Ethics Management in Swedish Political Parties

Abstract

Political parties are indispensable actors in representative democracy. However, trust in parties has declined in many democracies. Ethics management is a potential mechanism for parties to keep or strengthen public trust. Previous research about how parties have developed internal ethics mechanisms to promote organisational integrity is scant. This article explores how Swedish parliamentary parties use ethical strategies to uphold standards of conduct for their members. Sweden is a high trust society, but its citizens perceive risks of corrupt influence as relevant. Amongst representative institutions, parties score the lowest levels of trust. Therefore, Swedish parties are interesting to study in order to understand how they uphold integrity standards and assure voters that they are ethical organisations. We show that parties increasingly use formal ethics guidelines to set integrity standards within their organisations and integrity pledges for candidates. Parties also use relatively well-developed monitoring instruments but reactively rather than proactively. Tools to enforce integrity are few and often concentrated on formal expulsion procedures, which are rarely used. Swedish parties have during the last 15 years incrementally developed their ethics management processes. It remains to be seen to what extent these changes will transcend formal rules and strengthen integrity in the long run.