good’. The federation has a ‘general will’ of its own, because it has a ‘general good’ of its own and its own members.
A federation that struggles to conceive of a strong ‘general will’ will have varied semi-autonomous groups that draw different codes of conduct. When the federation’s ‘general will’ is strong but a small number of delegates strongly dissent this highlights their respective semi-autonomous groups’ ethical variance. Neither of these outcomes are inherently good or bad, but provide a structure of interrogation in which varying roles can be compared and contrasted to varying codes of conduct. This is particularly helpful to the employment of new staff, staff training, and the formulation of job positions. It is clear that different job positions require different people, and different tasks require different conduct. The formulation of the ‘general will’ from the semi-autonomous groups help identify the specifics of each job position within a federation. Such identification increases the likelihood of training an ethically strong and unified federation; a federation that is accountable, builds ethical behaviour, and internally well structured to deal with corruption.
In this paper I have constructed a system of public integrity that incorporates Rousseau’s notion of ‘general will’ in an attempt to institutionalise individual legitimation and participation. The result of incorporating individual legitimation and participation into a system of public integrity is a marriage of particular attributes and structures that are present in contemporary pro-ethical and anti-corruption approaches to public integrity. The structure of the system of public integrity thus presented is a federation of semi-autonomous groups that independently construct via the ‘general will’ a code of conduct that specifically works to achieve ethical behaviour in the common organizational area of each semi-autonomous group. I have shown how a self regulatory system of public integrity, based on Rousseau’s political philosophy of the ‘general will’, can encourage ethical behaviour and deter criminal misconduct by implementing the benefits of self-legislation in a code of conduct.
Bibliography
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997
Cobban, A. Rousseau and the Modern State, George Allen & Unwin. 1964
Grace, Damien. O’Neill on Trust, 2008
Kelly, C. Rousseau’s Exemplary Life; The Confessions as Political Philosophy, Cornell University Press. 1987
Miller, J. Rousseau; Dreamer of Democracy, Yale University Press. 1984
Noble, R. Language, Subjectivity, and Freedom in Rousseau’s Moral Philosophy, Garland Publishing. 1991
O’Neill, Onora, A Question of Trust: the BBC Reith Lectures 2002, Cambridge, CUP, 2002
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Rousseau Judge of Jean Jacques: Dialogues, ed. Masters, R.D. & Kelly, C. trans. Bush, J. & Kelly, C. & Masters, R.D. University Press of New England. 1990
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Geneva Manuscript, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, A Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality among Man, Burt Franklin NY. 1971
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Confessions, trans. J.M. Cohen. Penguin Books. 1953
Wright, E.H. The Meaning Of Rousseau, Russel & Russel. 1963
Uhr, J. Terms of Trust, University of NSW Press. 2005
Footnotes
Uhr, J. Terms of Trust, University of NSW Press. 2005. Pg 197
Ibid. Pg 199
Ibid. Pg 199
Ibid. Pg 199
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 17
Uhr, J. Terms of Trust, University of NSW Press. 2005. Pg 199
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 137
Uhr, J. Terms of Trust, University of NSW Press. 2005. Pg 199
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 137
Uhr, J. Terms of Trust, University of NSW Press. 2005. Pg 199
Ibid. Pg 199-205
Ibid. Pg 200
Ibid. Pg 199
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 57
Uhr, J. Terms of Trust, University of NSW Press. 2005. Pg 202
Ibid. Pg 205
Ibid. Pg 201
Ibid. Pg 200
Ibid. Pg 200
Ibid. Pg 200
Ibid. Pg 200
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 53
Ibid. pg 63
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, A Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality among Man, Burt Franklin NY. 1971. Pg 37
Ibid. Pg 14
Rousseau uses ‘respect for the law’ to describe the internal nature of the relationship between the subject and the law. Rousseau’s association of respect is best illustrated by the relationship the subjects of the state have with the general will when it is documented as law. When a subject submits oneself to the law the individual recognises their own will encapsulated in the expression of the general will, that has become the law. The law, as an expression of the general will, is nothing that the individual would not already submit to so long as every other individual would likewise submit to it also.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 53
Ibid. Pg 61
Ibid. Pg 61. See the first footnote at the bottom of this page, and follow also the trans. Footnote #44 on d’Argenson.
It would be of interest to examine whether the public interest is formulated in a similar fashion as an opposing position to all private interest.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 61
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Geneva Manuscript, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 160
The ‘general good’ as Rousseau uses the term is in reference to the physical and abstract goods, and actions, that are associated and belong to all the members of a group and by advantaging the ‘common good’ thus advantage all the members.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 63
Read this paragraph in conjunction with the earlier point made on the respect for the law on page 8 and the accompanying footnote 24.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 63. Pg 63
I will explain and elaborate on the use of “semi-autonomous” groups in the section of the essay in which I detail the principles of structure of the present system of public integrity. Essentially they are defined groups that are given a frame of reference in which the group has the ability to formulate codes of conduct.
In essence this transformation is capturing on a macro level Rousseau’s idea of the social compact as limiting natural freedom by instituting civil liberties.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 63
Ibid. Pg 70
I will explain and elaborate on the use of “semi-autonomous” groups in the section of the essay in which I detail the principles of structure of the present system of public integrity.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 62
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 157
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 158
Uhr, J. Terms of Trust, University of NSW Press. 2005. Pg 197
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 62
Ibid. Pg 62
Immediately arguments against the practicalities of the system spring up here, especially those which question the assemblage of the people to consult on every law. This paper will not address these arguments directly, for the purpose of this paper, and for size of the task at hand, the project is limited to the philosophical scope of the system. i.e. generalising from the particular. The arguments that spring from the preceding paragraph will rely largely on hypothetical failures of implementation of the system. To these ends I insist on the generality of the system, to such strength that I have not placed this system within a real or functioning organization, but have sketched the system to the notion of an organization to which will apply. Nor have I discussed the details of implementation but merely outlined principles of implementation. Neither have I analysed the contemporary debate in such a way, so that I have not come to rely on the failures of particularities of the contemporary solutions to public integrity to embolden my argument.
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 199
Cobban, A. Rousseau and the Modern State, George Allen & Unwin. 1964. Pg 48
see footnote 48
Ibid. Pg 70
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997. Pg 55
Cobban, A. Rousseau and the Modern State, George Allen & Unwin. 1964. Pg 87
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 54
The ‘general good’ as Rousseau uses the term is in reference to the physical and abstract goods, and actions, that are associated and belong to all the members of a group and by advantaging the ‘common good’ thus advantage all the members.
Ibid. Pg 71
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 71
Cobban, A. Rousseau and the Modern State, George Allen & Unwin. 1964. Pg 74.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 59
Ibid. Pg 59
Ibid. Pg 110-1
Clark, G. & Jonson, E. & Caldow, W. (Eds.) Accountability and Corruption; Public Sector Ethics, Allen & Unwin. 1997
Ibid. Pg 74
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On The Social Contract, St. Martin’s Press NY. 1978. Pg 132
Take notice as to how this would apply to the arguments discussed in footnote 48. ¶ 4:49 pm